I Watch Movies: Howling III

 

Howling III

Beckmeyer, an Australian anthropologist, discovers some film from 1905 of aborigines killing a wolf-man. Meanwhile the CIA is intercepting Russian communications about werewolves. They put this on Beckmeyer who convinces the US President to give the go-ahead to search for them in Australia.

Meanwhile Jerboa, an Australian werewolf, flees her outback community and rapist step-father Thylo to Sydney where she is immediately cast in horror film Shapeshifters Part 8 by Donny. Ignorant of horror films, Donny takes her to a werewolf one which she criticises for its inaccuracies. They have sex; Donny notices that she has a large scar and fur on her belly.

Strobe lights at the wrap party trigger her transformation and she flees into the street where she’s hit by a car and hospitalised. On her trail, three werewolves disguised as nuns attack first the wrap party and then the hospital, murdering people and abducting her back. Arriving late, Beckmeyer and team realise that the Australian werewolves are marsupials*. They then go to see the ballet in the Sydney Opera House where a Russian defector is performing. Inevitably she and her companion are werewolves, and after some study she escapes and heads for the outback town of Flow, where she is mystically linked to Thylo.

The film then heads for the outback for what would be a cool final sequence, except that it also insists on an extended epilogue.

Watch This: Marsupial werewolves, discussion of extinction and aboriginal land use and myth, ballet, horror films and the film industry, domestic abuse, as well as ancient conspiracies, modern oppression and some clever sight gags
Don’t Watch This: It lives and dies on special effects and monstrous violence

* The film offers three, or possibly four explanations for how the Australian werewolves have turned marsupial, a fun move more films should consider rather than having a singular point of origin.