A group of strangers visit an ancient Hungarian castle and bring along a werewolf.
The Werewolf series roars on and on and on.
With the opening scene of the film being set in the 1800’s I thought we were going to be in for a medieval based prequel but it was just a set set up scene for the film. It’s a set up we’ve seen a million times, I wasn’t exactly surprised to see it here and it never fails to come off as extremely corny.
What I wasn’t expecting was to enjoy it as much as it did, honestly I was in shock, here was a film that was completely unoriginal, seriously badly acted and the props look like they were made by the local school but what it lacked in all of that it more than made up for in its entertainment value.
This feature has so much charm to it that it’s really endearing and I found myself really involved in it, like I said earlier it has serious flaws but you just can’t help but enjoy it for what it is which is low budget fun. To see the story being taken into a different setting helped refresh the werewolf fatigue that was ongoing.
I can’t begin to explain how happy I was to see this shift in story, there’s only so many times you can watch a scene that’s set in the woods with a fire and people and blah blah blah. It get’s old really quick so to see this story taken into a confined and isolated area was fun to watch and it turned out a lot better than it should have.
“Howling V: The Rebirth” is a diamond in the rough, it makes for great Sunday afternoon viewing and it’s one film in the franchise I would recommend watching.
Miscellaneous facts about the film:
Despite the fact that this film states “Based on the novels ‘The Howling I, II, and III’ written by Gary Brandner”, this film is in no way based on any of those novels, and is a sequel to the earlier Howling films in name only.
The film’s original cinematographer was let go by the end of the first day of shooting, as he spoke virtually no English and so could not work effectively with Neal Sundstrom. Arledge Armenaki took over the role, despite only having a limited grasp of English himself at the time, but was able to communicate adequately well with Sundstrom, allowing filming to proceed.
Cedric Sundstrom was originally asked to direct by Clive Turner. He turned the offer down, as he was already committed to working on another film, but recommended his brother Neal Sundstrom, for the job. Neal took on the role, hoping to have a more positive experience on a film that he directed from the start, having taken over directing Space Mutiny (1988) halfway through that film’s production. Ultimately, however, he constantly found himself butting heads with Turner throughout filming.
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