Well folks, there you have it. The entire “The Howling” franchise review.
I have to say it’s been interesting looking back over this franchise.
For those of you who may not know the franchise started out as a book series, there are three books all by Gary Brandner so if you are intrigued be sure to seek them out. I’ve never read the books myself, though I have heard good things, I’ve also heard that none of the films do them justice.
There was a cycle of were wolf movies during the 1980’s, we saw films like “Wolfen”, “The Howling”, “Teen Wolf”, “Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf”, “Full Moon High”, “Teen Wolf Too”, “The Company Of Wolves”, “The Marsupials: The Howling III” and “An American Werewolf In London”. People must’ve been sick of Werewolf movies by the end of the 80’s.
Though there has been no new entries in the franchise since 2011’s “The Howling: Reborn” though it wouldn’t surprise me to see more releases in the future as Werewolves are becoming more popular again. There was an eight part comic series titled “The Howling: Revenge Of The Werewolf Queen” which got pretty good reviews.
I’ll finish this on a funny story: Joe Dante had been very critical of the book that the first movie is based on, he did many interviews talking about how the book wasn’t much good and how they had improved it in this movie. One day at a lecture, Dante started bad-mouthing the book. A man raised his hand from the audience and said, “So you don’t like the book, huh?” and Dante answered, “Well no, not really”, to which the man in the audience replied, “Because I wrote that book”, the man in the audience was none other than Gary Brandner, the man who wrote the book. Dante was caught by the author on television.
If were honest “The Howling” as a franchise is well known for being pretty weak though it does have it’s moments, I’d pick and choose which films you’d watch, don’t worry continuity isn’t a problem.
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