Welcome to the astonishing 300th article of B-Movie Enema!

It’s been a long time getting here. What’s funny is that I think back over the last several years and I could never be able to tell you the movies in order that I’ve covered. If you named a movie, I could easily immediately say, “Yeah, I covered that at some point!” I find it very hard to say even the month in which I covered a movie. It all just feels like a blur.

I could probably rattle off more than half of the movies covered just off the top of my head, but the roughly 27,000 hours I spent watching movies, plus the time it takes to write the articles while watching the movies at least doubles those hours, has been a pleasure. Sure, I’ve seen some good movies, and, yes, I’ve definitely seen my more than fair share of crap. Then, there’s the crap that just takes the shit cake. Not many movies have made it to the utmost upper echelon of films. Similarly, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, for as many not-so-great movies I’ve covered, very few have sunk to the absolute bottom of the barrel.

To celebrate 300 B-Movie Enema articles, I decided to bring the pain. It’s time to crown a new “Worst of All-Time” champion for the site. It’s time for The Howling: New Moon Rising.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us.

To understand how The Howling series went from atmospheric classic by Joe Dante to one of the worst movies ever made, it would behoove us to get familiar with the series. So, let’s do that now, shall we? The source material that would inspire a film franchise was a novel by American horror novelist Gary Brandner. Brandner’s first book in what would become a trilogy, The Howling, was released in 1977. It was immediately followed by a 1979 sequel, The Howling II, and, in 1985, a conclusion to the trilogy titled The Howling III: Echoes was released, but mostly was a stand-alone plot.

Joe Dante would make the 1981 film adaptation of The Howling. The plot and characters differed in many ways. The film followed TV news journalist Karen White (Dee Wallace) on the trail of a slasher murderer. She and boyfriend Bill Neill would eventually find a camp of what seems to be hippies, but they are actually all werewolves. The film features a handful of outstanding transformation scenes and really scary moments all set in a very moody location. By far and away, the scene most everyone will know even if they haven’t seen the movie is the final climax of Karen, in order to make the world believe there are indeed monsters out there, transforms into a werewolf on live television as she delivers her report. She sacrifices herself, but, sadly, many people watching the broadcast believe it to simply be special effects and an elaborate hoax.

Pretty much right away, the series takes a bizarre launch off the rails with the 1985 sequel Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf. The title alone makes for joke fodder. It sounds like a fake movie that people are going to go see in a comedy. It is a direct sequel to the original, and the ONLY film in the franchise the refers back to the original. Ben White, Karen’s brother, and played by Big McLargehuge himself, Reb Brown, is given evidence that his sister was indeed a werewolf and is convinced by Christopher Lee to come to Transylvania to fight an immortal werewolf queen played by Sybil Danning. If this sounds stupid, it’s only because it kind of is.

Howling III (1987) takes us to Australia, and begins a whole run of movies that either feel like spec scripts tuned into Howling movies or starts its own fresh series of movies completely unrelated to the first two. In this, it’s discovered that the werewolves down under are, guess what, marsupials. Sure, why not? It’s Australia after all! I’m surprised they aren’t incredibly venomous too. One of the werewolves down there is actually an actress working in a horror film. The actress wins an award and because of the flashing lights and whatnot, she transforms into a werewolf for all the world to see.

Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) is a much more faithful adaptation to the original Brandner novel, but also where lines start getting built that will eventually lead us to this terrible New Moon Rising bullshit. In this, a successful suspense writer is sent to a small town because she’s suffering from a nervous breakdown. She’s there to recover and get right, but, uh oh… The small town of Drago has secrets. She starts getting visions of werewolves. She takes it upon herself to basically kill the entire town by burning them inside the town’s church. However, one leaps out of the fire just as she saw in her visions and probably, like, kills the author lady? The movie was written by Clive Turner. Turner also is an uncredited director on the film and is a guy who is connected to the series from here on out, and directly responsible for the seventh movie that we’re here for this week.

Alright, Howling V: Rebirth (1989) is maybe my favorite of the bad Howling movies. It turns into a little bit of a whodunnit as a group of weirdo travelers come to Eastern Europe to be present at the opening of a long-sealed castle. But, of course, there’s a werewolf stalking about killing each of the travelers one by one. I know the movie is not great and, honestly, really feels like a spec script turned into part of the franchise, despite the direct involvement of Clive Turner who co-wrote the screenplay, acts as a producer on the movie, and appears as a character for the second consecutive entry of the series.

Howling VI: The Freaks (1991) is a little more based on Brandner’s third Howling novel. It’s one of those movies that gives us the monster, but he’s a sympathetic monster. In this, we meet solitary werewolf Ian. He doesn’t want to hurt people and wants to be left alone. He’s captured by a carnival owner and is thrown in the freakshow. But what’s this? The carnival owner is a vampire! He wants to recruit Ian and turn him into a bloodthirsty killer. Not a bad entry, but still the sixth in the series. It fares better than most of the sequels in the eyes of critics too. It’s important to note that Clive Turner was not involved with this entry, so he must have felt 1995 was a good time to jump back in so he can fuck it up but good.

Alright, caught up? Good, because we’re going to be digging deep into the anals of the seventh movie momentarily. But let’s talk about Clive Turner. Turner is an Aussie who got involved with the Howling series with the third entry as a location manager. He somehow rose up the ranks to script the very next entry. Now, I’m not too sure about much more about Clive Turner. He apparently got into a hippie and/or western American cowboy lifestyle because he really likes to put on his shit kickers in this movie to sing country songs, line dance, and just hob knob with locals. And, yes, everyone in this movie actually are the residents of Pioneer Town, California.

Well… I don’t think we can hold off any longer. Let’s get deep into the butt of the movie that Joe Bob Briggs once called “a movie apparently made by three drunk rednecks with a camcorder.” With that, I guess it’s time to try to sort out the exciting happenings of The Howling: New Moon Rising. I ain’t gonna lie… This one is gonna hurt, my dear Enemaniacs.

Okay, so… desert, bones… werewolf movie. Wait! Did I subconsciously restart Werewolf? Please tell me I restarted Werewolf… Please?

D’oh!

Alright so whoever this lady missing all her skins and blood and muscle is, it’s a part of some grizzly murders going on around this small desert California town. Apparently there had been a circus in town. Remember Howling VI? That was a circus. Apparently there was some sort of transient not seen since he snatched the bag from a woman in a picture shown to this local priest who is big on weird supernatural shit. The woman in the picture is the sexy werewolf girl in Howling V. See? We have connections! This is a real sequel!

Said no one ever.

I do appreciate that the priest looks at the picture and says, “This is an old picture…” Yeah, because that movie she appeared in was like six years ago. That’s one way to hide the production value and the lack of having the actress available for your shitty seventh movie.

Okay, well, apparently this transient was killed and all evidence points to it being a wolf who killed the guy. However, it can’t just be any ol’ wolf, it had to be a BIG one. You know, this is pretty standard werewolf movie stuff being talked about. But let’s not dawdle too long on that stuff. Let’s get to the main action and character and, unfortunately, setting of this movie!

Now, before you start to ask why Willie Nelson is in a Howling movie, just jump back, Jack. This is a different redheaded stranger. This is Clive Turner. His character’s name is Ted Smith. I’m glad they didn’t spend too much of the four-dollar budget on thinkin’ up character names because he needed that for the jukebox. Soundtracks don’t pay for themselves, ya know.

“Ted” “Smith” here just blew into town on his motorcycle earlier that day. The first thing he does? Shit talk the bar’s selection of country music. If you truly want to understand the level in which we are operating in this movie’s script, plot, acting, directing, whatever… You can get a real good vibe from the below clip.

I hate this movie.

Okay, I know you’re probably saying, “Geoff, you’re being too hard on this movie. So what if we just spent valuable minutes talking about George Jones?” You’d be sort of right, in another situation. In this movie, we’ve got the writer, producer, director, probably editor, probably the guy who bought all the props and costumes, and basically self-anointed King of The Howling, Clive Turner, telling people what to talk about. He’s got them talking about how great George Jones is. He’s got them telling super lame dad jokes that turn gross. He’s then expecting to completely floor this woman in the bar with, what, his animal charisma? His good looks? His accent? His obvious use of Pantene Pro-V shampoo? I don’t know and I don’t care. I hate this movie.

Back to the old priest and the investigator who is looking at what’s going on with the deaths around the town. The priest says the devil is to blame for the killings. He says that the killer has lycanthropic manifestations. In laymen’s terms – he’s a werewolf, a wolf man, a me when I’m not wearing a shirt. He’s a beast. At this point, if the above scene didn’t indicate this, I have to wonder if this script needed one more re-write. That’s because the investigator says to the priest, “Hey, that’s some cockamamie shit right there, padre! What do you mean werewolf?!?” (I’m paraphrasing) Now, I don’t want to be your above average movie viewer who actually pays attention to previous scenes, but the investigator specifically sought out the priest because he was into supernatural stuff. When he gives his expert opinion, now you don’t believe him?!? See what I mean about this movie?

We go back to the shit kicking bar. We meet old man “Pappy” who owns the bar. Ted introduces himself to Pappy and Pappy’s wife (I can only assume is named Mommy, or, worse, Mammy) offers him a job. They don’t pay much, but they’ll feed him and give him a place to live. The night continues and there’s some pretty sad, emotionless line dancing that happens. Ted seems hyper focused on the British blonde lady that he commented on failing to impress with his mere presence earlier.

There seems to be more going on with our friend “Ted”. He returns to the room and starts recording a journal talking about how he’s gotten to town, settled in, and now he needs to find out more about the town. He needs to do this before THEY find out about HIM. Queue up the dramatic music sting – we have some intrigue.

At least intrigue on par with whether or I not I should go to the mailbox and check to see if the mailman’s come yet or not.

The next day, Ted starts integrating more into the town and helping around the bar. He probably helps get more George Jones into the jukebox, he’s helping get the place cleaned up for the next night’s business, he’s sweeping eyeballs up off the floor as if this was the Double Deuce, and he’s doing it all with a smile and a sombrero.

Wait… what? A somb… Jumpin’ Jeebus on a pool cue.

We also get an idea of what life is like in Pioneer Town, California. It’s dull, it’s monotonous, it’s a lot of drinking, and it will assimilate you into its collective.

Guys, I shit you not, we are only 10 minutes in. I don’t know how they get 80 more minutes out of this movie. I don’t know how I will survive 80 more minutes of this movie. Now, get this shit… We spent the day with Ted and the other drunkards that hang out at Shitty Cheers. Great. I can understand that. He needs to learn more about the town before they learn more about him for… reasons. Even though I’d like to know more about what’s going on with Ted, I have to remember we’re still under 15 minutes in – which is painful. But guess what is also still going on?

If you guessed ANYTHING other than “the priest and the investigator are still talking about the murders and the supernatural explanation behind them” then you’d be dead fucking wrong. I really hope the priest has at least offered the investigator a place to sleep since it’s been days since this conversation has started. Anyway, the priest tells the story about the history of the castle in Howling V.

But fuck off with learning anything of use! We gotta go back to the shit kicker bar! What’s going on there? No werewolf stories that’s or fuckin’ sure. Clive just gets cozy with the blonde British girl by dancing with her and going outside probably to make out or something.

But then, it cuts back to the priest still talking about Howling V. I appreciate the story he’s telling, but I don’t know if it’s going to mean a damn thing in Howling VII or if it’s just a conscious realization by Clive Turner that, “Oy, mate! We can’t just stay at the bar for the whole time!” Whatever the reason for us to bounce back and forth like cinematic pinball, it’s making me make this face.

When you have scenes in which people are just hanging out at a bar and talking about shit that only people in this small town know about or talking about the size of the urinal and each other’s dicks (this happens), or have the owner of the bar singing songs for the bar patrons, or watching people line dance, or have a guy honestly believing that Clive Turner had a fling with Madonna, you begin to wonder exactly why there’s a screenplay credit at all. I guess maybe the only real screenplay stuff was between the priest and investigator. But the rest is unbelievably insignificant. It would be the stuff that would be used for coverage. But it’s not. It’s like the scenes with the priest and investigator are the coverage shots and the stuff that would normally be coverage in other movies makes up the entirety of this movie. It’s bonkers.

Finally, there’s some drama that occurs. A man with a giant mullet and a face that looks like Michael Paré has come to town and he knows who Ted is. He threatens to reveal to the town who he really is and what he does. I wouldn’t worry too much about him though because he’s attacked by a growling, red point of view shot that is clearly meant to be werewolf vision. After the man is attacked, Clive breaks into his motel room and finds a briefcase full of money.

The next morning, one of the waitresses at the bar tells Pappy’s wife, Mommy (I’m just gonna call her Mommy because I don’t know her name and that’s just easiest because she apparently is everyone’s Mommy in this town – or acts like it), that she saw Ted snooping around after she heard a scream. Mommy has the waitress, Cheryl, go ask Ted what he knows about the scream and the broken door and the now missing drunkard he had an altercation with the night before.

It maybe took like 22 minutes or so to finally break the seal on werewolf action, so I fully expect this movie to now be all werewolf all the time. I mean, the investigator says finding who killed these people are of utmost priority and importance to him, and the priest himself says they have much to do and can’t waste anymore time. Clearly Ted is working on a short clock now that people are starting to ask questions after that mullet man showed up. Things are gonna pick up… right?

Right?

While the priest tells the story of Howling V, we learn that the lone Australian in the castle where the werewolf attacked was named Ted. That’s horseshit because I’ve seen Howling V. Clive Turner was indeed in that movie, but he wasn’t named Ted. His name in that movie was Ray, but whatever. Sure, he may have clearly been killed in that movie, but, sure, it’s the same guy. That’s not the only connection we have either. We also see the star of Howling IV, the author lady who went and murdered that whole town of werewolves. Ted called her to ask why she sent the guy that nearly blew his cover. She looks concerned.

The brings up a good question. The card that Ted used to call the lady from Howling IV said something about “Investigations”. I have to assume at this stage that Ted is a super secret werewolf killer guy. I have to assume he is INVESTIGATING and therefore needs some stealth. Why would the second guy brought in want to reveal his identity? Is this some sort of weird jealousy among the investigators? Is this something author lady should be worried about and need to discipline someone over? Why didn’t she say anything? Oh, wait, I know the answer to that last question – no budget.

Speaking of another investigator, how’s the police investigator doing on his side of this movie?

Not fucking well, that’s how!

The priest tells the investigator that their time is running out. The next full moon coincides with the exact date in which the werewolf involved in the Eastern European castle deal will be at its three-year full maturity when it will be, get this, “engorged with an awesome new power”. That will be very bad news. I guess. It really just sounds like the werewolf will have a MASSIVE boner.

Cheryl continues to snoop around and tries to find out if Ted has stolen something from the one guy who suddenly disappeared the other day. Another lady who works at the bar is sent in to look at a briefcase sticking out from under his bed. It only reveals to have a bunch of cassettes. They bring up the George Jones thing again because apparently he has a shit ton of George Jones tapes. Ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA AAAAAAAAAH!

It’s been 20 minutes since the last werewolf sighting. In that time, we’ve seen Pappy and Mommy sing three full songs at the bar. Does the title “Howling” mean something else? Isn’t this supposed to be a werewolf movie?

I guess we don’t really need werewolves in our werewolf movie. Nah… Did you know there was consideration to not ever see the Wolf Man in the 1941 Universal classic? Yeah, they thought, fairly correctly I might add, that it might be more intriguing to make the audience try to figure out if Larry Talbot was really transforming into a werewolf or if he was simply losing his mind. Now see? You don’t need a werewolf in your werewolf movie.

If we apply that logic, then The Howling: New Moon Rising is a goddamn masterpiece!

Noooooooope. This movie is shit. The priest says the werewolf is probably disguised and hanging out somewhere near the Yucca Flats. Movies dealing with those are almost never bad… right? Anyway, werewolf vision returns as Ted is attacked by a man he kind of hustled money from at the bar that night. The guy mugs Ted and is immediately attacked by the werewolf and then it turns on the guy’s friend. It probably really won’t help that the guys that Ted gets into altercations with wind up dead and or missing.

One of the locals finds the muggers dead and from the looks of it, the dudes were attacked by an animal. Mommy isn’t sure what to do so she tells the guy to just bury the bodies and cover it all up. It also doesn’t exactly help that Ted is telling the fellas at the bar about how he got mugged by those guys last night. It’s in this scene that the single most important item not only for the production, the story that Ted is telling, and for anyone who is unlucky enough to watch this movie makes its appearance to steal the show.

Let’s check our time stamp… It’s currently 51:03 and we’ve got 2 scenes of werewolf vision, stories about a previous entry in the movie, a lot of line dancing and country song a-singin’. But no actual sighting of werewolves. Shit, for all I know it could be a mountain lion that is killing people. The town may be onto something with the various bodies they’ve found.

But… No matter how much you spin your wheels in a movie, there’s already room for a fart joke.

The two snoopy snoops from the bar, Cheryl and Bonnie, don’t buy that the guys who jumped Ted were simply killed by a mountain lion. Bonnie, resident mountain lion expert and middle aged lady mullet haver, says that mountain lions only kill and attack those who are already injured or dead. Bonnie thinks Ted is killing everyone. She tries to tell the British lady, whose name I had to look up and that didn’t help because none of these people want to be found out that they were in this movie. Anyway, British lady says Ted can’t be responsible and then doubles down by having him sleepover at her place. The next day, he’s got a bag of bloody clothes that he needs to get rid of.

Meanwhile, the priest is called by Marie, the author lady from the Howling IV. She says she has worries about werewolves. Bonnie tries calling the ranger to find out if there have been any mountain lion problems in the area. While she does that, Cheryl found the red-splattered shirt that Ted threw in the garbage. Mommy says that it isn’t blood, it’s paint. Bonnie and Cheryl are not buying that at all.

While the locals deal with this bombshell of a discovery of the shirt, Marie talks to the priest and tells her story. She asks him if he believes in werewolves. He kind of non-chalantly says, “Tell me your story…” and she does. So we get our recap of Howling IV. I’m starting to really think all these flashbacks are how we are getting our goddamned werewolves. Also, I feel like the priest should be quite a bit more excited about what’s going on… Oh whatever. Fuck it.

Marie doesn’t recognize the picture of the hot girl werewolf from the fifth movie. She does recognize Ted’s picture. So, yeah, Clive Turner was in Howling IV. He was a tow truck guy that Marie hit with her car and thought she killed, but apparently not. Didn’t Marie know Ted? Didn’t she send him and the other mullet man and he called and said she shouldn’t have sent the drunk mullet man? Why didn’t she know who Ted was?

Whatever.

Shit comes tumbling down, though. The police say they know where Ted is. At a campfire sing-along, which I really wouldn’t recommend if there’s a mountain lion running about, a guy asks for one of Ted’s George Jones tapes. The British lady, who I think might be named Eveanne…? Anyway, she pulls out a tape, and uh-oh Spaghettios, it’s one of his journals he recorded. He talks about how the town is mostly filled up with dropouts and misfits and keeping alive dreams that they will never fulfill. It’s a pretty damning recording about how the town kind of sucks. He walks outside and apologize to the townfolk and leaves. The sheriff comes and arrests Ted. He doesn’t exactly take him to the station. He just takes Ted to a garage and roughs him up. Ted fights back and knocks the sheriff out with a knee to the face. The cop wakes up and gets attacked by the werewolf.

Which we do kind of see lunging from out the shadows for the cop, but that, honestly, could be from any movie. I really don’t think New Moon Rising sprung for a werewolf.

Ted gets back to his room and the investigator shows up. He explains that he was hired to write an expose on the town because there’s something quite unique about the people in this town – more than half of the most wanted people in the country live here. They tell him that there are three dead guys who have his name written all over them because of their connection to him. Ted says it was a mountain lion that killed those people. So… Ted knows nothing of the werewolf thing. Was he really not the guy in the other two movies then? Sigh… I dunno.

Anyway, since we likely won’t be seeing that noose anymore, we have a new contender for Most Valuable Player in this movie…

The priest says a werewolf can only be killed with a silver bullet or fire. The priest is convinced that Ted is his white whale werewolf thing. But that’s not the case. The questioning does reveal that Ted was indeed in Europe and was found in the snow after everyone was killed in the castle. He’s never heard of the town of Drago from the fourth film. The priest is certain Ted is the werewolf because he believes Marie. The detective investigating all this doesn’t buy it. He thinks Ted is only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Besides, he’s not so sure about taking Marie’s werewolf story as gospel at the risk of killing an innocent man.

Speaking of Marie. She’s dead now. While Ted’s questioned and locked up all night, the werewolf went to Marie’s home and asks her if she remembers her voice. Apparently, the werewolf kills Marie. She was found tossed from her upstairs balcony with a broken… everything.

The priest comes up with a whole story about why he thinks Ted killed those people. The detective tosses that cockamamie story right out. He thinks the priest specifically wants Ted dead, not to protect the people of Pioneer Town, to protect himself. He received orders form the Vatican (sure) some time ago and ignored them. He thinks that the werewolf, whom the priest said can take over the identity of another person, is already in the town. He just had to play his cards right.

He thinks that the werewolf could hide in the town pretty easily. Then, it’s helpful that Ted was allowed to escape the castle previously. The next thing in the werewolf’s favor was having “mind control” over Marie to do what he wanted. Okay… We’re going with that, sure. The third key player, a priest with a guilty soul that was easy to manipulate and control. The priest wanted to believe the woman from the castle was here, and it was easy to get Marie Adams to make the priest believe whatever the wolf needed because he was desperate to find a wolf. The priest was then put on the trail of Ted. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

Oh, guess what? Ted escaped. Yeah. I’m glad we were shown this before this conversation between the detective and the priest. I mean, they do show it to us, but it’s dropped on us by surprise. We didn’t know he escaped. So they just have to tell us that in all this climatic conversation between two guys. One of the guys Ted had to smash a bottle over the head of to get away later was found dead. The detective thinks this was to make it personal and turn everyone in town against Ted.

The detective makes his case and asks the priest to help him find the real werewolf. The priest doesn’t agree with his conclusion so I guess that means no dice.

Don’t you love how this movie went from supposed werewolf move to a slice of shitty life in a shit kicker town to an episode of In the Heat of the Night? I guess I have to give it to Clive Turner. He is ending this movie in unexpected ways. The detective has the priest guard Ted. He goes to the rest of the town to reveal some new information. Cheryl arrives at Ted’s room to find the priest nursing a head wound. He goes to tell the town that Ted’s escaped, but Cheryl has him come to her truck and plans to help hide him.

But she is the werewolf! Cheryl is actually Mary Lou Summers. The real Cheryl died in the hospital and Mary Lou assumed her visage and life. However, the detective figured it out because she’s the one that saved Ted. The detective knew that if Ted was saved by someone in town, and not killed or simply immediately tried to warn the town, that person had to be the werewolf. They would have to kill Ted in order to still get away with everyone thinking that Ted was, indeed, the werewolf.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

We do finally get a werewolf and it’s every bit as bad as you might expect. I do appreciate that they chose to make Cheryl the werewolf because she was the hottest person in town. She was at least alluring enough to, you know, kind of not be assumed to be evil or something. Now that I think of it… I would probably help her. Why not? She could get me free drinks at the bar. She probably likes to boot, scoot, and boogie. She’s probably an animal in the sa… Oh yeah… Yeah. Wait. You want to see that werewolf transformation, don’t ya?

Just look at that in all its glory. That’s fantastic. It turns out, the detective and Ted find out that the priest does know his shit. The detective doesn’t have any silver bullets. So he and Ted need to beat cheeks out there. Good news, though. The town is waiting for Cherylwolf. They have pitchforks and torches and the whole nine yards.

But wait! Wasn’t the werewolf supposed to be engorged with an awesome new power? I bet it has something to do with busting through walls and/or windows.

Hey! Look at that! I was right! This was ultimately very stupid because she leaps right into a hail of bullets from the locals. Apparently they all have silver bullets. The town go to the bar – which is the only thing this place does. They have a little party and sing songs and forgive Ted.

This is a very, very, very bad movie. It’s shocking how bad it really is. This isn’t really a movie. I mentioned, like, four hours ago when I wrote the part about how this feels like a movie entirely made up coverage shots used to insert in between the real movie shit. While I do admit that this movie doesn’t make me as mad as Pot Zombies did or as mouth-agape stunned as I was for After School Massacre, at least those movies were indies made without six prior entries in a franchise to back it up. This is a scam of a movie. If you plunked down the $3 rental fee on some Friday night in late October 1995 when this was released, you’d be really bummed out that it was your choice for Halloween spooky times entertainment.

I’d love to know more about why this movie is. I don’t want to watch a documentary. I don’t want to buy the inevitable Vinegar Syndrome release’s special features. I want to just hear if my suspicion that this was either 1) a tax write-off movie or 2) a “we gotta make this movie or we lose the rights to the franchise” type of movie was correct. I don’t want to spend any more time or money on finding out the answer to that question.

I mean, seriously… I think I could pick up my phone, right now, and go out and just shoot the action going on in downtown Beech Grove, Indiana and have a better end result than this. I bet between me and two or three friends we could make a more compelling, spooky, and interesting werewolf movie that would run 80-90 minutes. The fact that this movie WAS 90 minutes is shocking. Like, how do you make it all the way to 90 minutes with what you had?

Sure, maybe 10 minutes or so were filled with clips and retelling of the fourth and fifth movies. Okay, fine, I’ll accept that. But that still means you have 80 minutes to fill with these non-actors who just hang around the watering hole and get shit faced every night. It’s downright amazing that there were probably still 20 minutes of stuff shot that wasn’t used.

I don’t know what happened to Clive Turner, but he would ultimately disappear from movies five years after this was released. He did have a couple other producing credits as an executive on both The Lawnmower Man and Lawnmower Man 2. He then had a role as a bouncer in the 2000 film The Apostate. Then… Nothing. I don’t know if he’s still alive or still out there trying to sell people on The Howling or what. he looked to be easily in his late 40s or 50s in this movie so it’s hard to say where he is some 26 years later. Maybe he retired in Australia somewhere satisfied he got his chance to make some movies. Maybe he moved to Pioneer Town in California and that’s all she wrote.

What I do know is that you cannot buy this movie on DVD… legally. You can still find someone who is willing to unload their VHS copy, but it’s never had a high definition remaster or update or anything. You can find The Howling: New Moon Rising on Tubi. It’s there in all its standard definition glory. You can watch it there. I wouldn’t recommend it, but you can if you really need to see this fuckshit poopcicle for yourself.

Well, how about that? 300 B-Movie Enema articles! That’s amazing. But guess what! I still have much, much more in me. The 301st edition is just one week away and it’s a classic of 80s sleaze and schlock. I’ll be checking out 1988’s Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers starring the gorgeous Michelle Bauer! To find out when it drops to read it, you can follow the blog right here on WordPress or you can follow B-Movie Enema on Facebook or Twitter! We’re in the last few episodes of B-Movie Enema: The Series for this second season as well! Go over to YouTube, subscribe to the channel and watch the incredibly crappy Mistress of the Apes tomorrow night!

In the meantime, don’t get yourself wrapped up in any long-haired hippie Australian cowboys because you may just get attacked by a werewolf! See you back here in one week!