REVIEW: The Howling 2: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985) Reviewed by Bryan Schuessler

The Howling was a werewolf film that I really enjoyed, but I think was eclipsed by the success and genius special effects that Rick Baker employed for the werewolf  in An American Werewolf in London, also coming out around the same time, but Kevin Yagher still did a mighty fine job of creating a solid werewolf transformation in the first Howling film. But now we have the sequel.

The Howling 2: Your Sister Is a Werewolf is one of those films that had lots of charm and character, winning me over, even though deep down I knew it was a stinker. Stuck smack dab in the middle of the ’80s and full of music and wardrobes of that time period, the film is one of those that you either appreciate or write off as another sequel that does not live up to its original counterpart. I felt that director Phillipe Mora created a fun and highly atmospheric horror film that has lots of big names in B-grade horror, such as Christopher Lee and Sybil Danning.

Christopher Lee was excellent in this film, as he most always is, and plays the part of Steffan Crosscoe, werewolf hunter and investigator, and the part fit him quite well. Lee’s mannerisms and regal English accent always lends a bit of class to every character he portrays. Ben White (Reb Brown) is the brother of a slain news reporter that turned into a werewolf while delivering the news and was killed before she started taking the lives of her colleagues. Then we have the news reporter Jenny Templeton (Annie McEnroe) who is intent on uncovering the truth and furthering her journalistic career in the process. The three of them all meet at Ben’s sister’s funeral and Ben does not truly believe that any of this at all real until one of the werewolfs attacks them. The film is goofy, and some may consider it to be an awful sequel, which it may be. I found the film to be fun to watch, if not just funny. Sybil Danning, playing the role of Stirba-the bisexual queen of all the werewolves, was quite enticing to watch on the screen: clothed, unclothed, or fully wolfed-out.

I will say that my favorite scenes in the film were the scenes of carnage that were creative, but just were not on par with the quality that the original Howling possessed. Steve Johnson (Night of the Demons, Lord of Illusions) was responsible for the special effects and did a pretty decent job. This take on the werewolf phenomena was fun, if not funny, and still enjoyable to watch on some levels. Throw in some atrocious 80′s new wave music and even a performance by a God-awful New Wave band that made me want to stick a fork in my ears after hearing them play for more then a second, which was still way too long.

Some of the scenes that were the high-points in the movie was the orgy scenes that the werewolves partook in and the menage-a-trois that the lucious Sybil Danning and her fellow lycanthropes engage in. Maybe by most movie standards this was a “bad” film, but it was one that I enjoyed, and had two of my favorite actors and actresses in the genre, Danning and Lee, in it. More importantly, Sybil Danning’s lovely breasts were on-hand and probably the finest scenes in the whole film were when they were exposed.