HOWLING VI: THE FREAKS

UK, 1991, 100 minutes, Colour.

Brendan Hughes, Michelle Matheson, Bruce Martyn Payne, Sean Sullivan, Antonio Fargas, Carol Lynley.

Directed by Hope Perello.

The Howling series was based on novels by Gary Brandner. The first film made quite an impact with horror fans with mixed feelings towards the various sequels, bloggers on this film considering it the best in the series as well as one of the worst – and many opinions in between.

This is a British production with British stars as well is an American cast and filmed in California.

In many ways, the film takes quite a while to get going, a stranger Brendan Hughes, wandering the desert with a strange bag, coming into American town, people suspicious, discovering he is British, then taken on by the pastor who needs his church rebuilt. The stranger does a very good job transforming the church. And there is also the pastor’s daughter (not a persuasive performance from Michelle Matheson). So, where is this going?

Then there is an announcement of a carnival coming to town, especially an entrepreneur, Harker (played by British actor in so many films in Britain and then internationally, often sinister, Bruce Payne). In fact, the troupe is quite extensive, and the audience sees quite a range of freaks as they set up in the town, then perform, quarrelsome amongst themselves.

However, Harker has his eye on the young stranger who, at the time of the full moon, has decided to leave. Audiences have been guessing where this will be going and it emerges then that the young man is a werewolf, Harker wanting to have him amongst the freaks – and so all kinds of horror sequences, transformations, to werewolf and back, threats to the pastor, to his daughter, to the people in the town.

As with all the sequels, the film has its horror moments, but, in comparison with so many of the other sequels, this one is comparatively straightforward, often much milder even with the horror sequences.