Director: Philippe Mora
Stars: Imogen Annesley, Lee Biolos, Ralph Cotterill
A sexy young marsupial-werewolf hybrid escapes from her demented family in the Australian outback, becomes a famous actress, gets impregnated by a human male, and then it gets weird.
Your first clue that HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS is a huge pile of cinematic garbage should be in the title itself. Ignoring how non-scary and giggle-worthy the phrasing is, the concept is just truly bizarre. “You know what this franchise is missing? Animals that carry their young in pouches!” It also has no relation whatsoever to the first two movies in THE HOWLING series, so fans of Joe Dante’s original (or that one guy who liked HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF) can rest easy. This shouldn’t even be a HOWLING movie.
(Oh, and in case you were wondering, the second clue is that Philippe Mora is also the director of PTERODACTYL WOMAN FROM BEVERLY HILLS.)
Unlike most werewolves, Felix turned in to Julia Roberts when the moon was full.
Despite what the title might suggest, there aren’t any were-kangaroos or were-koalas in this movie. As disappointing as that sounds, I assure you that HOWLING III is still worth your time. This is pretty much exactly what you want from a bad horror movie. The only thing worse than the hilariously ridiculous dialogue is the astoundingly bad wolf makeup and special effects. We’re talking “papier-mâché, grade school art class” bad. It’s just shoddy workmanship all around.
As for the plot, the characters come and go when it’s convenient to the story, regardless of whether or not it makes sense. It’s glaringly obvious that the cast and crew had a set number of days to film in the outback and kind of made everything up depending on what was available to them. The final product is so over-the-top bad that it’s almost like a horror movie parody or a satire on the werewolf genre. But that might be giving it too much credit. It’s really just your run-of-the-mill furry love story.
Makeup effects brought to you by Play-Doh and Rick Baker’s four-year old granddaughter.
When HOWLING III opens we learn that werewolves exist outside of the United States, specifically in the Soviet Union and Australia. A girl named Jaboa Jaboa runs away from home—home being a murderous clan of werewolf-marsupials that live isolated in the outback. (She tells a passenger on the bus: “I don’t want to go home because my stepfather tried to rape me. And he’s a werewolf.”) Once she gets to the city she is discovered on the street and immediately offered a starring role in a horror movie about werewolves. What a coincidence! The young producer Donny immediately falls in love with her and they have sex, even though he does think it’s a bit odd that she has a hairy flesh pocket on her stomach. Unfortunately, Jaboa Jaboa is hit by a car one night and the doctors and police immediately discover how weird her body is and want to keep her for further examination. Fortunately, Jaboa Jaboa’s three werewolf aunts, dressed as nuns for some reason, show up to kill everyone in the hospital and take her home.
“Excuse me, folks. Have you seen my pal Xenomorph?
Donny (who actually tells the cops that even though she was a werewolf, the sex was totally normal!) manages to track her down to a town/trailer park called Flow, which is “wolf” backwards, just like Nilbog was “goblin” backwards in TROLL 2. He has a surprise in store, however, since Jaboa is pregnant with his disgusting freak offspring. In arguably the film’s most memorable scene, the young woman gives birth and the baby werewolf slowly crawls out of her vagina, up her abdomen and nestles inside her pouch as the new mom gazes on lovingly. It’s truly an amazing achievement in cinema. Even more impressive, is Donny’s reaction to discovering he has a child. The man is shockingly excited when he sees his were-fetus, instead of screaming, “Oh my God, what the hell is that walking around inside your skin folds?!” like a normal person. Together the family walks around the forest playing with their freak baby.
The HOWLING-LOOK WHO’S TALKING crossover movie was a gamble, that’s for sure.
There are a few other random subplots going on, most of which concern the government trying to track down Jaboa and expose the werewolf plague. However, the strangest B-story revolves around a Russian werewolf ballerina who is psychically linked to mate with Jaboa’s rapist stepfather and arrives in Australia to do just that. However, she is captured by the authorities and placed under hypnosis so the movie can exposition dump the history of werewolves and were-marsupials. (Something about a god who had sex with a wolf…) As predictable as it may seem, one of the doctors falls in love with the Russian lycan and escapes with her to the outback where they meet with Donny, Jaboa and their freak baby to evade their captors once and for all.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which arm Scott Howard used to flog the dolphin.
And then HOWLING III completely forgets it’s a horror movie in one of the greatest, weirdest final acts in Awfully Good history. The two couples live together peacefully in the woods for the next decade or so, raising their freak children together and becoming one big happy family. Eventually Jaboa and Donny decide they miss the fame of Hollywood and leave to search out the limelight. The other couple stays until years later they get a visitor who informs them that the Pope and President have legalized werewolf marriage and they’re free to return to society. The doctor gets a job teaching at a university, where Jaboa and Donnie’s son just happens to enroll in his class. He tells the doctor that his parents are secretly moonlighting as famous movie stars and will be on some futuristic award show that night. So the doc and the Russian ballerina werewolf tune in to the “Academy of Laser Arts Awards” just in time to see their friend Jaboa win Best Actress…and accidentally turn in to a werewolf in front of the entire world
They must have great drugs in Australia.
“Everything is high art. That’s what this is all about. For example, in your first scene you’ll be gang raped by four monsters.”
So many amazingly bad lines. Watch them all.
Terrible werewolf makeup, terrible werewolf attack scenes, and then the greatest werewolf-marsupial birth scene in cinema history.
You can never unsee the multiple werewolf teats.
They made eight HOWLING movies! Buy this one here!
Take a shot or drink every time:
Double shot whenever:
Awfully Good Movies October Monster Mash continues below with 1972’s BLACULA starring William Marshall! Get your vampire blaxploitation fix right here!
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