John’s Horror Corner: Howling 3: The Marsupials (1987), one of the more comical werewolf movies

MY CALL:  I love that this movie doesn’t take itself seriously at all. It’s basically a spoof of a parody of a satire.  This sequel is in no way connected to the first two Howling movies, so feel free to see this even if you haven’t yet seen The Howling (1981).  [B for a bad horror]  IF YOU LIKE THIS WATCH:  Do you like less conventional werewolf movies?  Then aim for An American Werewolf in London (1981), An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), Cursed (2005) or The Company of Wolves (1984).

Given how this movie begins, we’re led to believe that Professor of Anthropology Harry Beckmeyer somehow stumbled across some 80-year old footage of Australian aborigines killing some man-wolf hybrid thing.  Considering this to be concrete evidence of the existence of werewolves, Harry travels to Australia so that he can prove the existence of werewolves to the scientific community.

Okay, guys.  Now let’s do a funny pose…

Meanwhile Australian native Jerboa (Imogen Annesley; Queen of the Damned) is recruited by a young filmmaker (Donny) to act in a werewolf movie called “Shape Shifters.”  They become intimate and Donny learns a bit more than he expected about werewolves–including that, evidently, they have kangaroo pouches just above their hoo-has.

The first half of the movie follows these three characters in an over-the-top marathon of fun horror-spoofed nonsense.  The second half feels like a really weird family movie complete with a healthy relationships between Jerboa and Donny, Harry settling down with a balerina werewolf, and they all have fast-growing werechildren.  Meanwhile, the Australian military has become hell-bent on capturing, studying and maybe eradicating the recently discovered werewolves.  It’s like The Little Marsupial Werewolf House on the Prairie with some pesky military occupants.

I feel like I’ve seen this scene in every werewolf movie.  Here, the military is trying to learn about the werewolves…

The free-again werewolf calls upon the great spirit (or something) to turn into a 20′ tall werewolf that we see for a few seconds here sticking its head into a soldier’s tent…

Also infused with the great werewolf spirit whatever is this werewolf skeleton, which attacks a soldier…somehow…with no explanation of the skeleton werewolf zombie thing in the movie…whatever, it was funny!

The cheesy transformation scenes are comically littered with rubber prosthetics, bubbling skin and retractable claws.  There’s a laughably gross monster birth scene dream sequence.  Oh, and there are werewolf nuns and a werewolf ballerina with poor transformation timing!  Of course, the actual action is infrequent and awful, but I don’t mind at all.

Okay, so here someone is turning into a…ummm….seahorse or something?

And here we have a croco-werewolf with Wolverine claws.

“Congratulations.  You’re having a AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

Werewolf nuns which smack of were-kangaroos.

Fun, weird, light-hearted and spoofy.  All in good fun, folks.

MPAA SIDEBAR:  As for the rating, you should really consider this to be rated R (not PG-13) when considering young viewers.  It’s not scary or gory, but there’s basically total nudity obscured only by a thin layer of “body fur” and this includes the moment and the actual act of monster childbirth followed by watching a tiny, slimy, marsupial lycanthrope–which is strangely cute–make its way to mommy’s pouch from her…well, you know.  At age 10 I think I would have been just fine
with this, but I’m rather sure my mother wouldn’t be!

Yup.  She has a teeny baby in her pouch just above her hoo-ha.