The Howling III: The Marsupials (1987)

In Australia, there is a secret species of marsupial werewolves. The last of their kind live in a small town called Flow (get it?), headed by Thylo. But Thylo is now in the mood to increase his tribe, and he attempts to force himself on his stepdaughter, Jerboa, who forcefully rejects him and flees from Flow into Sydney, where she runs into your standard 80's guy Donny Martin, who helps her get a role in a low-budget horror film and she helps him become the proud father of a werewolf. While three women from Flow-disguised as nuns-go on the hunt for Jerboa, an internationally renowned Russian dancer who is secretly a werewolf answers Thylo's call for a mate, and two American scientists begin to investigate the existence of the Australian werewolves...

After being thoroughly nonplussed by Howling II, I was reluctant to even consider trying the third in the series. The usual rule in sequels is that it can only get worse, and it's a rare thing indeed when sequels are better in any way than their predecessors. Yet, I knew I must plow on through The Howling series, so I took the box in hand and squirmed sheepishly up to the register, allowing the clerk to give me the possibly fatal tape in exchange for the display box and some cash.

And you know what? It wasn't all that bad.

Mind, it wasn't all that great, but I was really expecting much, much worse, considering that it was written and directed by the same guy who did directing duties for the much despised (on my part at least) Howling II. Still, despite the outlandish premise (or perhaps partially because of), the shoestring budget, and an overdose of bad 80's pop on the film soundtrack, Phillipe Mora puts in an effort that, while seriously flawed in some respects, is still mostly enjoyable with some genuinely creative moments.

Now, probably the film's best accomplishment by far is its handling of the premise. You'd think immediately that a movie about marsupial werewolves would be a comedy but, even though Howling III has a good number of comedic and self-consciously campy moments, the basic concept is taken fairly seriously. There's even a vivid scene where we see Jerboa give birth to her and Donny's son, and we see the pup crawl out over her belly into the pouch. It's a great scene in the fact that it's in equal portions sweet and kind of gruesome, and in that it beautifully plays up the biological aspect of the werewolves that's prevailant in the first half of the movie. In fact, it's the idea of werewolves as a biological species that makes this film worthwhile at first at least until, about halfway through, the script takes a sudden left turn and completely scraps that idea, instead becoming immersed in Aborigine mysticism. While this route is not entirely handled badly (although their explanation for the "real" motive behind the forced extinction of the Tazmanian tiger, which is so outlandish and bizarre I'll leave it to the viewer to discover, and what that has to do with the werewolves of Flow is just too much for the suspension of disbelief), it does seem a bit of a contradiction, since the film at the beginning-with the interest and beliefs of the American scientists, the lovingly detailed look at the marsupial werewolf birth cycle, and a camera look at a female werewolf's multiple teats-seemed to want to set up the concept of lycanthropes as a seperate species of humanity. If this biological theme was pursued, the second half of the film-when your usual Men in Black/Army types are sent in to wipe out the Aussie lycanthropes-would have had a stronger meaning behind it. My guess is perhaps Phillipe Mora was for some reason forced to change the werewolves' origin from a biological to supernatural one in order to make the film more consistent with the series' previous installments. Whatever the reason, though, it was still a poor idea.
The first half of the film also seems to have a much greater share of memorable scenes. There's the werewolf ladies dressed as nuns who give an apt response to an obnoxious brat on a bus; there's Jemora and Donny watching a crappy werewolf movie at a theatre (which just so happens to have werewolf-metamorphing effects that aren't really that much worse than the ones in the movie!) with Jemora complaining, "It's not like that!"; the dance rehearsal where the star dancer slowly morphs into a werewolf and makes a snack out of another performer; and the debates between our two American scientists, Dr. Beckmeyer and Dr. Sharp, over just how possible it is to have an isolated species of marsupial lycanthropes. The second half drags out though, with a dull chase of our main protagonists through the outback by the Men In Black/Army. Once that threat's disposed of with a couple of helping hands from the phantom of the Tazmanian tiger (don't ask), our heroes go out into hiding (where, suspiciously, nobody really seems to bother searching for them again depsite the Big Deal that's made out of the lycanthropes' existence). Then about twenty years go by for the protagonists and Jerboa becomes a successful actress, so much so she's presented an award at the Academy Awards (hosted by Dame Edna, who makes a guest appearance to finally insure the film's Aussieness). Unfortunately, after being presented the award, some reporters flash their cameras at her. Earlier in the film, it was established that flashing lights somehow induce "the change," and so Jerboa goes on a rampage right at the awards ceremony. There's a huge logical problem with this ending, for one thing. If Jerboa's become such a renowned actress, she should have certainly been exposed to camera flashes from the press long before. But the bigger problem is that through out the movie the film's moral seemed to be that, no matter how dangerous a natural species can be (and certainly before this ending not too much effort was spent on giving the film's werewolves an overly sympathetic portrayal, which is another refreshing aspect to this movie), it should be preserved and not hunted into extinction. Taken with any seriousness at all, the ending is a cynical undoing of what the movie's been trying to say all along.
It's a shame that The Howling III should be riddled with such vital flaws, since it really did show such promise, especially in its enjoyable and interesting first half. At the least, it gives you the right to say you saw an entire film centered around marsupial werewolves in Australia...

Cast Connections:

-Fans of British TV might recognize the priest on the bus (Roger Eagle) who also played the idiotic sidekick in Blackadder.