Day 21: The Howling III: The Marsupials
Summary: The survivors of two different kinds of werewolves converge in the Australian Bush.
This movie is a tricky one.
The biggest issue is that there's a rape/incest subplot that the movie takes too lightly. I don't even think I see any kind of comeuppance at the end; at one point it looked like they were building towards that.
Another thing I disliked: the atrocious, lifeless cover of Bad Moon Rising that made me wish I was watching An American Werewolf in London, a much better movie.
So the basic plot of this movie is the a young woman, Jerboa Jerboa who flees her little settlement Flow in the Australian Outback for Sidney, where she falls in love with Donny, an American in the film business. They do it at some point. She also transforms into some kind of creature because of flashing lights; people assume she has epilepsy and she is taken to the hospital, where she discovers she has a pouch and there are cute tiny little werewolves inside. They return to Flow for reasons. In a hilarious moment (similar to Nilbog in Troll 2), it is revealed that Flow is actually Wolf spelled backwards. These are not like the wolves we know, however, because these are marsupials. They are derived from an extinct Australian animal called a thylacine, also known as a Tasmanian wolf. It is later revealed that these creatues were hunted to extinction deliberately by the government because they were going to turn everyone into werewolves or something like that.
There is also a Russian ballerina who defects to Australia who is revealed to be a werewolf. The American and British/Australian (I can't keep track of the geopolitics of the Howling III, sorry) suspect something wolfish is going on. They send a scientist to investigate, but later decide that they should just genocide the werewolves.
There is also a subplot about a Russian ballerina who meets up with the marsupials, and reveals that she is a different kind of werewolf, i.e., a placental werewolf like the kind we all know and love. She falls in love with the scientist sent earlier who has become sympathetic to them. The ballerina also suggests at some point that werewolves may survive "in California" which I suppose is the sole nod to the first film.
Soldiers/cops/mercenaries/rednecks/whatever show up and try to kill all the werewolves and nearly succeed.
Jerboam Jerboam and Donny decide to return to civillization, despite the warnings of the scientist. They promise to be extra extra careful. By extra extra careful, they mean moving to Los Angeles, with her becoming a model and an actress, but they dyed her hair so nobody will ever know. (This movie doesn't make a lot of sense) She wins the non-trademarked equivalent of the Oscars, but oh no, there are too many flashing lights and she transforms into a werewolf. The government official (I guess he's supposed to be Australian, but he seems so British) is shown at his home giggling in delight where we see various werewolf artifacts, almost trophies, implying that this was part of his diabolical plan.
Like the Howling II, this movie is also pretty dumb and doesn't make a sense, but, without the unpleasant subplot I mentioned, it's a much more enjoyable experience. An advantage it has over it's predecssor is that the basic premise is very unique. I've never even seen a film mention a thylacine, let alone feature them. I don't think most people even know they existed. They aren't interested in delving into the deeper themes of "the beast in man" that all the top shelf werewolve movies do, but at least it's not actually about fucking vampires (Brotherhood of the Wolf doesn't count, it's a weird European movie and can do whatever it wants).
My overall take on this movie is that while there is definitely unpleasantness involved, but if you can get past that, it's kind of goofy and creative. The movie make no sense, but it's not lazy. It's setting out to do something unique which I always like. It also digs into my favorite 80s/90s trope, the strange but misunderstood being who needs to be protected from the government/megacorp that wants to destroy them. (These stories usually feature a benevolent inventor/scientist type who because of their rationality know better than than to fear what they don't understand.) I'm a sucker for that kind of story. Linking everything to a real extinct animal helped drive this point home.
Next: I'm embracing full-on goofiness in the hopes of solving a childhood riddle. Plus: Kramer! Let's hope this movie is actually funny...
