Harker was named after Jonathan Harker, from "Dracula".
The first Howling movie since the original to be filmed in the United States, the second and fifth movies having been filmed in eastern Europe, the third in Australia, and the fourth in South Africa.
Mary Lou from the previous sequel The Rebirth has a brief, non-speaking cameo as a circus audience member in the beginning of the film. The makers of the next sequel, New Moon Rising, included a reference to it in attempt to connect the plots of all the films.
Despite the fact that this film states "Based on the novels 'The Howling I, II, and III' written by Gary Brandner", this film is in no way based on any of those novels, and is a sequel to the earlier Howling films in name only. Minor elements from the third novel, The Howling III: Echoes, are in the film, which includes the solitary drifter who is cursed as a sympathetic werewolf and later recruited by a supernatural being, as well as werewolves being used in carnival freak shows.
This is the only Howling film between III and VII that Clive Turner was not involved in.