Trivia

Sybil Danning was tired of having to go topless or nude so often in her movies, and wanted to remain clothed for this one. The producers disagreed, but in the end, a compromise was reached where Danning would do a single topless shot. She was very angry on watching the finished film to find that the ending credits featured this shot no less than seventeen times.

Sir Christopher Lee stated in an interview at the time of this movie's American release that his reason for accepting the role was because he had never before appeared in a werewolf movie.

When Sir Christopher Lee was cast in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), one of the first things he did was apologize to director Joe Dante, who had directed The Howling (1981), for being in this movie.

The reason behind Sybil Danning wearing sunglasses was because she arrived on-set one day and said she was not sure what to do because she had conjunctivitis, so director Philippe Mora said, "Here, wear these sunglasses." She protested, because the scene was indoors, and Philippe told her, "Sybil, you're the Queen of the Werewolves, you can wear whatever you damned well like."

Director Philippe Mora didn't know that Sir Christopher Lee was a war hero in Czechoslovakia. This was not something he was allowed to talk about, but during World War II, he was part of an Intelligence Agency, and so when they showed up to film this movie in Czechoslovakia, he was greeted with a hero's welcome at the airport when they arrived. That's when Philippe first found out about his past, how he had been involved with killing one of the top Nazi officials, Reinhard Heydrich, and everything. Philippe couldn't believe it. One day, he took Philippe to Prague to visit a church. He remembers Sir Christopher Lee saying, "Dear boy, please come with me and let me tell you about what I've seen", and he then took Philippe inside to the basement and proceeded to tell him a story about how this was a place where people had been trapped by the Nazis and some very terrible things occurred there. It was such a profound moment for Philippe, because he realized just from where Christopher's gravitas came, he had seen true horror first-hand in his lifetime, and he used that in his performances. He was also a Nazi hunter for a couple of years after World War II. Christopher lived such an intriguing and complicated life, and most people don't have any idea of who he was beyond being such an iconic actor.

Edit: While this story is interesting Sir Christopher Lee was in actuality stationed in Libya at the time Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated, awaiting transfer to Sicily for the invasion. Lee was never attached to elite or secret units and has been accused of embellishing his war time service, though he did fight in both Africa and Italy and take part in Nazi hunting operations after the war had ended. He was certainly not in Czechoslovakia in 1943.