Howling: New Moon Rising

It took them seven sequels but they have finally made the worst "Howling" of all. This is a godawful mess filled with fat old drunk rednecks, and line-dancing. Noithing happens at all in this movie, don't even attempt to believe the posts here sauying this is funny---I LOVE bad movies but this is just a worthless pile of steaming excrement. No plot, no blood, no nudity, no suspense, no sense...

I watched this movie on Monstervision on TNT, and I gave it a chance, but it was just horrible! I have been trying to find the worst movie of all time, and I think I have found it. The Howling 6 was Casablanca compared to this Turkey!!!!

When movie fans discuss the most influential directors of all time, the name Clive Turner is usually at the top of the list. Like some sort of bizarre love child of Lynch and Tarantino, Turner exploded onto the scene with his masterpiece, Howling VII, and with that one film, defined post-modern primativism. In the limited space I have available, I will discuss my interpertation and views of Mr. Turner's awe-inspiring vision.

First, the character of the inspector. Just as Eastwood destroyed the myth of the remorseless gunfighter in Unforgiven, Turner destroys the myth of the police investigator. Turner's inspector isn't glamourous, he doesn't drive an expensive car, he doesn't solve crimes with only a few clues he carefully pieces together. Turner's inspector is so world-weary, so jaded, that he cannot even listen to a simple werewolf-on-the-loose story without taking a break to absorb all the information, because his mind is so haunted by his past cases, he simply cannot stop thinking about all the pain he has witnessed.

Turner even manages to reduce the werewolf, probably the most primative of monsters, into a simpler form. No CGI effects here, no elaborate camera tricks,. Just a very simplistic, very primative revealing of the monster hiding inside all of us.

One of the biggest complaints I have read about this film is Turner's use of "ordinary townpeople" rather that real "actors" in his film (this in a time when reality TV is considered the height of human achievement) This unique casting decision again shows Turner's devotion to post-modern primativism. No other director would dare to take a chance like this. "Real" actors could never have delivered the raw, primal emotions the performers in this movie demonstrate. I know I am not the only audience member to "Stand Up and Testify!" when Pappy (Turner's brilliant play on the authority-figure archtype) commands, nor am I the only one to recoil in horror at the sad, brutal reality of alcoholism and drug abuse as demonstrated in the song "Sit here and drink my good Christian beer."

The final point I would like to discuss is the line dancing, probably Turner's most powerful statement about our sad modern world. Notice how unhappy and robotic all the line dancers look. Turner is forcing us to confront our MTV controlled culture. No matter how unhappy or robotic we feel, we must follow and worship whatever MTV tells us is "cool." Don't like rap? Don't like boy-bands? Too bad, MTV says you must like it, and it is your duty as a good consumer to roboticly follow.

Howling VII, much like Rebel Without a Cause, Saturday Night Fever, and Pulp Fiction is a movie that defines a generation and causes us to re-examine the world we live in. Mr. Turner is trying to warn us: Stand up, testify, absorb the world around you, before you wake up one morning and discover there is dirt in YOUR chili.

Howling VII cannot easily be classified into any genre, and that's what makes it so great. like the works of thomas pynchon, william gaddis, and david foster wallace, clive turner (the writer, producer, director, and star) uses a plethura of art forms and techniques and splices them together into a seemingly meaningless cacophany of pure postmodernism that, when dissected, reveals an underlying theme that examines the chaos that surrounds us in our media obsessed country.

he sarcastically makes fun of a myriad of movie forms: the werewolf flick, the rip snortin' country movie, and the comedy film, all while keeping an amazing straight face (i'm still attempting to comprehend the coyotes that jump out of trees and night line/ enigma).

clive turner is pressing his theory of modern america in our face, and we can do nothing but try and understand his points: we are constantly surrounded by all these stories, all these lifes, and all these various art cliches, and we have become them. we have become the horror flick. we have become pappy and harriet. we have become pioneer town. we have become the chili with the dirt in it and the only thing we can do to make ourselves clean is to laugh at our meaninglessness.

the werewolf is a symbol for our discontentment with commercial america, and when cheryl transforms, our anger at our worthless situation comes out of our pores like cold sweat.

this is an amazing movie. watch it and try and understand the point it is making about our pointless world. we keep our insecurities inside until they all come out in a violent rage. watch mr. turner's masterpiece today, if possible.

I don't understand why they even made this film. There is no story, no scares, and nothing new to the series. The only part of this film of any value is the variety of clips they used from the previous Howling films. Why on earth they thought they could get away with using a steady-cam with a red filter to portray a werewolf is beyond me.

Only the very well rendered cover/poster art for this film gives it a reason to exist.

If you are a fan of the Howling series or werewolf movies in general, then the first four films are as far as I advise you go. The werewolf film as a genre has little to pick from as far as gems, but New Moon Rising is perhaps the worst ever conceived.