Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988)

Steve Johnson, who had did lab work duties on Joe Dante's original The Howling, and makeup work on Philippe Mora's ill-fated Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, returned once again to the series as part of his fledgling XFX effects house. However, first as tragedy, then as farce, as Howling IV would have similar production problems as Howling II, this time originating from notorious schlock producer Harry Alan Towers.

According to Steven Lane, 'I was approached by a producer (Towers) with a studio production deal in Africa, (...) It seemed like a great deal, a tax shelter type thing, which is how a lot of films were getting made during that period. The producer had a long track record and we had the idea to go back to the original story, back to something similar to what Conrad and I had planned for the first one.

'I don’t really understand how guys like Harry work. (...) He has made a career out of making bad films and going bankrupt. He’s sort of a low-end Dino DeLaurentiis. I think it was a pretty typical production for him. When we got there he was gone. Lots of what he had promised wasn’t there. We found we were working in (apartheid-era) South Africa though he had said it was a neighboring country. A lot of us weren’t too comfortable with that. It was a dreadful experience.'

XFX's more simple duties for the film included a series of mid-transformation makeup effects for when the werewolves burn in a fire; unfortunately, most of these makeup effects aren't seen clearly onscreen, nor have I been able to find much in the way of behind the scenes images yet - still on the lookout to find better quality images of these!

One thing Johnson wished to do differently was the transformation effects, one of which included a face-ripping evoking Christopher Tucker's work on The Company of Wolves; Johnson devised a prosthetic mask with an elongated jawline that could have the rubber skin ripped off to reveal a bloody jaw underneath.

The face-ripping mask before, well, having its face ripped.

For the main transformation at the end, Johnson went all out to do a werewolf transformation never seen before; a melting werewolf! The effect was achieved with a disfigured prosthetic makeup, followed by a skeleton puppet (similar to the melting effect Johnson had helped with on Fright Night), and then finally a change-o-head werewolf puppet to represent the 'fresh' werewolf.

Johnson was not happy with the final result, '... the final effects look nothing like we intended. The producers wanted something really new for the transformation, so we had the man melt into a big pool of ooze in several different stages. Then we zoom in on the pool and it forms into a wolf. But take a lok at the edited film; I don't think that idea gets across, through no fault of our own.

The first stage melting prosthetic.

The third stage change-o-head wolf.

When it came to the actual werewolves, the first was a puppet head (that in some distance shots, may have been worn with a hair suit) barely glimpsed in the final film; the lack of werewolf action was a point of contention for Steven Lane, who laid the blame on director John Hough;

'The werewolf suit was wasted, in the sense that the director did not shoot it like it should have been shot, (...) They didn't get as much out of it as they should have.' Johnson agreed, stating 'Hough was not up to the task. He never really understood what was going on'.

The main werewolf seen in the finale was realized as a suit; William Forsche wore the head like a hat, and the head had mechanisms inside to open and close the jaw. The suit did not have legs for Forsche to wear, as it would be shot in closeup only; however an American Werewolf in London-style wheelbarrow rig was also constructed, with false legs attached, for shots implying the werewolf was walking on all fours.

Johnson recounted, 'You can shake a piece of fur fabric at the camera for those guys and they'd be happy but I always try to make a few pieces for each film that I can be real proud of. We made an interesting wolf suit for Howling IV that was essentially based on the American Werewolf rig and some gore effects. They came back to me for Howling V, but I was in the middle of The Abyss and didn't want to split my concentration. So I loaned Kevin Brennan my wolf suit and suggested they use him.'

Kevin Brennan also was handed over all the production problems as well, a recurring issue with Howling sequels; 'Howling V just semed to be a mess by the time we got to Budapest. Many of the effects ideas we had talked about were changed by the new director, and there were not many supplies available. So we were only set up to do some very basic things. I would have liked to have had more time to do something interesting, and I was disappointed when it did not turn out real well.'

Howling V's lack of any werewolf action - even less than Howling IV's! - was enough to even make original Howling director Joe Dante wryly comment, 'Isn't that the one where a lot of people run around in a castle and nothing happens?'

Sources: 

• Fangoria #76 'The Comeback Kid' by Gregory Nicoll
  
• Fangoria #134 'The New Breed of Werewolf FX' by Mark Salisbury
  
• Gorezone #19 'The Howling Chronicles' by Marc Shapiro
• Cinefantastique Vol. 22 No. 1 (August 1991) 'Still Howling After All These Years' by John Thonen