Problem: Write a negative movie review.

Answer: From the moment Christopher Lee puts on a pair of punk sunglasses and tries to sneak into a punk rock club, you know you've got a stinker on your hands! This film had potential. Beneath all of the sludge there are the remnants of what could have been crafted into a decent film, if not an interesting one. The final product is a real mess, however. Aside from the gratuitous nudity and some very attractive women, Howling II winds up being a laughable excuse for a horror film. Christopher Lee gives it a nugget of credibility, but even he cannot raise it above the level of crap.

Having never seen any of the other films in this series, this critic will be forced to accept on face value that this is a genuine continuation of the events in part one. We start off at a funeral for one of the characters from the original, and within the first ten minutes we find ourselves in Transylvania with a small group of heroes ready to battle a coven of werewolves. The film is paced fairly well, and there are not too many dead spots. The action is there; it just isn't filmed well. One bright spot is the music of a punk band called Babel. Though their song is played quite often, it is rather catchy.

The problems with this film are great in number. First off, the acting is worse than pitiful. Christopher Lee is good enough, but that's where it ends. The two leads Reb Brown and Annie McEnroe are lacking in just about everything you'd want for such characters. The writing is wretched, the editing redundant, and the direction amateurish. There are a couple nice special effect gimmicks, but the cheesy ones far out weigh them in number. Sybil Danning is nice to look at, but her acting performance is less than satisfactory. Judd Omen looks the part he plays, but his voice and acting are unconvincing to say the least. Much of the dialog is in an unintelligible language that may or may not be Latin.

I liked the general idea for the story. I always enjoy stories of true believers out to battle seemingly invincible forces of evil. One scene where a small group of good guys are trekking through a dark forest and shooting down a bunch of werewolves is even kind of exciting. Kind of. Maybe a bigger budget or a better director could have made the rest of the film a bit more compelling. 3 of 10 stars.

The Hound.

Side note: As of this writing, the censors at youtube.com have still not taken down the ending credits with Sybil Danning ripping off her top several times while the Babel song is playing! Catch it while you can!

Problem: Write a positive movie review.

Answer: The penultimate collaboration between director Anthony Mann and star James Stewart (excluding the few days Mann worked on Night Passage before parting company with the star under less than amicable circumstances), The Far Country belies its mainstream look to offer another portrait of an embittered man dragged unwillingly to his own redemption, fighting it every step of the way. This time he's a cattle driver whose response to labour problems - challenging troublesome cowhands to a gunfight at the end of the trail - results in his cattle being confiscated by John McIntire's larcenous judge of the Roy Bean school of law and order. Stealing them back and taking them across the Canadian border, he soon finds himself unwillingly drawn into the growing conflict between prospectors and the judge as he cheats or kills them out of their claims...

While it's no great surprise which way Stewart turns at the end, he's a surprisingly callous critter along the way, even using his desire to just be left alone to excuse not warning a group of prospectors of an impending avalanche when he has the chance because it's not his problem. For most of the film there's really only a hair's breadth between him and McIntire, something the judge recognises immediately, revelling in the company of a kindred spirit even as he's genially planning to lynch him. In many ways the townspeople who put their faith in him probably recognise it too - despite their appeals to his dead-and-buried better nature, there's an unspoken acknowledgement that the only person who can stand up to the judge is someone almost as bad as he is.

As usual with Mann there's an exceptional use of high country locations, though for once the final showdown takes place on level ground, and the film is almost perfectly cast with strong support from Walter Brennan, Harry Morgan and Ruth Roman (though Corinne Calvert's young romantic interest veers to the irritating). Sadly the great cinematography of the Canadian Rockies is done few favours by a distinctly average DVD transfer, with only the theatrical trailer as an extra.

Problem: Write a negative movie review.

Answer: An older man touches a flower in his wife's greenhouse that seems to be wilting. He gets pricked by it, or bitten by something on it. He quickly becomes ill, and at the hospital spits out a large writhing white larva of some kind. A later attempt to resuscitate him with paddles results in a splatter of blood.

A cop is at the hospital because his partner got badly hurt in a shoot-out. Somehow the cop gets paired up with one of the female doctors, as well as an entomologist who is brought in. There are several young kids wandering around the hospital, who I suppose we're supposed to find adorable, but who are extremely annoying little brats. They happen to wander into the room where the specimen is being kept, and happen to dump a growth hormone on it. Horror movie logic would say they deserve to die for this, but they're never even in any danger.

The critter grows and starts breeding. People run away from it, and sometimes towards it for some reason. The hospital gets surrounded by military who are prepared to destroy everything if need be.

There are no really compelling characters in the movie, and most of the time it seems like people are searching around for the monster. It was fairly boring. Clearly it owes something to the Alien movies, with the monster being born inside a human and having several stages of its growth. There's also a character named Bishop, and the lead actress has Sigourney Weaver's hair.

Problem: Write a negative movie review.

Answer:
Decent animation and some workable character development keep this animated horse fable from DreamWorks at least watchable... however it remains somewhat slow paced and the storyline is a bit on the silly side.. It is interesting to see a reversal of the typical cowboys and indian roles, but here it just seems like a nod to political correctness rather than a proper storyline decision. GRADE: C