Howling IV: The Original Nightmare
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) is a supernatural horror film directed by John Hough and Clive Turner.
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) is a supernatural horror film directed by John Hough and Clive Turner. This R-rated film stars Romy Walthall, Michael T. Weiss, Antony Hamilton, and Susanne Severeid. As of this review, this film is available on Amazon Prime, Crackle, TubiTV, The Roku Channel, and Vudu. This film acts as a more faithful adaptation of the original novel.
Marie (Romy Walthall) suffers nightmares and writer’s block, preventing her from continuing her novel. To overcome these issues, she visits the small town of Drago to recover. However, Drago hides a troubling history that threatens to unravel this recovery. The further she investigates, the more troubling and real these threats become.
What I Like about Howling IV: The Original Nightmare
As mentioned earlier, this film aims to create a more faithful adaptation of the novel. Because the original film remains a reasonably loyal adaptation of the first book, it follows the plot closely on a tighter budget. It’s a strong plot with a strategic delivery on what to spend that budget on. This loyalty refocuses less on werewolves, providing a more demonic evil.
That full transformation deserves respect, especially considering the lower budget and practicality dominating the film. It truly haunts the eye, with every second earning its place. While it did cave on budget in some respects, the pain feels so real and diabolical.
The “howling” element takes less from the werewolves and more from the haunting sounds that echo across the town of Drago. It’s not inherently a change, as one could make the case for the original movie, but it remains a new focus.
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare earns its place by adapting an interesting plot. While this deserves respect, I’ll further dive into criticisms later. However, it’s an unsettling film, achieving an eerie tone throughout its runtime.
Tired Tropes and Triggers
There are moments of gut-churning body horror that might leave some taken aback. While the fake skeletons and necessary budget limitations don’t raise this as a main concern, it deserves a mention.
Gaslighting and verbal and physical abuse occur within the relationship. The verbal and psychological abuse reoccur and remains straightforward. The physical abuse, however, evokes a more supernatural justification.
For those sensitive to this material, it’s hard to recommend the film.
What I Dislike and on Adaptation
This film begins a drastic quality downgrade from the previous installments, including the underwhelming third film. Howling IV: The Original Nightmare remains firmly centered in the direct-to-video category. Because of this tight budget and competent plot, however, the film earned enough to justify several sequels. While this does deserve some credit, the quality remains hard to overlook.
In some ways, the more faithful adaptation works to the disadvantage of the film. The original remains a loyal adaptation with some creative decisions, making this film feel like a repetition. At the time, this retreading confused some viewers and critics alike. Another issue with this loyal adaptation remains how it communicates some aspects of the book that rely on inner monologue.
The acting ranges from passable to bad, never living to the high standards of the first film. As this largely follows the same plot points, inferiority remains a recurring thought.
This film fails to haunt the viewer. While some scenes certainly overachieve, the film woefully lacks memorability. While it’s far from an unenjoyable experience, the first film makes this installment unnecessary and a strange step backward for the series.
Final Thoughts
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare is not the original nightmare, which remains its greatest problem. While the plot remains strong, it only creates a low-budget remake of the original film. There are times of genuine ingenuity, but it mostly poorly imitates the first. However, the direct-to-video’s success creates a proof of concept that the IP owners don’t hesitate to exploit.
(2 / 5)
House of Dragon S2E2: Coors Lite seems to have sponsored this episode. Remember, this is NOT a spoiler free review. It’s Jim watching the episode and writing random bits down without proof reading. …. much like what the show runners must have done with the season bible.
Without any further ado…our House of Dragon S2E2 Review! (Crap, that rhymes!)
That one prince dude is still dead and like so is the other one. No, not that one!
So apparently, Matt Smith didn’t mean to really have that one baby prince die or something. But you know, it’s easier to kill smaller ones than ones with eye-patches. I guess. I mean, does anyone care who killed a baby prince? It’s not like the rest of Westeros is going to see the dead kid on parade with his grieving…wait…what?
Are you shitting me? I haven’t seen this much of an obvious heart tug attempt since that one time I paid that Russian hooker to give me ‘the full trump’.
So..a populace of people who are very poor and really couldn’t give two shits who is in charge…are going to cry for you if you display a kid’s body? Sure. I guess it worked for (checks notes) Absolutely nobody before.
That other queen and the dude from Doctor Who’s conflict:
With an unforced error that one queen basically puts out the one guy who would literally kill for her. Is this a weird plot point I’m missing? So far the people who didn’t let Matt Smith’s character (man, we need a name for him. I mean one I can spell) do what he needed to do all sorta failed and died. Wonder if that’s foreshadowing or just an extra thing to go through to fill time?
And TWINS!!!:
Remember that one guy who was a twin of the other guy? And like they took opposing sides of the throne struggle? Nope? Well, me neither. Apparently Coors Lite is sponsoring this episode as the ‘you’ll go in and kill someone dressed as your twin’ trope gets used. It almost works. Sorta. Kinda. Okay, it’s not even close.
Not even a beard to tell the evil twin apart, we get rammed right into…a fight that ends in both of their deaths. That’s a missed opportunity, but I think a lot of this show might just be that: A missed opportunity.
New Hand aka OK Boomer
Looks like they tried a Boomer thing with HoD. The other other king kid (does this guy even have a name? Let’s call him Spanky Z). Spanky Z is all like I does what I want so I’ll kill every rat catcher and like hang them up and stuff. You know, things that Joffery would say was ‘a weak show’. Apparently, the populace doesn’t like being gutted and having their sons/fathers hung up dead on public display. Who knew?
The Hand knew, that’s who!!! Oh boy, is he ever going to take it to his grandson/nephew/niece (incest, amirite?)! Orr…..not. What I meant to say is, Oh boy! Won’t he ever just show how apparently weak a Hand he is and just resign after being replaced by some white cloak “definitely a virgin and not fuckin your mom’.
I think we’d care more if…we remembered anything from Season 1 about anyone here except this:
- 1. White Cloak dude fucked his mom
- 2. King dude is like not really the king but a pretender
- 3. Hand dude sold his 7 year old daughter to fuck the old king so she would be queen.
This episode was stronger than the last. I think they can still turn the ship around. I’d give this one a 4/5
I think that sums it up for our House of Dragon S2E2 Review. Now, back to that Coors Lite…
(4 / 5)
Season four of Amazon Prime’s The Boys launched on June 13th of this year. Having now watched the first episode, I believe I can safely say that this season is going to be bonkers.
Let’s discuss.
The story
When this episode begins, things aren’t going great for Homelander. He’s irritated at everyone around him for constantly agreeing with everything he says. He found a gray hair and is finally facing his own mortality. Oh, and he’s on trial for murdering a man last season.
Homelander decides he needs someone around him who will tell him the truth. Someone who can help him build a legacy. So he seeks out a sup named Sage, whose superpower is being the smartest person in the world. And what does he want with Sage? He wants her to help him destroy America.
Meanwhile, The Boys aren’t doing so well. They’ve been tasked with assassinating Neuman because she is the presumptive VP. But Neuman manages to avoid their assassination attempt by being literally bulletproof.
Unfortunately, The Boys aren’t bulletproof. And as we find out in this episode, one might not last much longer.
What worked
In fiction as in life, it is the little things that matter. It’s the small details that make the difference between a fine show and an exceptional one. This episode was full of such little details. One such detail was Homelander finding gray pubic hairs.
The reason why this distinction is important is because later in the episode we find out that his stylist has been dying his hair. She’s been intentionally hiding the fact that he’s going gray. This is important because it’s just one more person in Homelander’s life who is being dishonest with him. And I think that is what’s going to finally crack him.
The timing of this season is something I’d like to shed some light on. It is so fitting that this came out during an election year. Because of course, The Boys is mimicking the very real infighting we’re experiencing in America. We’ve all seen protests break out into violence. We’ve all seen important trials spark controversy. This is just so much like our real experience, except that in The Boys, the megalomaniac blond man baby is competent and good at things.
Finally, I was amused and impressed with the evolution of Neuman’s character. She is a politician, through and through. The way she can smile at someone while threatening them, and then make a pithy quip at their expense is fantastic. She made me laugh almost every time she was on screen.
What didn’t work
If I have one complaint about this episode, it’s that a lot happened in this episode. We have a whole bunch of plotlines going on here. Like, so many things. Butcher’s health, Homelander’s aging, Ryan’s future, Frenchie’s new boyfriend, Annie’s charity, Sage’s plotting, Butcher’s old friend, A-Train and The Deep growing discontent. And I’m sure I’m forgetting a few. This is just a lot to keep track of. And I just hope they have enough time and space to do them all justice.
Overall, I have high hopes for this season. And Amazon must too, because it appears that season five is already in the works. But for now, we’ll be back very soon to discuss episode two of The Boys.
(4 / 5)
By the way, if you like my writing you can get my short story, Man In The Woods, on Smashwords and Amazon.
Computers are all the rage. Of course, you already knew that. But did you know that scientists, those denizens of deep throaty maniacal laughter and storms brewing over dark brooding castles, are building tiny brain computers now? So apparently this is what all the zombies are being used for… They’re the lackeys getting the goods. No surprise there, though, zombies do make good lackeys.
16 Mini Brains
It’s catchy. Like a jingle. And those sixteen mini brains are getting all sorts of attention nowadays. Apparently they’re all over social media. We don’t know what truths they think they’ll find there, but it has been said they do like to play Pong, so maybe some of those other kind of mindless clicker games will have similar appeal. Anyway, we’ve caught a rare glimpse of these little items of incidental intellect, through our prompting of the NightCafe AI art generator. And they’re kinda cute. See these renditions of the tiny brain computers for yourself.
Mushrooming Mayhem
It’s not just tiny brain computers though. Those sneaky scientists have also been experimenting with mycelium, harnessing the fungal power of mushrooms to make mental machine magic. Or create computer craft as it were. So what happens when the tiny brain computers and the mushroom computers start talking? Well, we aren’t sure, but we suspect the manifesting motherboard mushroom man would know. You’ll have to ask him. We hear he’s a fun guy.
So What Do the Ethicists Think About All This?
I have to admit, I don’t know any ethicists to ask about the topic, but that career path sure beats archaeology. All we know is that the scientists are at it again, and they haven’t had the best track record for working with ethicists, though morality has been a kind of touch and go subject through the course of human history anyway.
And the whole idea has been a big influence on AI generated art, with all sorts of people prompting all kinds of crazy combinations of computer creatures crawling with creepiness into the realms of dystopian nightmare. In fact, more of these stories seem to be illustrated using AI art generation than including actual images of the real life results, perhaps because the reality is that petri dishes of cells and fungal fragments really aren’t that interesting visually, just kind of snotty looking kin to the Blob…
