Reviews: Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) Movie Review
Subgenres: Werewolves, Body Horror, Cursed
Exploring Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) through our review, we cover its story, scares, and how it fits into the broader horror genre landscape.
Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (1988) is a UK horror movie that is a sequel to The Howling (1981) and was filmed in South Africa, Los Angeles, California, USA, and Fresno, California, USA. Director John Hough (The Legend of Hell House (1973), The Watcher in the Woods (1980), Escape to Witch Mountain (1975), and The Lady and the Highwayman (1989)) failed in directing this movie to an exceptional standard. Howling: IV had an entertaining trailer that made me anticipate seeing the movie that was a failure, in my opinion.
Author Marie Adams (Romy Windsor - Face/Off (1997), Camp Nowhere (1994), My Brother the Pig (1999)) has visions. She had one of her visions while she was with her Tom Billings (Antony Hamilton - Mission: Impossible (1988), Fatal Instinct (19Jumping’Jack’Jack Flash (1986)) and started to scream frantically as she saw a creature that resembles a wolf in her visMarie’srie’s husband, Richard (Michael T. Weiss - The Pretender (1996), Tarzan & Jane (2002), Sex and the City 2 (2010), and Bones (2001)) believes that his wife has an overactive imagMarie’s. Marie’s doctor told Richard that it might be best for Marie to be away from her usual average daily activities for a while until her imagination/vision subsides. Richard decides to take her to a small cottage in the woods, but that turns out to be a bad idea as things become slowly dangerous. After a few minutes, Marie’s visions become a reality as she learns that Janice Hatch (Susanne Severeid - Hollywood HighDon’t6), Don’t Answer the Phone! (1980), Van Nuys Blvd. (1979)) was once a nun. Janice told her how her closest friend, Sister Ruth (Megan Kruskal - Shot Down (1988), City of Blood (1987), and The Tattoo Chase (1988)), disappeared about a year ago. They later found her friend, but she was insane and only speaking of howling sounds, a bell, and the devil. Janice is still trying to find out what happened to her friend, although she died without saying much about what happened to her when she disappeared.
The movie had an excellent premise but was too slow and had too many plot holes. The film was not good, just average, and it is a movie that every moviegoer will have a different opinion about. I enjoyed it and admired the screenplay but dreaded the slow pace moments. The ending was predictable, as were many other things in the movie. The special effects needed more effort as it appears that the department was struggling to put everything together. The makeup department did a good job, but it was not perfect. Overall, I recommend this movie to werewolf fans but beware that this film is far from perfect.
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Sources Used to Shape This Review
Insights in this review are drawn from director interviews, fan commentary, production notes, and long-form breakdowns across genre-specific platforms. Content is written uniquely and reviewed for accuracy.
- Howling IV: The Original Nightmare Rating Scores
- Our Score: 4/10
- Overall Score: 3.61/10
- IMDB: 3.4/10
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