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 (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'

The XFX team made a prosthetic appliances for the early stages of the werewolves transformatio, such as the makeup on Lamya Derval.

A more complicated makeup appliance was made to depict a 'half-face' transformation that Johnson had previously done for Fright Night, and would do again on Bad Moon.

The sculpt for the 'half-face' appliance.

The XFX team also devised a grisly face-ripping transformation, realized as a performer in a prosthetic mask. The 'face' could be torn to reveal the sharp teeth underneath.

The XFX team decided to try and make their mark with a new type of werewolf transformation: a melting werewolf! The effect was achieved in various stages. The first stage was a performer in a prosthetic appliance, sculpted to look like the flesh was sagging like a prune.

This was complemented with a puppet skeleton arm, echoing a similar effect Johnson had realized on Fright Night. Tubes were fitted under the performers clothes and hidden by the prosthetic, to pump out goo to make the effect more gross.

The 'prune face' sculpt was also used for the transformation's second stage, which was a puppet. The 'flesh' would slough off, revealing the skeleton underneath.

The skeleton was a rudimentary puppet. The limbs could flail around, and the eyes could swivel and blink, similar to the melting Billy effect that Johnson has achieved on Fright Night.

The final stage was a rudimentary 'change o head' made from the same mould as the main werewolf suit. The change-o-head's snout could slightly extend.

The third stage change-o-head wolf.

It seems only two werewolves were made for the film. The first was a puppet head barely glimpsed in the final film.

The sculpt of the first werewolf.

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 second werewolf, seen mainly in the finale, was a hybrid between a suit a la The Howling and the 'wheelbarrow' method employed on American Werewolf in London.

William Forsche wore the head like a hat, and the head had mechanisms inside to open and close the jaw. The legs were puppeteered by the wheelbarrow mechanism, while Forsche's real legs were obscured.

Sculpt of the second werewolf's head.

Mike Hosch sculpting the werewolf suit.

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 make the original Howling's 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