Finally someone has the cajones to put werewolves in a castle and initiate murder mystery slasher mode. My god, how did it take till 1989 to kick this into gear? And what fun we have here!At least in terms of a C-movie eclectic character cast and some cool castle cinematography. This is a murder mystery where you don't really care about the reveal, and you know it's a werewolf anyway so the why isn't important. It's also a slasher where there's not much bloodletting or fun. It lies somewhere flatly in-between these two genres that share so much in common and yet can't meet a happy middle ground.

Count Istvan invites twelve people to a spooky castle that was locked up for more than 500 years. In the evening a blizzard encases the dark ruins and traps the twelve visitors inside. Suddenly people disappear. A wild animal seems to walk abroad. Is it a werewolf like the legend suggests? Or is it just the count playing a sadistic game? A life-threatening cat-and-mouse game ensues.The Howling franchise is a cinematic trainwreck of epic proportions. Parts II and III are crackbrained trash festivals, while Part IV is a dreary remake of Part I, which isn't that great to begin with. Within this landscape of dilettantism, "Howling V: The Rebirth" is a breath of fresh air. It's actually a quite decent flick, mixing slasher elements with a murder mystery plot. The script has some engaging twists and turns, although it ultimately is pretty predictable. The twelve characters aren't fleshed out enough. They're sketchy stereotypes at best. There's a smart-alec professor, a femme fatale, a goofy never-do-well, an aloof pretty boy and a painfully naive fool of woman. You'll have a hard time caring about even one of these characters, which hurts the suspense a lot.There are some cool jump scares, but other than that, the horror elements are pretty tame. In fact, we barely see any werewolfs. Most of the action happens off screen. Director Neal Sundstrom emphasises mystery over gore, which is fine with me. (I'm not sure if I want to see any more Howling werewolfs, at this point.) The castle has an eerie look to it and the soundtrack is amazing. Whenever one of the visitors gets murdered, there's an epic music cue: a choir singing something like "Sanctus! Sanctuuus!" After the second time, I sang along cheerfully. Great stuff.Phil Davis does a good job portraying the humorless Count Istvan. Otherwise, the acting is subpar at best. Elizabeth Shé as the starry-eyed Marylou is the queen of underacting: "No. This is not real. Please say it's not real. (Yawn.)""Howling V" is by far the best of the Howling sequels. (Hey, it only took them four tries.) But that's not saying much. Check it out if you want to watch a decent, yet clumsy werewolf murder mystery.

When a group of people from different walks of life converge in a Hungarian castle situated in Budapest which has been sealed for 500 years, they bring with them a werewolf which slowly begins to cut their numbers down.As I like to say, I would rather watch a bad 1980s horror film than a bad 2010s horror film. This is a prime example of that. While it has very little redeeming about it (trying to latch on the disreputable "Howling" franchise is its first mistake), I still like the general 1980s style of horror film better than many of the failures made today.Some have compared this to Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None", which is probably fair. But if you are going to do that, you may as well compare it to "The Beast Must Die", which was a werewolf film that followed a similar concept. And heck, "Beast" is a great film... much better than this one.

Howling 5 (1989) ** (out of 4) Budapest, 1489 is where our film starts off. In a dark castle everyone inside has committed suicide for some unknown reason. Two survivors are in terror and decide to kill themselves after a baby is thought to have also been killed. After their death we hear the baby cry out, which gets us onto to the mystery. Five hundred years later a group of people is brought back to the castle by a strange Count who could be hiding his own little secrets.The group has no idea why they are at the castle and things take a strange turn when the bus that brought them there drives off into the night. To make matters worse a snowstorm has hit, which means they'll have to spend the night in the castle. Soon members of the group begin to disappear so that Count orders a search of the place. Soon bodies are found with their throats bitten out and it appears that the legend of the werewolves is real. In a Ten Little Indians fashion, the group must discover who the werewolf is and destroy the thing before more die.Howling 5 suffers from a very small budget and I'm not sure to bash the film for this or praise it. The low budget is so low that we have to suffer through the fact that the werewolf is pretty much never seen. We get a few close-ups of its teeth and a couple quick shots of it attacking but we never get a good eye on the creature. This become pretty irritating, although I guess some could claim this was a homage to Universal's dreadfully bad She Wolf of London. Those expecting gore will also be disappointed to hear that all the death scenes are shown off screen.The good thing about the low budget is that the director tries to make up for it with some wonderful locations and a pretty nice script, which is full of some funny dialogue. Most of the laughs come from a dumb blonde actress who is too stupid to know what's going on around here. The director pretty much abuses the "dumbness" in the woman but it's pretty funny in the end. The castle is very well decked out and adds some nice atmosphere to the mix. Another good aspect is the snowstorm that rages outside. This here leads to some very nice shots, although I doubt this is what horror fans is wanting to hear.In the end Howling 5 is a decent little movie but the low budget and non-gory violence will probably turn more genre fans off. It's well made and well acted but that can only take a horror film like this so far. Another problem is that the film drags on and on with useless talk about the legend and mystery when the viewer knows exactly what's going on. The characters talk and talk about it not being a werewolf yet we know it is so these scenes come off as fake and really just pad the running time, which should have been cut to begin with. Many fans of the series talk about the shock ending but I pretty much caught it early on. If you want to see this same storyline better done then I highly recommend the Amicus film The Beast Must Die with Peter Cushing, which features that infamous "werewolf break".