Product Description

Howling V: The Rebirth - When a group of strangers converge on an ominous Romanian castle, they begin to suspect one of them may be an ancestor to a legendary werewolf bloodline. As the evening progresses and bodies start turning up, their suspicions may be true! Howling VI: The Freaks - When a drifter named Ian comes to the rural town of Canton Bluff, he finds work fixing up the local church. But when the owner of a traveling carnival finds out Ian's terrible secret, he blackmails him into becoming part of his sideshow...but it turns out the carnival owner may have a secret of his own!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #30765 in DVD
• Brand: HOWLING 5-6
• Released on: 2007-06-19
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 196 minutes

Customer Reviews

A downgrade from the OOP Artisan disc
This is a re-release of the fifth and sixth films in the Howling series. They were originally released together on DVD by Artisan with full frame transfers and Stereo audio, with no extras to speak of (not surprisingly, as I believe these were DTV releases). Nothing special, but acceptable for films of their quality.

This re-release doesn't even match the original Artisan disc quality-wise, let alone improve on it. It is a disappointing downgrade. By no stretch of the imagination does the Artisan disc have sparkling transfers, but a side-by-side comparison of the two discs shows a noticeable difference between the two - this DVD's full frame transfers are much worse than Artisan's. On top of that, the audio on this disc is presented in 2-channel Mono, not Stereo. Like Artisan, no extras to speak of.

The only thing this disc has going for it is its price. There is a neat little menu introduction, but that's hardly worth recommending it. If you've got the old Artisan disc, by all means hold on to it and don't even consider this as an upgrade. If you don't have the Artisan disc and want one then I'd definitely start looking for a copy now. It has been out of print for a little while now, and if you're lucky enough to even find a copy (at this writing it is no longer available on Amazon.com - not even from third-party sellers, or eBay), the prices are pretty high.

As far as the films go, they are okay stand-alone, but don't really fit into the Howling "series", which shouldn't really be considered a series at all. They are sequels in name only; there is no connection to the first Howling film. Bad acting aside, I really enjoy Rebirth. It's got a chilling setting, and effective atmosphere. I never really liked The Freaks, too un-werewolfy for me.

5 is passable...but 6 oh boy
Howling V wasn't too bad, but that may just be because in making my way through the entire Howling series, it was just a great relief after the absolutely horrible Howling 3 and the less than stellar Howling 4.

The story's pretty stock. Bunch of people isolated in a spooky setting and one of them is an evil malaicious werewolf picking them off one by one.

Not a lot of gore or effects compared to the other films in the series, but despite the unoriginality of the premise, I was still more interested than I was in the third or fourth in the series. The characters were all written pretty well, even if none of them were jumping out of the norm.

It was a film that could have easily become boring, but somehow I remained attentive. So it stays solidly on the line of average. Not great, not awful. Which about means there's not a lot of need to see it unless you're a big werewolf film fan


Howling 6 however is complete trash. It gives us the story of a small town with two problems: a werewolf in their midst and a sinister freak show carnival.

The werewolf looked like an apeman. Seriously. They slapped extra hair on the man, gave him some quick prosthetics on the face, some fangs, and bam! Apeman--er, I mean werewolf. I guess. Really terrible.

It doesn't end there. The head of the freakshow carnival, Harker, is out to capture him to put him on display. The actor playing Harker was actually okay. He gave off a poor man's Alan Rickman vibe, which was pretty cool since who doesn't like Alan Rickman? Unfortunately, he has his own dark secret and it's much worse than it turning out that he's a werewolf too. I won't spoil it, but I will let you know I winced and my levels of disappointment in the movie dropped another handful of notches.

If you're looking for a casual horror film, go ahead and watch 5. If you need something to really tear apart with friends go for it and watch 6. If you're looking for a pair of good horror films, you should probably already know that a double feature of the fifth and six films in a series probably won't give you anything good, so skip this.
But really the only thing that should make you buy this is if you're a werewolf nut. If you think because you liked The Howling you'll like this, you're wrong. These are just one very average film and one very awful film that conveniently have THE HOWLING prefixed onto their titles. Don't be fooled!

Howlong 5 & 6
I remember this from the 80's and liked it immensely. The first howling was good except for the end where Dee Wallace Stone turned into a big mouse. This one was just as scary as when I first saw it without being super bloody and gory! Loved my sister trying to figure out who the were wolf was.