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At this point none of us had seen the film, only stills and first-hand accounts of mishaps and so forth while Philippe was in the Czech Republic filming. My conversation with Philippe Mora led me to believe this just might be a real classic as he openly admired Tod Browning and James Whale as directors and was a total film buff to boot. I loved the fact that he kept a prop severed hand in the fruit bowl on his coffee table. It wasn’t until I visited the prop and make-up dept out in the valley that I began to wonder if this project was indeed a return to classic horror or at even as good a film as Joe Dante’s. The guys who created the make-up, and had spent days packing the props and werewolf gear to be sent overseas, had a different tale to tell. “This film is really gonna suck cause the gargoyle on the staff cannot be animated properly and they are going to try painting beams of light onto Sybil’s fingers for the conjure stuff cause there is no money to do it right.”

Apparently there was a cash flow problem over at Hemdale and the special effects were the first to feel the pinch. “Look at these masks; they’ll rot before they arrive and there’s no one at the other end to fix them properly. One of the make-up men related how Scott Dacy threatened to kill the guy who was applying werewolf hairs on Sybil’s body (and I mean all over her body) and at one point Scott was barred from the set until they wrapped the three-way sex sequence. By this time the whole crew knew about me tossing Scott out of my Xmas party so the stories flowed about his abusive behavior.

My old friend Ferdy Mayne had a small but showy part as a werewolf at the film’s beginning and is fatally staked by the hand of his old mate Christopher Lee.
Ferdy remarked about the make-up being “all rubber and teeth,” and also expressed concern for Christopher as he was not feeling well during the filming and later we would discover that he’d had to have open heart surgery soon after the film wrapped, and that the Lee family made the decision to return to England for good. Ferdy wanted to play Chris’s part and felt he could have really given it a bit more life, since his pal was under the weather. Christopher did remark soon after I saw Ferdy that the scene in the graveyard where Ferdy used his feet like an animal “was absolutely on and so right for his character.” The other werewolf bitch in the film was played by the fantastic Marsha Hunt, who appeared with Christopher Lee in one of the very last Hammer Dracula’s, a cult favorite – DRACULA AD 72 – and since then became world famous for having a daughter by Mick Jagger (legend has it the stones hit single “Brown Sugar” was all about her). Marsha was the third sex partner in the werewolf three way and had hoped it would “rock.” As she explained, “You can never tell about how this shit will look until they fuck with it.” Somehow I knew just what she meant by that. You… go… girl.

As more information began to mount so did the anticipation to see this epic as soon as a print could be made available. The answer to everyone’s wish came in the guise of The American Film Market, which was the venue Hemdale chose to screen THE HOWLING PART TWO—Your sister is a werewolf” for foreign distribution, and not for reviewing, as there was no release date for a Hollywood premiere and there never would be…

Nothing could have prepared me for the film itself when I finally sat down to experience the wonders of Striba and her three-way for myself. There are many who, after seeing YOUR SISTER IS A WERERWOLF that day, felt perhaps this was the PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE of werewolf films, or better yet, the worst film ever made in the Czech Republic. For me it was just a total mind-fuck as to what on earth could have made an intelligent, sophisticated gentleman like Philippe Mora make such a sloppy, incoherent mess like the film I had just sat through. The make-up and lame effects were the worst I have ever seen in a horror film, even worse considering the budget this film was supposed to have had. The best thing about it was Sybil and her fantastic body; even Chris Lee, with a voice like God, seemed lost in this sea of celluloid despair. The film was shot in such darkness that, mercifully, you could not make out whether the werewolves were really men in fur coats, but I swear that is what it looked like in places. The infamous werewolf three-way proved not to be very erotic (unless matted hair turns you on). It was in fact downright silly, as Marsha and Sybil growled and clawed at their male companion as if they were all infested with fleas. The film as it stands today is a catalog of bad moments, some rather camp, but is it enough to create a midnight cult film…? Perhaps it is, as I feel my unique experience with it disqualifies me from an opinion, although now that it is out on DVD from MGM you can decide for yourselves as the disc offers a widescreen presentation (or flip it over for full screen: either way it won’t get any better I assure you).

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