Australia in the 80s. Donny falls in love with the beautiful Jerboa. Unfortunately, Jerboa turns out to be a werewolf. But Donny doesn't seem to care and they both flee into the wild. Meanwhile, werewolf expert professor Beckmeyer is assigned to exterminate all the werewolfs. The scientist grows to like the misunderstood creatures and tries to hide them from the military. Will that work?"Howling III" is the third part of the Howling series. It was directed by Philippe Mora who was responsible for the sleazy second part as well. At this point I am inclined to call Philippe the Ed Wood of werewolf flicks, because "Howling III" is a glorious trash gem. It is a wild mixture of different genres: It begins as a romance, mutates into a horror comedy and ends as a sentimental condemnation of racism. Sounds great? Guess what: It is.The humorous parts are surprisingly self-reflective. There's a pretentious director talking about Andy Warhol making a really demented movie. There's a scene where Jerboa and Donny watch a terrible horror flick. A B-movie in a B-movie! That's genuinely hilarious. Mora cites many other movies, such as "Psycho", "Alien" and even "An American Werewolf in London". (Oh, the irony.) The ending is a nod to "The Howling" from 1981. Pretty cool. The horror scenes in "Howling III" are gross, especially the infamous birthing scene which is just … yuck. But there's some decidedly awesome stuff, too. There's a werewolf zombie, guys! And a guy blowing himself up with a freaking rocket launcher.If you haven't already guessed, this movie is all over the place. At the end it becomes a cutesy romance, which makes you wonder if you're watching a perverted prototype of the "Twilight" series. You've got to give Philippe Mora some credit. This movie is quite original. It certainly is one of the most unusual werewolf flicks ever. The script treats them as an endangered species, not as bloodthirsty monstrosities. That's a nice touch. Still, many things are downright bad: The acting is abysmal at times, the special effects are sloppy and the story is full of plot holes.Philippe Mora's "Howling III" is a spectacular mess. It's the fabric cult classics are made of. If you're a trash fan, this one is a must-see. But be warned: It might fry your brain.

Part III is a change of direction for this franchise, set in Australia(no overt links to the first two) where a young woman finds herself involved with an oddball film director and some very strange werewolves related to a secluded aboriginal tribe, where expedition members are being killed.Though different from Part II, this is no less bizarre and ridiculous, with a plot that doesn't hang together at all, truly bizarre characters and music, and an ending sequence so self-defeating and crass that you would think returning director Phillippe Mora was intending to kill this budding franchise(not a bad idea really...shame it didn't happen!)

Howling III (1987) * 1/2 (out of 4) The third film in the series has no connection to the first two so this here works best as a standalone episode or at least a different werewolf film that has the "HOWLING" tied in for commercial reasons. There are two stories going on here with the first being a scientist trying to figure out if the werewolf footage his grandfather shot in 1905 is actually a real wolf. The second story deals with a young woman breaking away from her family but this isn't your typical woman, she's actually a werewolf. Soon the two stories come together and the end result just isn't very good. HOWLING III has a pretty poor reputation and a lot of this seems to be from fans who simply don't like the fact that this film has no real connection to the first two movies. I can see how that might be disappointing to people but the real issue is the story itself, which is just silly and never really makes too much sense. This entire thing is more Oxploitation than anything else as we get some pretty silly sequences that pop up out of nowhere and don't go anywhere. I think the highlights of the film has to be the pregnant woman giving birth to a werewolf baby and of course since we're talking Australia you have to have her carry the baby around in her pouch just like a kangaroo. These scenes are just so outrageous that you can't help but smile at them and wish the entire film was about these patches. There's no question that the film goes for many laughs and I think this is part of the problem. It seems to try and be more like the first film in the series but there's simply nothing clever going on here. The performances aren't too bad but these aren't what people come to see. For a horror film there's really no scares and for a horror film of the 80s there's not any gore either.

What comes to mind when you think of director Philippe Mora. Who's that I might hear… but Philippe Mora is truly a one-of-a-kind filmmaker that cult fans would know in some shape (Mad Dog Morgan comes to light). For good or bad… his ideas are unique (if crazy) but the end product is usually an unhinged mess. A baffling mess. How did it come to this mess? Its head scratching, although entertaining at that. I thought Mora's "Howling 2" was strangely bad… however he tops it with the Australian based "The Marsupials: The Howling III". Well more so in the bewildering weirdness, although it felt purposely campy despite some mock serious contributions. Not as incompetent, but hypnotically tacky with its beaming personality. Mora takes one audaciously original idea (a twist on folklore to relate to specific culture and sense of place; marsupial werewolves!) and clumsily patches it together into an Aussie werewolf soap opera filled with shocks and laughs. Like no other could do. He's a man of pure vision who's never heard of the word cohesion. Maybe he doesn't know the definition. Please could you put in to a sentence. The direction of the material simply lacks cohesion. You could say that it might just benefit from that, as everything is so outrageous so why confine it in a sensible manner. Mora's surrealist direction is just as random and erratic, like the busy plot and choppy editing. There's no denying how ambitious the concept is, as it's quite different from the norm. Where else can you get werewolf nuns, a Soviet werewolf ballerina, aboriginals that don't look like aboriginals, a determined but love struck Barry Otto (a sincerely good turn), an eye-opening birth scene that sees a baby marsupial werewolf in a pouch (while the father doesn't seemed to be too fazed by making love with a she-wolf and having a werewolf baby… "It's beautiful") and for the locals the never ageing Bill Collins, Frank Thring portraying b-grade horror director and Barry Humphries' Dame Edna getting close and personal to a snarling werewolf (which could be seen as a homage to Dante's original's ending). There are references aplenty from home grown to feature films (like the amusing quip in the cinema --- gotta love the facials of the audience, it's priceless), but being a Sydney resident it was nice to see some familiar scenery on screen. When the action leaves the city (which looks like it's during a heatwave) and heads out bush to the town of "Flow" is when I found it to fall away. Really the werewolves are not the threat, but the humans that don't understand and fear them turn out to be. Specialists are called in to deal with this threat. These so called military specialists (two of them) are anything but… and I don't think it's purposely done either. The local hick hunting party seem better equipped and last much longer then those nervous wrecks. The performances of the leads (Imogen Annesely, Lee Biolos, Max Fairchild, Dasha Blahova and Ralph Cotterhill) are fittingly good. The make-up FX of the werewolves was quite uneven, cheap and rubbery although with some colourful shots. It's laid-back air and offbeat charm is simply hard to resist.