A well known female journalist takes a needed break out in the Californian countryside along with her husband(?) but there are mysterious things going on, the locals aren't very friendly and at night she can hear howling! More of a remake than a sequel. We don't get to see a werewolf proper until after an hour into the film, but prior to that there is horror in the form of psychological tension & ghostly happenings. Now I can understand many viewers feeling cheated by this but for me personally I felt that it worked fine. However, last half hour provides enough werewolf action to make the wait worthwhile. The best transformation scene sees a man literally MELT into a werewolf. There's a fair smattering of gore plus one inevitable sex scene. I'm not sure if the film was dubbed but sometimes the speech & mouth actions don't match, but just a minor moan. Obviously I'm in the minority here but like I said I found it reasonably entertaining & trust me, there are far worse werewolf movies out there!

Released in 1988, "Howling IV: The Original Nightmare" chronicles events in the Southern Cal desert town of Drago, where a writer (Romy Windsor) goes to heal after a mental breakdown, which is hard to do when she gets caught up in a mystery about demons and werewolves. Michael T. Weiss plays her husband while Antony Hamilton plays her hunky friend from Los Angeles. Susanne Severeid appears as a fan of the writer who becomes her assistant sleuth while Norman Anstey in on hand as the aloof sheriff. Lamya Derval plays a shop-owner with cat-like eyes and torpedo breasts (sorry). The movie's subtitled "The Original Nightmare" because it's more faithful to Gary Brandner's original novel, which doesn't mean it's better, not even close. The low-budget prevents it from being anything more than a decent sequel with a rushed, awkward ending. Unlike the classic "The Howling" (1981), werewolves are scarce, but it's superior to "Howling II" (1985) and "Howling III" (1987) in that it throws out Phillippe Mora's goofy camp and general eccentricities. I like the slow-build mystery and the cast. There's some quality full moon ambiance as well and Windsor & Severeid make for an effective female team. Moreover, Weiss is one of the few actors who could get away with a mullet. While the bulk of the movie was shot in the sticks of South Africa, and you can tell, it's not THAT bad of a substitute for the desert wilderness of Southern Cal. Actually, it makes for an interesting change of pace for the barely-connected series of stand-alone werewolf flicks. The film runs 94 minutes and was shot in South Africa with some parts in Fresno & Los Angeles, California. It was directed by John Hough from a script by Clive Turner and Freddie Rowe. Clive would continue serious work with the franchise on 1989's "Howling V: The Rebirth" and 1995's "Howling: New Moon Rising." GRADE: C+

This plodding and deathly dull entry in the HOWLING franchise is only notable for a couple of decent special effects scenes in the last ten minutes of the movie, but unfortunately you have to ensure the previous eighty minutes before you get to these bits. The first eighty minutes adopts a predictable mystery template, as a young writer moves to a strange old town in the middle of nowhere, and hears howling noises coming from the wood. Is she going mad, or are there really wolves living out there? Does anybody really care? The answer is, unfortunately, no. The film is cheaply made and director John Hough, formerly of the Hammer Horror stable, really doesn't distinguish himself at all, providing a bland, TV-movie look to the proceedings.The film's mystery is a really run-of-the-mill one, with the bad guys being obvious right from the start, so the whole conspiracy angle just falls flat. It doesn't help that lead actress Romy Windsor (THE HOUSE OF USHER) is so…well…normal, either. She's just there, and undistinguished from a million other low budget scream queens of the 1980s. A minor plus point of the film is the '80s setting, which allows for a cheesy mulleted hero – played with gusto by Michael T. Weiss – something I have to say I enjoyed a little. However, the film is so cheap that most of the voices are dubbed in, which makes it just look even more amateurish. Exploitation stalwart Harry Alan Towers was on board as producer, but the film doesn't have much of the gusto of his other movies.However, the last ten minutes ARE decent. There are torn throats aplenty, a pack of dogs with glowing red eyes which look pretty damn cool, and a massive werewolf beast inside a church. For horror fans, best of all is the excruciating sequence (yes, even more excruciating than AN American WEREWOLF IN London) in which a guy melts down to a fleshy skeleton before growing back into a werewolf! The latter two effects are courtesy of Steve Johnson, who really distinguishes himself with these gooey offerings, a definite highlight of the film. It's just a shame that, as fast as the fun begins, the film ends on a low note. If only these things had happened half an hour in and continued from there, it might have been a decent movie

Seriously, I want the 90 minutes of my life back that I just watched. This film is so badly written, I could have fallen asleep in the first 10 minutes. The acting is like a really bad soap opera, worse than the bold and the beautiful. There is no tone or pace, and no action happens until the last 10 minutes.It is not scary at all, and highly laughable, not a credit to the horror or werewolf franchises at all.The effects I suppose are decent for its time, there is s melting scene that was OK, but other than that, I think an episode of in the night garden is more scary ;)