Night of the Howling — Night of the Howling( DVD)
From 2024, Night of the Howling is a crossbreed between a werewolf film, a stalking serial killer thriller, and a cop lost his faith drama, with some great, moody mist/ fog bound atmospherics and lo-fi bloody splatter. Here’s a DVD release of the film from Wild Eye releasing with a director's commentary.
The picture was directed/ co-written by Milan, Michigan Matt Jaissle (The Necro Files, Gobblefoot, Maws), who I’ve recently become a big fan of, so I’m slowly but surely making my way through his back catalogue, hence this review- though the release is still very available.
As with most of Matt’s films, the runtime is kept trim at seventy minutes, but within this time he tells a decent tale. We kick off in fine atmospheric fashion- as we move from snow-bound churn yard credits to eerie drifting through small-town foggy streets.
We see two bikers breaking into a machine shop- clearly looking for someone; all of a sudden, a werewolf appears- they battle it back, stabbing a silver spike in its heart, and locking it away. Sure, it’s clear it’s a guy (I’m presuming) in a suit- but Jaissle never overshoots the creature, and there are some neat snarling jaw touches, and all in all it’s a half-decent creature.
Next we see two figures tramping through deep snow to an old American house; we’re told from the 1800s… they’ve clearly gone there for drinks & nibbles, but find themselves in the basement with candles and a glass globe. The house's purple-dressed owner is trying to summon up the spirit of the recently disappeared killer who had been killing people like a wild animal. So, of course, our staked werewolf arises- heads to the house of summoning- rips at the faces of the three, before pulling and munching on the guts of one.
We then meet ageing, grey, and tubby-bellied Detective Whitlock (Chris Heikka), whose equally ageing boss is trying to tell him about the recent killings- but he keeps pushing him away. In the end, he takes the bait, but he's a lapsed-in-the-faith Christian who keeps looking for answers in the good book and is quite often open to pushing & pulling his way in & out of situations.
As the film unfolds, more fall victim to the werewolf, with blood-face and big-teeth attacks. Whitlock searches for the creature and his faith, and we get some more nicely moody moments. Yes, some of the after-attack effects look a little rushed/ cobbled together, though there are some decent moments of low fi gore/ gut munching.
Heikka is good enough in our lead role, and it’s great to have an older gent hero. Most of the rest of the cast is fine, for a low-budget film. And as we’ve come to expect with a Jaissle production, there's some time & thought put into the score, with the lead cue being this great synth-based affair that mixes throbbing bass tone with a malevolent melody on top.
On the extras side, we get a commentary track from Matt, and with his other tracks, he's once again down to earth/ dryly amusing. We find out this was the third film he made with Wildeye releasing- it started filming just before Christmas 2023, finishing in February 2024; they shot over a total of ten days, and did a few weeks of editing. He talks about how lucky he was with the fog, and that he wanted to create a John Carpenter vibe with these scenes. He talks about how he was the only crew member on the film, with the picture having a ten-page outline. We find out that the werewolf was played by lots of the cast. We find out where the guts in the picture came from, and he talks about how the actors that played the detectives were on his first film, 1993’s Back from Hell. Later on, he talks about the Christ on fire scene, points out some of the locations, comments on the chicken scene, and how dead trees & grey sky sum up the Midwestern America he grew up in.
I’ll have to say Night of the Howling stands as one of my favourite Matt releases, as it’s a perfect balance of atmosphere, neat stalking POV, gory attacks, and a memorable older lead.