criterionforum.org

Wow, went to go check prices and discovered there are no Blu-rays for the Abyss and True Lies-- aren't these huge budget popular films from an established money making machine? You'd think the studios would have had these out by now, especially the Abyss since it was one of the most notable uses of director's cuts and additional material when it was first released on Laserdisc

colin wrote:There is also Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies as well, who also learns to find her inner strength to move from mousy housewife to punching Tia Carrere in the face by the end!

Which is the theme of The Terminator, where a regular, undistinguished girl in her mid-twenties becomes, as she says, "the mother of the future." There's also something to be said for the fact that Cameron's two most "tough, hardbitten, guntoting" females, Ripley and Sarah Connor, are strongly maternal women. So their reasons for being tough and violent have nothing in common with the reason Cameron's male characters are tough and violent. They aren't merely women acting like men.

EDIT: Hah! I wrote my post before you'd added that last paragraph to your own, so it looks like we were both thinking the same thing!

I think I said originally that the whole thing was an impression on my part, and I'm not really going to pretend I have strong textual evidence to back it up- it's more a matter of shots come off to me, and how Cameron sounds when he talks about it. I had thought it would be something other people would have picked up, and as that seems not to be the case, I'll just assume that it's more or less all in my head.

Part of the issue may be just that Cameron is making different assumptions about what constitutes a strong person in general, and what an appropriate and cinematic response to trauma comprises, than I would, which certainly shouldn't be grounds for assumptions about his sex life.

bamwc2 wrote:Esther (Amos Gitai, 1986): Simona Binyamini stars as Esther, the Biblical matriarch who saves the Israelites from extermination while operating out of a harem during the Babylonian Captivity. Rather than tackle the subject matter in the same way that say Hollywood approached Biblical epics, the Israeli auteur instead goes the arthouse route with sparse settings and many line sung. As Gitai makes clear, the film is very much a commentary on then contemporary Israeli politics, with the final quarter of it set in the 1980s with real Israeli citizens providing brief life stories. It's by no means a bad film, but it also never felt like it added up to much of anything to me. This is the first of two Gitai film's that I plan to watch for the project (Ananas, being the other), and hopefully the next one will be better than Esther.

Funny, this must have been one of the very few films I bought entirely based on a largely negative review. Admittedly, I saw some screenshots elsewhere which enticed me, and that Italian Raro 4-disc-set was dead cheap, but still thanks for the recommendation Actually, I really liked Esther for the way the film manages to fuse the past and the present - the shifts between the eras are often hardly noticeable, sometimes only indicated by 'modern' sounds on the soundtrack when the scene is still the Biblical era - and for its minimalism, which gives it sometimes the feeling of a ritual or of a theatrical performance. I wasn't sure about the final part at the beginning, but the longer the real-life stories of the actors went on, the more I was captivated, and the more the timelessness of the story became apparent. It's fascinating how Gitai manages to subvert the viewpoint of the Biblical text, I think. An immensely political film, but one that doesn't take sides (only for humanity itself) and is never preachy. Now I'm looking very much forward to seeing Berlin-Jerusalem (1989), which is also in the Raro set.

Talking of 'theatrical' films, I feel very much like giving myself a pat on the back for actually managing to sit through the whole seven hours of Manoel de Oliveira's The Satin Slipper (1985), which was both a fascinating and frustrating experience. The frustrating part was largely due to Paul Claudel's extremely derivative and not terribly exciting Christian play, of which this film is a complete staging. The fascinating bit was Oliveira's direction of it. Entirely set on a theatre stage, the glorious colours and costumes combined with the minimalist camerawork and the actors often talking directly into the camera had a deeply immersive effect on me. The whole thing indeed feels like taking Rohmer's "Perceval" a decisive step further. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this. Any other Oliveira recommendations? This was actually the first film I saw by this director.

matrixschmatrix wrote:Part of the issue may be just that Cameron is making different assumptions about what constitutes a strong person in general, and what an appropriate and cinematic response to trauma comprises, than I would, which certainly shouldn't be grounds for assumptions about his sex life.

I have to ask, given the contexts of the movies themselves, what is inappropriate (or uncinematic) about the responses from the lead women? When Cameron shows Sarah Connor suffering persistent night terrors about the nuclear holocaust and almost slaughtering a man in front of his family before nearly having a mental breakdown as a result, do you think he is unequivocally recommending her general state of mind, or is he somewhat more aware of its toll? Also, these are action movies about people fighting aliens and robots. Seriously now.

Tommaso wrote:Talking of 'theatrical' films, I feel very much like giving myself a pat on the back for actually managing to sit through the whole seven hours of Manoel de Oliveira's The Satin Slipper (1985), which was both a fascinating and frustrating experience. The frustrating part was largely due to Paul Claudel's extremely derivative and not terribly exciting Christian play, of which this film is a complete staging. The fascinating bit was Oliveira's direction of it. Entirely set on a theatre stage, the glorious colours and costumes combined with the minimalist camerawork and the actors often talking directly into the camera had a deeply immersive effect on me. The whole thing indeed feels like taking Rohmer's "Perceval" a decisive step further. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like this. Any other Oliveira recommendations? This was actually the first film I saw by this director.

If you liked that aspect of this work then I'd also highly recommend his Mon Cas from a couple years later which is all about theater really but contains a section toward the end specifically built around a staging of the dialogues in the book of Job which is both faithful to the text but also severely heightened in terms of aesthetics. Actually though most of Oliveira's work from this period would probably interest you as it retains its feel for extreme artifice well into the 00's (I would argue it has slightly lessened over the last few years though it's still present if you're attuned to it). Nothing else is quite as extreme as Satin Slipper, however, not even close. I would have to disagree with you on the quality of the Claudel play which I think is pretty tremendous actually in and of itself but I don't think it is generally held in as high regard as Claudel's The Tidings Brought to Mary. Of course few people ever stage the whole thing (and even Oliveira's long cut is edited if you can believe it).

Tommaso, I'm glad that you liked the movie and that my write up inspired you to seek it out, but I wouldn't call my review negative. I had a very mixed reaction to it, and I meant to communicate that. I found some elements quite good, and as usual, Gitai's willingness to engage in a critical dialogue about his homeland refreshing. However, the minimalist stage design made it difficult for me to connect with the story (but then again since his point isn't to marshal Israeli nationalism, perhaps that's his goal?). Actually, the more that I think about it as I type, the fonder my memory of it becomes. I may have to rewatch this soon.

Well, I probably thought that your review was mostly unfavourable because of the very last sentence I quoted, which I interpreted as an expression of disappointment. And yes, I can imagine that the minimalism -not just in terms of set design, but also in the often static and distanced camera set-ups - can be off-putting, but this is exactly the kind of thing that I often like in other films by other directors as well (the Oliveira I mentioned is another example). But on the other hand, the film is also pretty lavish in terms of costumes and colours, and while watching it I thought that it might also appeal to people who like Pasolini's 'mythic'/Arabian films. Minus the sex and violence, of course.

Mr Sausage wrote:

matrixschmatrix wrote:Part of the issue may be just that Cameron is making different assumptions about what constitutes a strong person in general, and what an appropriate and cinematic response to trauma comprises, than I would, which certainly shouldn't be grounds for assumptions about his sex life.

I have to ask, given the contexts of the movies themselves, what is inappropriate (or uncinematic) about the responses from the lead women? When Cameron shows Sarah Connor suffering persistent night terrors about the nuclear holocaust and almost slaughtering a man in front of his family before nearly having a mental breakdown as a result, do you think he is unequivocally recommending her general state of mind, or is he somewhat more aware of its toll? Also, these are action movies about people fighting aliens and robots. Seriously now.

I'm thinking more of Aliens than of T2, though the characters are similar- I think he coarsens the character of Ripley somewhat, taking someone who was constructed as a heroine in a way that avoided a lot of the clichés of action- she was appropriately terrified, she didn't carry a gun, and she was willing to make unsympathetic decisions- and put her in a shoot-em-up where she became a tiger mother figure, afraid of nothing in defense of someone she was treating as her child. I think it's still a good movie, in part because Weaver gives depth to the character that helps smooth the transition, but I think it's a situation where Cameron moved the character forward in a way that seems off to me.

As for T2, I certainly have no objections the reactions to trauma presented, and there at least her transformation is somewhat predicted by the end of the first movie, but it does feel like the end result is a lot like what he made Ripley into. I think I said originally, and still hold, that I quite like the transformation, but the survivalist libertarian fantasy aspects of it are things that very clearly come from someone who thinks differently than I do.

matrixschmatrix wrote:I'm thinking more of Aliens than of T2, though the characters are similar- I think he coarsens the character of Ripley somewhat, taking someone who was constructed as a heroine in a way that avoided a lot of the clichés of action- she was appropriately terrified, she didn't carry a gun, and she was willing to make unsympathetic decisions- and put her in a shoot-em-up where she became a tiger mother figure, afraid of nothing in defense of someone she was treating as her child. I think it's still a good movie, in part because Weaver gives depth to the character that helps smooth the transition, but I think it's a situation where Cameron moved the character forward in a way that seems off to me.

It's here that I wonder if you've seen the movies recently. I mean, firstly, she wields a flamethrower and shoots the alien with some sort of grappling hook. It's not a character or thematic point that she doesn't carry a gun, it's a fact that they don't have any on a commercial towing vessel. She otherwise wields every weapon available to her. If there was a gun on board, you can be sure she would've used it. Second, it makes little sense to argue that Aliens "coarsened" the character using as evidence the fact that she doesn't make any unsympathetic decisions. Wouldn't that be evidence that she's softened? Third, when the question arose of who was going to go into vents to chase the creature, Ripley said without a pause or tremor in her voice that she would do it. This is not a woman lacking in bravery.

It's weird you mention Ripley's fear, as the character arc in Aliens is bringing her from a state of fear (she begins the movie suffering from intense night terrors) to fearlessness and finally closure. It's the perfect structural complement to Alien since it returns her to the origin of her trauma and has her face and conquer an absurdly gigantic manifestation of her fear in the queen mother (you could have a Freudian field day with this material). This is the archetypal resolution to the story begun in Alien. The director's cut also adds in further motivation since we learn that Ripley's young daughter died an old woman before Ripley was rescued from hyper-sleep, which adds extra urgency to her care for Newt, although it's not strictly necessary. The character also asks to be trained in how to use the weapons available, and otherwise behaves exactly like you'd expect the Ripley from Alien to act in the situation she's been thrown into. You would expect her to treat a surrogate daughter differently than some coworkers she has a combative relationship with.

Look, unless you're able to point to something in the situation that wouldn't provoke the character to do the things she does, the "off" quality would have to lie entirely in your head. You can prefer one movie to the other, but to complain that there's a lack of logic or a sleight-of-hand in a confident, tough-willed, and resilient character from one movie becoming even more confident, tough-willed, and resilient in the second is really, really strange. It's willful in a way that seems divorced from the movies themselves.

matrixschmatrix wrote:but the survivalist libertarian fantasy aspects of it are things that very clearly come from someone who thinks differently than I do.

I have the same reaction to this as I did when you called The Incredibles an Ayn-Randian libertarian fantasy: your ideology is draining your reactions of nuance and producing caricatures of the movies, and cliched ones at that.

Barefoot Gen (1983, Mori Masaki)
I first became aware of Barefoot Gen in college when I saw a screenshot from its infamous bombing scene in an anime book. Flash forward about 8 years, and I’ve finally gotten around to watching it. The scene in question, which presents a graphic and stylized depiction of the atomic blast in Hiroshima complete with images of adults and children evaporating right in front of us, their skin melting away and eyes falling out of their sockets, has certainly earned its reputation. It’s a scene that you will never be able to un-see. What makes it even more horrifying is that the movie up to this point has played more like an anime sitcom, focusing on the antics of spunky 6-year-old Gen and his younger brother. While there is an awareness of the impact of World War II on Japan’s economy and Gen’s family in particular from the start, it’s more of a backdrop to the decidedly fun central dynamic between the children. After the bomb, the story changes to one of intense survival and personal growth as Gen must work to help provide for his surviving family members. From the bombing scene onward, Barefoot Gen is a visceral and highly emotional experience, but I think the movie as a whole suffers slightly from its uneven mix of comedy and horrific devastation. The very on-the-nose voice-over narration doesn’t do it any favors either, but it’s a movie that remains vital for its unflinching treatment of the bombing and its immediate aftermath in the lives of one Japanese family.

Barefoot Gen 2 (1986, Toshio Hirata)
Picking up three years after the first movie left off, this one finds Gen, his mother and adopted brother still struggling to make a living after the devastation of Hiroshima. As Gen’s mother begins showing signs of cancer, their need for more income and food becomes increasingly desperate. Meanwhile, Gen befriends a group of vagrant orphans, learning from them the tricks to stealing what he needs while helping them build a sturdy shelter. While nowhere near as horrific (and thus, not as well remembered) as its predecessor, Barefoot Gen 2 is, in my eyes, the superior movie. Like the first one, it does not shy away from the harsh realities of its characters’ lives, but it is aided by a better developed story, a steadier balance between drama and comedy, and more sophisticated animation and character design. One of the things I find really appealing about this film is its focus on building strong social communities in order to survive. The ways in which Gen reaches out to the ostracized vagabonds, who in turn rally together to help his mother and even take in an elderly man who has become estranged from his own family, is an uplifting testament to the essential good in humanity even in the midst of catastrophe without being overly sentimental. And it is indeed another deeply felt emotional experience. This is a strong candidate for my list.

Grave of the Fireflies (1988, Isao Takahata)
In hindsight, the two Barefoot Gen films almost seem like stepping stones toward Takahata’s all-time masterpiece of animation (which isn’t really fair to either of the previous movies as they have different intentions in spite of the similar subjects). The story of a teenaged boy and his toddler sister struggling to survive in Japan during World War II after the death of their mother is just a beautiful, heartbreaking work. The focal point is really the complex relationship that grows between the boy (Seita) and his sister (Setsuko), who become each other’s only means of nurture and support and, in some ways, their only reasons for living. We are guided through the story by Seita, but it is Setsuko who, in spite of her young age, is truly the cornerstone of this movie. She is one of the most intelligently realized children I have ever seen in a film, comprised of all the innocence, insight, and even annoyances we know children to possess. Even in its more stylistic moments, such as a late montage of Setsuko’s daily activity ironically set to “Home, Sweet Home,” the characters’ basic humanity is foregrounded. It’s hard to imagine this film could have been more human if it were live-action. In case you haven’t guessed already, this will definitely make my list.

Feego, if you'd like to continue on with the theme, then I strongly suggest Jimmy T. Murakami's When the Wind Blows (1986, so it qualifies for the list). I watched it based on a recommendation in the animation project thread, and was blown away by it.

Thanks, I just became aware of When the Wind Blows a couple of weeks ago and would like to see it. Is there a DVD edition currently in print?

The UK DVD I bought many years ago is now OOP. There's also this one, but I can't vouch for it. Twilight Time is supposed to be releasing it on blu-ray sometime fairly soon.

I'm pretty sure that I watched it on Youtube about a year ago. Unfortunately, it looks like it's been scrubbed off of there since then.

I will certainly be looking out for it in some form, perhaps on YouTube or TT's Blu-ray release (which hopefully will happen this year before voting).

Communion (Philippe Mora 1989) Well, it didn't take long to see a worse film than Last Rites! This is really just a wise lesson is saving hyperbole for when you need it, because this could very well be one of the worst films I've ever seen. Christopher Walken plays Whitley Strieber, the author who famously claimed to have been visited by unidentifiable creatures (in the film they'e clearly aliens), and if you think you've already seen the most unhinged, unreined-in Walken performance ever and haven't seen this film, you are mistaken. And that's not a good thing, even if you think it must be-- Walken is so off-the-rails here, and given no conceivable direction, that he starts improvising bullshit lines and bits in every scene, as if to say "I truly do not give a shit, and no one else gives enough of a shit to stop me." Linday Crouse often joins him on these bad actor's workshops flights, with her wife character reduced to following along with Walken's bonkers lead and then sometimes devolving into line readings in the affectated tone of her real-life husband at the time. And that's not even mentioning the intercut scenes of the times to be had aboard the spaceship with aliens and probings and, in one gallingly audacious and awful moment, Walken's effeminate magician double. If this sounds like a fun mess, you're only half right.

Doctor Detroit (Michael Pressman 1983) Arguably the best possible movie that could be made of Dan Aykroyd as an accidental pimp, this is surprisingly fun and carefree fluff, probably because it wisely ignores or glosses over actually exploring the behaviors that Aykroyd's charges must perform in favor of treating them as prostitutes in the abstract. This makes for probably one of the breeziest and most genteel films on the subject at least! After nerdy college prof Aykroyd is conned into pretending to be the titular pimp moving in on the bull matron Mom's territory, the hijinks as could be expected come (get it, that's dirtier than any joke in this nonetheless R rated comedy) but nothing can prepare you for the bizarre manner in which Aykroyd realizes his Doctor Detroit persona. It is too weird to be funny, yet I admired its peculiarity. That's kind of my take on the film: I wouldn't say I laughed a lot, but it was oddly entertaining, and any movie that features a James Brown-scored dance number featuring dozens of pimps and prostitutes and led by Dan Aykroyd in a fright wig and sporting a metal claw-hand is worth a recommendation.

the Howling III: the Marsupials (Philippe Mora 1987) Look, I'm not going to go so far as to call this sequel-in-name-only good, but I've seen plenty of humorless 80s horror movies to know and appreciate a decent, self-aware lark when I see one. This is one, in case you couldn't tell. What I've learned from this round's exposure to the work of Mora, who directed the unseen by me (and incredibly titled) the Howling II: Stirba-- Werewolf Bitch, is he is nothing if not overly ambitious, and this film's no exception. Now, making a weirdo Aussie werewolf film with elements as bonkers as a mid-ballet transformation of a werewolf, killer wolf nuns, a fake Hitchcock, and a cross-movie role for the President from the Return of Captain Invincible is never going to result in anything more than a mess, but at least it's a fun mess. I liked the fourth-wall touches the best, as when two scientists are discussing one of the plot points and then one picks up a newspaper with a relevant story in the headline and comments on how peculiar that is, or when the characters stop to acknowledge the weird camera angles and POV shots, or the fake Hitchcock's great line to a young actress that effectively sums up and dismisses most of the low art genre efforts of the decade, "Andy Warhol showed us that the pop can be art. Now your first scene has you gang-raped by four monsters." And the Australian touches are nice, as when the Aboriginal character lies dying and is comforted with all the maudlin delights that will await him in death and he defiantly says, "No, I'm just going to die." Again, I don't exactly recommend this, but I definitely enjoyed it more than the original (one of my least favorite Dante pics).

the Return of Captain Invincible (Philippe Mora 1983) Here's a movie that embodies the textbook definition of something working on paper and not translating at all to the screen. The comic premise here is sound: Cast Alan Arkin as a superhero. That mismatch could indeed be hilarious. Now make him a washed up superhero from the Golden Age who must retrain to fight a modern menace in the form of Christopher Lee. Again, could be good fun. But this movie has too many ideas on a conceptual level and yet no ideas on how to follow through in practice. And so we get a bizarre slog of Arkin's drunk prepping for his American battle in Australia and, oh, did I forget to mention that twenty minutes in the film pulls the rug out and turns into a musical? And the first song is just the word "Bullshit" repeated over and over in rhythm to a funky beat? These numbers too are problematic: In theory, the only thing funnier than Alan Arkin as a superhero is Alan Arkin as a singing superhero. But the numbers other than the first two with MIchael Pate as the president are played straight and without much zest, with the only good song being Lee's humorous ode to alcoholism (penned by the Rocky Horror Picture Show scribes no less). This is a noble failure, but it's such a spectacular mess with no conceivable intended audience that I'm surprised it doesn't have a cult following (or, if it does, a larger one).

...the title of the boxed set holding the three Mora pics is called "Sights Frights and Tights," which is better than anything found within!

Domino, I must admit that I was unfamiliar with the subtitle of Howling II that you mentioned. The version that I saw half of before my wife made me turn it off was called Howling II: You're Sister Is a Werewolf, which also brings a smile to my face.

domino harvey wrote:Communion (Philippe Mora 1989) Well, it didn't take long to see a worse film than Last Rites! This is really just a wise lesson is saving hyperbole for when you need it, because this could very well be one of the worst films I've ever seen. Christopher Walken plays Whitley Strieber, the author who famously claimed to have been visited by unidentifiable creatures (in the film they'e clearly aliens), and if you think you've already seen the most unhinged, unreined-in Walken performance ever and haven't seen this film, you are mistaken. And that's not a good thing, even if you think it must be-- Walken is so off-the-rails here, and given no conceivable direction, that he starts improvising bullshit lines and bits in every scene, as if to say "I truly do not give a shit, and no one else gives enough of a shit to stop me." Linday Crouse often joins him on these bad actor's workshops flights, with her wife character reduced to following along with Walken's bonkers lead and then sometimes devolving into line readings in the affectated tone of her real-life husband at the time. And that's not even mentioning the intercut scenes of the times to be had aboard the spaceship with aliens and probings and, in one gallingly audacious and awful moment, Walken's effeminate magician double. If this sounds like a fun mess, you're only half right.

Sorry you didn't enjoy this one; I adore it and have for decades. It's one of those films I know like the proverbial back of my hand as I've seen it so many times over the years but I certainly wouldn't expect everyone to share my enthusiasm. It may help if you harbor an affection for Strieber and whatever kind of mad performance art he's engaging in--it's just as wild and unhinged on the page as it is in Walken's fully embraced character (love little details like Walken quietly intoning the words "if I was in my right mind..." after abruptly leaving a group therapy session or his They Live inspired moment of sudden awareness as to the insect headed reality of who is sharing the bus with him or best of all his casual flipping through of a magazine during the interior spaceship flashbacks as though he's in a dentist's waiting room). It's a movie of moments and details all of which feel fleshed out and committed to which is no small thing given the risible circumstances but Walken and Mora also manage to invest the whole scenario with a sensitivity for the possibility of very real psychic distress and torment (the moment between Walken and Crouse after he fires the gun off in the house, the brief cut to a silently stricken Walken after one of the hypnosis sessions, etc.). I really admire how well Mora manages this material actually in that he allows for the chaotic insanity but grounds the human element in the briefest of references rather than indulge in excess sentimentality. And he gets very well that this material desperately needs such care. I always think of how smart it was for him to acknowledge and indulge the comedy instead because he knows it cannot be gotten past nor should be as the absurdity is a response to the extremity of the situation (e.g. the awesome moment when Walken is carried off by the California Raisin "visitors" and the quickly escalating eerie music exists alongside Walken's hilarious reactions to being picked up and carried off--the one thing does not eradicate the other but complements it and deepens or complexifies our own response).

Although I've never seen Communion, I was terrified of alien abduction as a kid thanks to the ridiculous stories of it on Unsolved Mysteries. Just seeing the box for Communion at my local video store traumatized me as I thought that I was bound to be abducted any minute.

It's funny you say that, because I kept thinking of how influential Stieber's work was on how aliens and abductions are perceived and how much I'd rather be watching a ten minute Unsolved Mysteries reenactment instead of Communion. I even looked up Unsolved Mysteries DVDs, because there's something wrong with me

bamwc2 wrote:Domino, I must admit that I was unfamiliar with the subtitle of Howling II that you mentioned. The version that I saw half of before my wife made me turn it off was called Howling II: You're Sister Is a Werewolf, which also brings a smile to my face.

It would be so awesome if it were actually called that.

domino, be prepared to cue up the X-Files prefiguring Fire In The Sky in the 90s list for more alien abduction shenanigans (weirdly over the Easter weekend I was playing the South Park game which features a sequence of trying to save someone from getting probed in the ship by playing a round of the colour-matching game Simon, which inevitably gets so complicated there is no chance of winning!)

The most jaw dropping thing about Howling II (apart from watching Christopher Lee try and retain his dignity) is the end credits sequence in which Sybil Danning's extremely brief nude scene from earlier in the film in which she rips her dress off, gets repeated in an infinite loop to the beat of the rock song! Apparently Danning was extremely annoyed by that!

zedz wrote:

bamwc2 wrote:Domino, I must admit that I was unfamiliar with the subtitle of Howling II that you mentioned. The version that I saw half of before my wife made me turn it off was called Howling II: You're Sister Is a Werewolf, which also brings a smile to my face.

It would be so awesome if it were actually called that.

#-o Did I mention that my professorship is not in English? That should read The Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf.

colinr0380 wrote:The most jaw dropping thing about Howling II (apart from watching Christopher Lee try and retain his dignity) is the end credits sequence in which Sybil Danning's extremely brief nude scene from earlier in the film in which she rips her dress off, gets repeated in an infinite loop to the beat of the rock song! Apparently Danning was extremely annoyed by that!

I was confusing Sybil Danning and Blythe Danner in my head and now her (non-)appearance in a Howling sequel makes more sense!