15 Guilty Pleasure Horror Films To Watch This Halloween

By Ian Watson /

1. Howling II: Stirba Werewolf Bitch (1985)

The ten thousandth birthday of werewolf leader Stirba (Sybil Danning) is approaching, which will cause all other werewolves to reveal themselves unless Lee, Brown and Annie McEnroe venture to Transylvania to destroy her. So far, so camp, but then the narrative flies off into the stratosphere. Danning€™s presence usually signifies a fairly high jiggle quotient, though here she€™s required not just to disrobe but to break out in fur for a lycanthropic ménage a trois that must rank as one of the least erotic, most unintentionally (?) funny nude scenes ever filmed. When she€™s not flanked by naked, cooing werewolves, the Playmate wears shades and a leather catsuit, shoots laser beams from her fingertips and causes noses to bleed and eyeballs to rupture with a mystical chant. She can also transform gargoyles into rubbery predators that suck their victim€™s intestines out through their mouths, which is all her castle seems to have in the way of security since the €˜guards€™ are more likely to be found indulging their orgiastic proclivities. She even keeps McEnroe€™s imperilled heroine, clad in rags and slathered in fake blood, chained up in an unlocked and unguarded cellar so that when our heroes arrive they can walk straight in. Armed with nothing less than the Holy Grail, Lee€™s final confrontation with Stirba proves something of a letdown as, having expended her arsenal of colour-swirls, all it takes to defeat the werewolf queen is a single thrust of a titanium blade.