10 Horror Movie Franchises You've (Probably) Never Seen
3. The Howling
Similarly to It's Alive, you may well have seen Joe Dante's original 1981 werewolf film The Howling, but did you know that it was only the first in a series of eight movies spanning three full decades?
To call the series schizophrenic is rather underselling it - there's no cohesion at all between movies, most of which make no reference to the original, and are instead quite keen to just do their own thing, almost as if each new film is a spec script that was retrofitted into a Howling sequel.
Some especially eccentric examples include Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, which just decided to more faithfully re-adapt Gary Brandner's source novel, and Howling V: The Rebirth, which is basically a lycanthropic riff on Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None."
The most recent entry was 2011's reboot The Howling: Reborn, which evidently performed poorly enough to finally put the series to bed. However, in 2020 it was announced that It director Andy Muschietti is soon to direct a remake of the original movie for Netflix.
The Howling is quite the shaggy doc of a franchise, but there are at least a few flawed gems among the lot worth checking out.