. It was the inspiration for the 1981 film The Howling
, although the plot of the film was only vaguely similar to that of the book.
Brandner wrote two sequels to the novel, The Howling II
in 1979 (later republished as Return of the Howling) and The Howling III: Echoes
in 1985. Neither sequel was used as the basis for any of the subsequent Howling films. The fourth film in the series, Howling IV: The Original Nightmare
made in 1988 is the closest adaptation of Brandner's original 1977 Howling novel, though even this differs in parts.
When middle-class Karyn Beatty is attacked and raped in her Los Angeles
home, she suffers a miscarriage
and a nervous breakdown
.
[first lines] Repression. Repression if the father of neurosis, of self-hatred. Now, stress results when we fight against our impulses. We've all heard people talk about animal magnetism, the natural man, the noble savage, as if we'd lost something valuable in our long evolution into civilized human beings. Now there's a good reason for this.
Thank God! [drops to the ground]
[on how to kill werewolves] Silver bullets or fire, that's the only way to get rid of the damn things. They're worse than cockroaches.
[about his occult bookstore] The Manson people used to hang out here and shoplift!
Don't you know anything?
[proceeds to pull the bullet from his fractured skull out of the hole it left his head] You said on the phone that you wanted to get to know me. Well, here I am, Karen. Look at me. I wanna give you a piece of my mind. I trusted you, Karen. You can trust me now.
I'm gonna light up your whole body.
Erle Kenton: You can't tame what's meant to be wild, doc. It just ain't natural.