How sad is this?

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I'm only here to make a comment on the greatest movie ever made. There's a scene in this flick were a werewolf/kangaroo hybrid gives birth to a little joey werewolf kangaroo hybrid, which promptly proceeds to crawl to his mother's pouch and attach to the teat. Great stuff.

While some people say this is the worst entry in the Howling series, I actually think it is one of the best of the sequels following the Joe Dante classic. Let's get one thing straight, this is an intentional camp film and takes great glee in being as cheesy as humanly possible. Here we are introduced to a new breed of lycanthrope from the Land Down- Under, a were-creature based on the long extinct thylacine. I don't want to give anything in the plot away but I would of really preferred if the movie focused more on giving us lots of werewolf action instead of focusing almost entirely on a certain romance-subplot. So in closing, I feel you should sit down with your friends and have have a laugh while watching this campy film.....

I am shocked this movie is not a stoner/camp classic. It is at times meta and knowingly funny, and at times painfully earnest. The effects are laughable, the horror minimal. I don't know quite what this movie was trying to be. Take the title: "The Marsupials." That term does not invoke any sort of horror; it invokes cuteness. And indeed the lead female werewolf/marsupial gives birth to a Gizmo looking thing who grows into a tow headed child actor then a slightly studly monosyllabic brunet. Plot-wise, at first you think you're watching an origin story, with evidence of werewolves in early 20th century Australia. Then you get a comedic "modern" story where one werewolf woman escapes a Deliverance like town and is cast in a movie with a pervy director, and another werewolf woman tries to join a ballet co. but is thwarted when she accidentally turns during a performance. Then a horror action plot where some soldiers and medical types attempt to ID, study and eliminate the were-whatevers, and then the plot comes to a halt with both werewomen giving birth and a 20 minute, filmed like a dryer sheet commercial, montage in favor of bestiality, otherkin/human relations, furry-ism, nudism or some thing or another. I think if these filmmakers had had Tumblr, this movie would never have been necessary. The movie ends on a laugh line and a Dame Edna cameo. Had it been 20 minutes shorter, I might have totally recommended it.

What comes to mind when you think of director Philippe Mora. Who's that I might hear… but Philippe Mora is truly a one-of-a-kind filmmaker that cult fans would know in some shape (Mad Dog Morgan comes to light). For good or bad… his ideas are unique (if crazy) but the end product is usually an unhinged mess. A baffling mess. How did it come to this mess? Its head scratching, although entertaining at that. I thought Mora's "Howling 2" was strangely bad… however he tops it with the Australian based "The Marsupials: The Howling III". Well more so in the bewildering weirdness, although it felt purposely campy despite some mock serious contributions. Not as incompetent, but hypnotically tacky with its beaming personality. Mora takes one audaciously original idea (a twist on folklore to relate to specific culture and sense of place; marsupial werewolves!) and clumsily patches it together into an Aussie werewolf soap opera filled with shocks and laughs. Like no other could do. He's a man of pure vision who's never heard of the word cohesion. Maybe he doesn't know the definition. Please could you put in to a sentence. The direction of the material simply lacks cohesion. You could say that it might just benefit from that, as everything is so outrageous so why confine it in a sensible manner. Mora's surrealist direction is just as random and erratic, like the busy plot and choppy editing. There's no denying how ambitious the concept is, as it's quite different from the norm. Where else can you get werewolf nuns, a Soviet werewolf ballerina, aboriginals that don't look like aboriginals, a determined but love struck Barry Otto (a sincerely good turn), an eye-opening birth scene that sees a baby marsupial werewolf in a pouch (while the father doesn't seemed to be too fazed by making love with a she-wolf and having a werewolf baby… "It's beautiful") and for the locals the never ageing Bill Collins, Frank Thring portraying b-grade horror director and Barry Humphries' Dame Edna getting close and personal to a snarling werewolf (which could be seen as a homage to Dante's original's ending). There are references aplenty from home grown to feature films (like the amusing quip in the cinema --- gotta love the facials of the audience, it's priceless), but being a Sydney resident it was nice to see some familiar scenery on screen. When the action leaves the city (which looks like it's during a heatwave) and heads out bush to the town of "Flow" is when I found it to fall away. Really the werewolves are not the threat, but the humans that don't understand and fear them turn out to be. Specialists are called in to deal with this threat. These so called military specialists (two of them) are anything but… and I don't think it's purposely done either. The local hick hunting party seem better equipped and last much longer then those nervous wrecks. The performances of the leads (Imogen Annesely, Lee Biolos, Max Fairchild, Dasha Blahova and Ralph Cotterhill) are fittingly good. The make-up FX of the werewolves was quite uneven, cheap and rubbery although with some colourful shots. It's laid-back air and offbeat charm is simply hard to resist.