"Just when you thought it was safe to go Down Under," Philippe Mora makes another werewolf film with HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS, on Blu-ray from Umbrella Entertainment.

When the National Intelligence Agency picks up Russian communications about a certain "Operation: Lyncanth," the President (Michael Pate, THE MAZE) to bring in anthropologist Dr. Howard Beckmeyer (Barry Otto, BLISS), an expert in "weird shit." Although he has always professed that the footage shot in 1905 by his father – who mysteriously vanished in the Outback – of Aboriginals hunting and executing a werewolf is just a ritual with a woman in a very realistic mask, he does indeed believe in werewolves and that the report of a man killed by a werewolf in Siberia is indeed the subject of the Russian operation and not a code word. Traveling to Australia and meeting up with scientist Professor Sharp (Ralph Cotterill, THE CHAIN REACTION), Beckmeyer tries to find the spot where his father vanished. Meanwhile in an Outback town called Flow, young Jerboa (Imogen Annesley) flees the family-approved attentions of her stepfather Thylo (Max Fairchild, MAD MAX) and winds up in Sydney where she is recruited by young production assistant Donny (Lee Biolos, LES PATTERSON SAVES THE WORLD) to star in horror film SHAPE SHIFTERS PART 8 by pretentiously-Hitchockian director Jack Citron (Frank Thring, BEN HUR). Donny and Jerboa fall in love, but sex (and strobing lights) brings out the animal in her and she comes to the attention of Sharp and Beckmeyer when she runs in front of a car. Upon discovering that she possesses a marsupial pouch and is pregnant, Beckmeyer is thrilled to discover a new species of human while Sharp shares the government's belief that she is a freak of nature and potentially dangerous; especially after three of her sisters track her down by scent and kill anyone that gets in between them and their mission to return her to Thylo. Although he is skeptical of Sharp's intentions, Donny tells Beckmeyer everything he knows about Jerboa (which is very little). Beckmeyer stumbles upon a new lead while he and sharp are watching a rehearsal of a ballet at the Sydney Opera House and defecting Russian diva Olga Gorki (Dagmar Bláhová, THE APPLE GAME) turns into a werewolf on stage. Psychically drawn to mate with Thylo, she escapes from the hospital and is trailed by Beckmeyer and Sharp – along with Donny who has secretly followed them – to Flow. With the army on their heels determined to destroy the werewolves, Beckmeyer may have to commit treason to help Olga, Jerboa, Donny (and their newborn hybrid human/werewolf) find safety with the help of Aboriginal magician Kendi (Burnham Burnham, DARK AGE) and the spirit of the Phantom Wolf.

French expatriate Australian director Philippe Mora's follow-up to wonderfully trashy train-wreck HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF is the only PG-13 entry in the series, but it is no less excessive in its oddity due to the greater creative freedom Mora was able to exert on the story and its execution. Everything about the film is so ludicrously earnest that it is difficult to take seriously its dramatic elements or its ecological concerns, particularly when there is also a clashing amount of intentional comedy and attempted satire. The effects of Australia's go-to prosthetics man Bob McCarron – whose resume encompasses everything from the likes of DEAD ALIVE, RAZORBACK, and BODY MELT to the likes of THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY, CRUSH, and Jane Campion's THE PIANO – and higher on rubbery appliances than onscreen bloodshed, with the "highlight" being the birth of the cooing werewolf pup that crawls up into Jerboa's pouch. The film was produced by HOWLING II's Robert Pringle (PHANTOMS) and Steven Lane (LAWNMOWER MAN) who teamed up with Edward Simons (EDGE OF SANITY) whose Allied Entertainment would produce the subsequent HOWLING entries along with Mora's oddball take on Whitley Streiber's novel COMMUNION.

Released theatrically by Square Pictures and on home video by I.V.E. – who also distributed the fourth, fifth, and six entries – HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS (onscreen title: THE MARSUPIALS: THE HOWLING III) got its first digital release from Elite Entertainment with an anamorphic transfer, audio commentary by Mora, and a Dolby Digital 5.1 remix. The film's first Blu-ray release was a travesty by Timeless Media in the HOWLING TRILOGY which upscaled the letterboxed transfer along with the fullscreen standard definition masters for the fifth and six films and compressed them onto one single-layer Blu-ray disc. Mora supervised a 4K restoration last year that had its debut in the United States from Scream Factory with extras. Sourced from the same master, Umbrella Entertainment's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer looks spectacular from the crisp black and white footage of the opening and its segue to color to the bolder colors of Sydney nightlife and the variegations of the prosthetic make-up. While the Scream Factory disc had the original Dolby Stereo track as a lossless option, Umbrella's disc features a rechanneled DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that is presumably the same remix as the Elite edition. The surrounds are used for gimmicky sound effects. Optional English SDH subtitles are included.

The Scream Factory edition included a new commentary by Mora moderated by filmmaker Jamie Blanks (STORM WARNING) which is carried over here. The discussion takes the form of a rather chronological detailing of Mora's biography and filmography. The son of a French restaurateur father and artist mother – the recipient of a state funeral a few weeks before the recording – who came to Australia after the war, he developed a passion for the movies which was fostered by his father who gave him an 8mm camera, and their network of art circle personalities included Josef von Sternberg (THE BLUE ANGEL) who saw one of his shorts and encouraged him. He ended up in London as a roommate to Eric Clapton who gave him £5000 from the profits of the first Cream album to make his first feature-length film TROUBLE IN MOLOPOLIS. After making MAD DOG MORGAN in Australia, he became a contender to direct THE BEAST WITHIN and relates that it was the perception of his being French that got him the job. He also discusses HOWLING II and its problems as a film shot behind the Iron Curtain – with the same crew as YENTL – and not helped by the cost-cutting of Hemdale (all of which is explained in greater detail on the extras of Scream Factory's Blu-ray of the film) but notes that the film's success on video was what got him the job and more creative freedom for the sequel which was primarily inspired by footage of the Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger which had been hunted into extinction in the thirties. LONG WEEKEND cinematographer Vincent Monton also makes a brief appearance on the track. The Elite solo commentary was not carried over to the Scream release but it has been included here, and there is a lot of overlap between the two tracks as well as the video interviews with Mora repeating some of the same anecdotes verbatim (not unusual when a filmmaker is asked to talk about a film many times over the years). While he seems to have come to terms with the wide variety of opinions on the film on the newer track, he is a bit more defensive here, noting that the genre gives filmmakers more leeway to explore social themes and get away with the surreal and the comic while also noting more than once that a lot of the classics of horror were regarded as trash in their day.