Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
And this is Joe McCormick.
This week we are returning to the wild world of Mexican cinema. Six episodes ago, we watched a non lucha vampire film in the form of nineteen sixty two's The Brainiac, and so it feels fitting that today's episode is a werewolf movie, and not just any werewolf movie. It's widely considered the first Mexican werewolf film. Nineteen sixty five's La Loba or The.
She Wolf really the first one in nineteen sixty five, huh.
Yeah, yeah yeah, So to give that a little context in comparison, just to the wider cinematic tradition, nineteen thirteen's The Werewolf, which is now presumed to be lost in one of the studio fires. The Werewolf nineteen thirteen is considered to be the very first werewolf film period, and interestingly enough, it too centers around a female werewolf. So I'd been wanting to cover some sort of female werewolf
movie for a while here. Most of your werewolf films, they tend to employ some sort of a male, hyper masculine werewolf. We'll get into some of this in a bit, and looking around, it's like some of the possibilities for like a female centered werewolf film. I mean, there are some standouts. Ginger Snaps is often held up as a kind of a classic of its own sort. There's nineteen seventy six is Werewolf Woman starring Anique Borel, which is
pretty great if you're looking for grindhouse ridiculousness. And then, of course, female werewolves also play into a number of really good lik in films. Joe Dante is the Howling for one. Two thousand and seven's Trick or Treat has some really cool female werewolves in one of its sequences if I remember correctly. For my money, however, none of
these films are as great as a Lolova. Lelova, I think, does a great job of telling its own little mad science infused Gothic horror tale with lots of werewolf intrigue and just some terrifying sequences.
In general, I have some real questions about the backstory in this movie. There are hints as to where the were wolves came from, or I'd say more than hints. It is strongly suggested where the were wolves came from, but we're not exactly told, and there are elements that don't really fit with other elements of the story, Like it is suggested that doctor Bernstein's research is what created
the two main werewolves in this movie. But also there's a character who seems to have pursued a werewolf around the world searching for revenge, and that doesn't fit with the Bernstein thing. So I don't know what's going on, but I like the ambiguity, as I often do, and maybe I'm on record saying this about enough films at this point that is just a part of what my taste is. But I kind of like it when it's not exactly clear what the backstory is.
Yeah, this film does have its ambiguity about it, and I want to drive home that the tone is pretty serious and ultimately quite grizzly and grim, especially for the time period. This is not, again, not a luchador or luchadora movie. Nobody in a shining mask is going to show up and save the day.
No, though more loosely defined, there is a good bit of wrestling in it, it doesn't have like all the definable moves that you see in a Luca film, even the Luca genre crossovers, but it does have a lot of like grappling and rolling around.
Yeah. Yeah, there is a brawl towards the end of the picture that I look forward to talking about. And while it is not strongly Luca in its vibe, there's a little lou just sprinkled in there. I mean, it was unavoidable. So yeah, we'll come back to that in a bit. Coming back to the female werewolf aspect of the movie, We've had plenty of tales of female were wolves, you know, dating back hundreds of years and so forth,
but again, male like inthropes often receive more attention. I'm currently reading a book titled she Wolf, a Cultural History of Female Werewolves that it did by Hannah Priest, and one thing it points out is that we can often so there's sort of like two ways. There's one primary way you tend to see where wolf tales in general handled, and that is to trace it back to humanity's prehistoric history, the domestication of wild wolves, our relationship with wild wolves,
looking at wild wolves, and so forth. But one thing that the authors in this book point out is that you can also, perhaps more even more accurately, look at where wolf tales is something that really emerged specifically during an agricult era, so narratives in which a male landowner is threatened in the case of a male werewolf, by a dangerous outsider and in the case of female werewolves,
by a threat within his own house or community. And as we'll discuss, it's notable, you know, perhaps by accident, that today's film Lelova manages to reflect both of these models, the werewolf as a threatening outsider and the werewolf as some sort of interior threat within the family or social unit.
Oh that's interesting.
Yeah, another thing I want to say, and we'll come back to this as well as we can get into the specifics from the film. But cinematic werewolf visions are always, I think a careful balancing act. How are you going to stylishly deliver on a concept that is in many ways like deeply rooted in the human psyche, but do it in a believable way, make us buy into it with our heart but also with our skepticism, you know.
And so werewolf effects can absolutely connect with us on a primal level and a picture, but they can also flounder and fail, and we see that occur at pretty much every budget and artistry level. You know, you can throw millions and millions of dollars at your werewolf effects and it doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to buy it. It's a fine line.
Well, yeah, and that's true on multiple levels. I mean, in one sense, that's true of basically any monster design. Like we've talked on the show before. I think this came up in our episode on the Thing from Another World, where the presence of the monster is way more than
just the monster makeup or the monster suit. It's very much in how it is framed, how it is lit, how much of it you get to see, and in what context, the kind of management of music and tension and all these things in the lead up to our glimpse of it on the screen. So, in the context of a movie, in a story, a monster is a lot more than just you know, it's costume design. So yeah, you can have cheaper costumes or cheaper makeup effects that
can be used quite well, and vice versa. But I think maybe part of what you were getting at is that there's something about the werewolf in particular that's kind of difficult to manage in this way. Some movies really do pull it off well, but it's just a kind of monster design that's maybe harder not as easy as some.
Yeah, And it's made me think about one of the reasons that I find myself preferring like an actor ensued effect as opposed to CGI stop motion animatronics. And to be clear, there are plenty of examples of CGI stop
motion and animatronic werewolves that I very much enjoy. But I think, maybe you know, like I've been reading about the various traditions that entail the use of a specific animals have pelt in a werewolf transformation, or the taking on of an animal's skin or human bodies that are revealed when the skin of the wolf falls away or
is peeled away from the defeated monster. And of course this goes beyond werewolf myths, but also like various transformation into animals and transformation of animals into humans that you find in various traditions. So I wonder if it is important on some level, maybe even a crucial level, to understand that we're looking at a person in a werewolf costume, at a human dressed in a skin you know, tying into ritualistic embodiment and shamanistic transformation underlying like the power
of cinema in these instances. I'm not saying that it's its key to all cinema, but maybe for just Werewolf pictures, it's like a shamanistic act where we're viewing. There is a sacredness to watching someone like lan Jenny Junior or Paul Nashi perform their art.
Yes, I can see what you're saying. So like the versions of Werewolf design that look more clearly like a person in a furry suit have a more religious feeling, a kind of ancient mythical feeling, than the ones where somebody is just fully transformed into a convincing cana k nine morph like where it's just a human covered in fur that feels more like a priest donning an animal skin to do some kind of ritual.
Yeah, or when the person just turns into a full blown German shepherd right there on the screen, which we've seen before.
I might come back to more about how this movie's form of where Wolf fits more into movie history, but maybe later in the plot section.
All right, moving on to elevator pitch mine is simply house of usher, but make it wear wolves.
Yep, there's some weird family energy here, like arriving at a cursed mansion and somebody's you know, a suitor is there to marry various family members. There are actually multiple versions. I was thinking of it as if this were a ClickHole article, it would be quiz, which of my garbage wolf daughters are you?
That's good too, all right, So, as far as I know, there's not a trailer for this picture, so maybe we'll just get a little taste of some of the Spanish dialogue.
U paria sambo kan trapia.
See that that's for number in Lobo.
In love, La sieniocha existentialpaendpino te mismo.
No what I can think about?
All right, if you would like to see nineteen sixty five's La Loba, first of all, just make sure you're if you're looking for Lo Lobo or she Wolf, make sure you're throwing that nineteen sixty five. Because these titles have been used a lot. There are some DVDs floating around,
but I can't speak to their quality. I think if I had to do it over again, I would have gone out of my way to try and get my hands on one of these DVDs on just the chance that the quality could be a little better because we had to depend on like archive dot org and some other streaming options. They're just there's not a high quality physical release out there as far as I can tell, and I would love to see such a release occur in the future for this movie.
Oh yeah, Crisp Blu ray of this would be really nice. I would love to see what treasures there are in all the corners of the frame. Even the version we were watching, I think, which seems like the best streaming option out there, it's kind of cropped, like you can't see the full frame, and it's certainly a little bit fuzzy around the edges everywhere. So yeah, if you're out there and you can get the rights to this thing, please release in the highest quality possible.
Yeah, Because I mean, this film does have its following. It's considered a cult classic in many regards. It just needs a better releases off. All right, let's get into the people behind this pick sure, starting at the top with the director. It's Rafael Baldon, who lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen ninety four, Mexican Golden Age actor director screenwriter and producer, whose nineteen fifty seven film The Savages was nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
This is just one of several horror movies that he directed, including nineteen fifty seven's Swamp of the Lost Monster, which has a little creature from the Black Lagoon action going on there, nineteen fifty nine's The Man and the Monster, in nineteen sixty three He's the Curse of the Crying Woman. Both of these two Man and Monster Crying Woman, those had Abel Salazar in them, who was under the Brainiac. He also did nineteen sixty four's Museum of Horror and nineteen sixty nine's per Verse Doll.
Oh, I just realized we've talked about Swamp of the Lost Monster before. I think it was in chat one time, because it's one of the great examples of like mismatch between what the monster looks like on the poster versus in the movie. On the poster, well, you're getting the classic the Tor Johnson framing where the monster is carrying an unconscious woman and the monster looks like a cross between the brain mutant from This Island Earth and Kiff from Futurama. But in fact, in the movie it is
like it looks like a killer clownfish. I guess it looks like a weird little fish with teeth going eh, nothing like it. And also there's another poster for this movie that is boring as all get out, doesn't have the monster on it and instead it's just like a cowboy on horseback. Why would you make that your your monster movie poster.
I don't know. Maybe in some markets you were going more for the cowboy film crowd as opposed to the monster movie film crowd.
I don't know. Well, having seen Loloba, now I'm impressed enough that I do want to seek out these other movies.
All right, Moving on to the story and screenplay credit, we have Raman o'ban, who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen six costa Rican born writer whose credits include a number of Lucca horror western in action films, including Swamp of the Lost Monster nineteen fifty Eight's The Vampire's Coffin with Abel Salazar nineteen fifty nine, is The Black Pit of Doctor m. Perverse Doll nineteen seventy six is Santo versus the She Wolves, which yeah, we had to have some
Lady werewolves in that as well, seventy seven's The Black Widow, and he also directed nineteen sixty five's one hundred Cries of Terror. Just one hundred, just one hundred. I mean, you know, you have to fit it all within a certain run time. But yeah, he's the historian screenplay credit here. And I have to say, I think it's a nice amalgam of gothic horror and mad science, with a kind of like provincial Mexican feel to it as well, like almost a full Carr vibe.
When does this movie take place?
That is a great question.
Definitely riding around in cart yeah, like horse strong buggies, and I don't think we ever see a motor car in the film. And yet there are industrial freezers. There's like a walk in freezer, and microscopes and the.
Most advanced microscope. We were looking at it. It just looks like a standard microscope, but we're told it's very good. All right. Well, let's move on to the cast. And this film concerns the Fernandez family, so let's meet the Fernandezes here. First of all, we have the patriarch of the Fernandez family, a brilliant scientist working in the field of Metaplasia. This is Professor Fernandez, played by Jose Eleas Moreno.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's Mexico Santa Claus himself. This is the guy who played Santa Claus in Santa Claus, which we previously talked about on Weird House Cinema. That film was just six years earlier.
I thought he seemed familiar. Now. Wouldn't it have been horrible if the Santa Claus movie ended with him getting mauled by wolf like him this one.
Yeah, that would have been tough for the kids for sure. Yeah, he does not have a beard in this film. I don't think he had a beard in real life. He does have a mustache, as does I think every male actor in the picture, So you can't really tell anybody apart purely based on their facial hair.
Oops, all mustaches.
Yeah. So. Moreno was an Aerial Award winning character actor, largely known outside of the Santa Claus role for playing heavies and sometimes villains. His other credits include nineteen fifty two is the Magnificent Beast.
This is the one.
He was awarded an Aerial Award for nineteen sixty nine's Night of the Bloody Apes, and he also played an ogre in Renee Cardona's nineteen fifty eight movie Polgrisito. I think it's great for me to finally see him in something other than Santa Claus, which I've seen so many times, because I think he's really good here. It's a very expressive performance. He's not a villain, but he's I guess, kind of a morally complicated character at the center of things here.
Well, he's a cursed, troubled man who has maybe turned his daughter into a werewolf or just happens to be working on werewolf related research. Meanwhile, one of his colleagues fell in love with his daughter and turned her into a were wolf. Which one is it?
We don't know, but he seems to hold a great deal of guilt in this. Is it because he created the lacanthropy that is in his daughter or daughters we don't know early on in the picture, or is it because he's aware of it and like out of perhaps a bit out of like professional pride and also out of love for his daughters, thinks that he can cure it, even if deep down he knows that he cannot and should have put a different stop to things earlier. You know,
it's all left rather ambiguous. Now. A note on the Aerial Awards. By the way, I've mentioned them in passing on the show before, and I'm going to mention them several times here, but I'm not sure we've ever stopped to define this for those not familiar. These are in some ways the oscars of Mexican cinema, and they've been going on since nineteen forty six.
All right, So.
Sticking with the Fernandez family here, we're going to move on to Marcella de Fernandez. This is Professor Fernandez's wife and mother to his two daughters, played by Columba Dominguez. She lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty fourteen. Mexican actress, best known for the nineteen forty nine film Maclovia, for
which she won the Best Supporting Actress Aeriel Award. Frequently worked with Roberto Conedo and once co starred with Japanese acting legend to Shira Mafuni in nineteen sixty one's The Important Man, which was nominated for an Oscar. Now, I will say it was rather confusing at times because mom in this picture does not look any older than her daughter's in fact, the actress here playing the mom is only six years older than one of the actresses playing one of the daughters.
I also found that confusing. I the first time I watched it, I was mighty confused by the family relationships, especially because there is I believe intentional misdirection at first on which one of the daughters is the werewolf.
Right, Yeah, this film we've kind of already spoiled to a certain extent. This film is sort of a werewolf who'd done it? But I have to say doesn't lean heavily enough on that gimmick to where it's it's absolutely necessary.
It's only a werewolf who've done it for like twenty or thirty minutes at most. Yeah, I mean you get to the who way before the end.
Yes, all right, Now, getting to the daughters, the Fernandez daughters, We're gonna start with Claressa Fernandez, played by Kitty de Oyos, who lived nineteen forty one through nineteen ninety nine. This is the Professor's favorite daughter, or it must be so, because she's played by our top buill performer, Golden Age starlett Kitty Dei, an actress of stage and screen and an enormously famous sex symbol of the day in Mexican cinema. She's sometimes called the Marilyn Monroe of Mexico.
Hmm okay.
So she was the daughter of an opera singer and she took to acting early, and her film credits go back to the mid nineteen fifties. Apparently the nineteen fifty sixth film as opposed Us in felis really Skyrocket Career. This is like the This is like a drama about infidelity, and she only has a bit part in it, but it features artistic nudity or at least, you know, topless nudity, which got a lot of people talking and ultimately Mexican
censors talking, but it very much put her on the map. Afterwards, she often played fem fatale type characters, though appeared in both serious films and comedies. Her best known films include nineteen sixties to Each his Own, nineteen sixty five's Adventures
at the Center of the Earth. If you look around online you can find some screenshots some promotional images from that in which she's being carried around by some sort of a bat creature, and also another couple of films from nineteen sixty six, The Witch Riders and the Crows are in mourning, the latter being I think, another gothic horror picture.
Now, maybe we should have said this earlier for listeners who were new, But as usual, we're going to be talking about various twists and turns in the plot and reveal. So if you want to go into the movie unspoiled,
you should probably pause and go do that now. But okay, so now on the other side of that, Kenny Doios's character is of course the daughter who is the werewolf, and one thing that I did find kind of strange was I couldn't tell exactly what they were going for, And a couple of the transformation scenes like is this supposed to be scary or is this supposed to be sexy?
And I think maybe it's both. Understanding her as like a known star in Mexican cinema as the Marilyn Monroe of Mexican cinema makes more sense of like the nude transformation scenes where no significant nudity is revealed, But I think clearly these scenes are supposed to be somewhat exciting to the viewer.
Yes, yeah, I think so, And I have to say, as a performer, perfectly fine when she's a human, but I feel like she really shines when she's the were wolf, and I feel like it's a really great physical performance.
Oh. I actually quite like her in some of the human drama scenes because she brings a danger to the character even when she's not in wolf mode. There is a I don't know, a kind of harshness in her eyes where there are things that are never said out loud in the film. But you since that maybe she is accepting of the idea that, yeah, she will transform and go out and kill in exchange for having some kind of some kind of other power, some kind of experience. It's beyond life and death.
Oh. Absolutely, Yeah, that is a great point. I mean, she does have a terrific monologue about all of this later on in the picture. And oh and then that great piano playing sequence which you'll get to as well.
The piano scene, which it's almost like the piano playing scene in Reefer Madness, but less funny and more serious where she's It's like, right when we're coming up to the climax of the film, she is furiously madly playing the piano, and the lead up to win the Full Moon is going to be revealed and she I think it's implied that she knows she is going to change and that she is going to kill, that she's going to kill innocence.
Yeah. Meanwhile, her sister, Alicia Fernandez is complaining, like, you shouldn't be playing the piano. You're supposed to be mourning and yeah. Alicia is played by Adriana Roel. She lived nineteen thirty four through twenty and twenty two. She was an Aerial Award winning actress herself for nineteen seventy nine's Anacrusa and twenty fourteen She doesn't want to sleep Alone. She also has a supporting part in One Lopez Mantuzuma's nineteen seventy seven horror film A Lookarta.
Spell that backwards, folks.
Yeah, and it's a Dracula.
A dracula means non Dracula.
I need to watch that one for myself. But I've seen at least one film by one Lopez Mantuzuma and I was very impressed by it. So at some point I'd like to watch one of his films for weird House, but I'm not sure just yet which one it's gonna be.
But wait, Okay, so that's the Fernandez family, but both of the adult daughters in the Fernandez family. I was gonna have to mention this at some point because it's a weird plot decision. Both of the daughters, the adult daughters are dating coworkers of the father.
Well, this is what happens when you lock your suspected werewolf daughters up all the time. You don't let them go out into the world and meet people. They're just gonna end up following in love with your various like co authors and fellow scientists.
Yeah. So the two other doctors who come to do werewolf research at the mansion just happens to be like, Wow, I've never seen another man before. I guess we're gonna get married. Yeah.
Yeah, So Clarissa has a suitor in the form of doctor Alejandro Bernstein played by Joaquim Cordero, who lived nineteen twenty three through twenty thirteen. Mexican actor of stage, screen and TV actor for active from the mid forties through twenty eleven. His career particularly picked up in the nineteen fifties when he won nineteen fifty one Aerial Award for The Two Little Orphans. His credits include nineteen fifty four's
The River and Death. Nineteen sixty six is Doctor Satan, in which he plays the title character Doctor Satan, who I'm to understand is kind of like a super criminal character and a bit of a hypnotist with maybe some occult flavor hm okay. He returns to play Doctor Satan Wants More in nineteen sixty eight Doctor Satan Versus Black Magic.
Then there's nineteen sixty nine's The Book of Stone, and certainly a few Luca movies in there, including a couple of Santo films and nineteen sixty nine's Wrestling Women Versus The Killer Robot.
I liked this guy as well, so he is again. He's kiddy to OOS's character's suitor, and they play well together in their scenes. There's one of their scenes is sort of the central motivation scene in the movie, where he sort of explains what he wants. I'll talk about the monologue later on, which is echoed Mike Clarissa in a voiceover later in the film. But he gives this monologue about how he wants some kind of secret, some kind of pleasure or possibility that exists only beyond life.
So he's a he's got a kind of death drive embodied, embodied in a way like he wants something that cannot be achieved as a mortal, only be achieved beyond death. And we really don't get a lot of explanation of what that is except it is somehow related to lycanthropy. And in the way he announces his desire for this thing beyond death, he has a quality that reminds me of some other cool characters in movies we've watched. It, kind of like the antagonist beater Beck in the Doctor
Fibes sequel. You know, this character who is strong, driven, focused, and kind of beyond good and evil. Not quite a villain, but not necessarily good either, just like on a kind of amoral quest that has no precedent.
Yeah, I think that's a good way of framing it. So that's Clarisis suitor. But then we have another suitor in the mix, and that is doctor Gonzalez played by Roberto Canado who lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen ninety ninety eight. This is an actor we've talked about on the show before because he played the Doctor of Doom in nineteen
sixty three's Doctor of Doom the Luchadora picture. He's the mad scientist in that one, which is a bit of a spoiler, but a really fun role for him because he got to play like the meek, friendly scientist but also like his secret, true identity, that of a raving mad man who wants to do all sorts of unspeakable experiments and transplant I can't remember if it's I think it's gorilla brains into or some sort of beast brains into the bodies of luchadoras.
Yeah, transplanting gorilla brains into women, I think, or vice versa, maybe both. Yeah, But this is a great role. It's a great double role in that it's not that he's playing Clark Kent and Superman is playing He's playing Clark Kent and doctor Doom.
Yeah. So that's a fun one. Go back and watch that one slash listening to our episode on it if you haven't already. But Canado was a talented Mexican performer during the golden age of Mexican cinema. He acted in over three hundred pictures, which included a lot of B
films but also some serious dramas. On the B cinema end of things, he pops up in several Santo Pictures, nineteen sixty eight's The bat Woman, which is pretty great, as well as a nineteen eighty six slasher film called Bestia Nocturna in the nineteen eighty nine Mexican slasher film Grave Robbers. Two of his most well received films include Pulverina from nineteen forty nine and an adaptation of Crime and Punishment from nineteen fifty one.
So I may have misspoke earlier when I framed both of the medical colleagues of doctor Fernandez as like werewolf researchers. Rob corrects me if you disagree, But I think Gonzalez is not a werewolf researcher. I think he's just a general medical colleague and it's only Bernstein who is working on the werewolf frequency with Fernandez. Is that how you took it?
Yes, Yeah, this guy's not in on any of like the more scandalous research operations that are going on. He's just a doctor. He's doing doctory type business in the area and beyond, including advising the local law enforcement officers about mutilated corpses that suddenly pop up.
Yeah, he's like, here is the attacker's blood. I can tell you what kind of creature it came from that sort of thing. Actually, though, in keeping with his role in Doctor of Doom, where I said he was a Clark Kent slash Doctor Doom. In this movie, he really has an impressive range, which is he goes from I would say the most kind of like handsome and capable Indiana Jones looking character in the film to making the goofiest reaction face I've ever seen in a movie.
He does. It happens pretty early on. He pulls this wonderful face when he uncovers a mutilated corpse, and it's amazing. It's like the toilet has overflown reaction face here.
Oohoo, you know what it is. It's that face they put on YouTube thumbnails to make people click on them.
Yeah, oh yeah yeah, or Netflix thumbs for films like if l Loba was a modern film and was featured on Netflix, it would be this face or some other ridiculous face that somebody's pulling. All right, we have two more characters, two more actors. Really to highlight here. We have a character by the name of Krumba. He's a stoic man, kind of dread. We were talking about this off Mike kind of dressed like a barbarian who aids Professor Fernandez and owes him some sort of mysterious life dead.
Crumba is cool. Every time he's on screen. I was like, Okay, we're in good hands. Yeah.
He mostly just stands around, smokes a pipe. Occasionally, man's the Secret Passage cranks, but he has a very chill, intimidating five So. Crumba is played by Crux Alvarado, who lived nineteen ten through nineteen eighty four, costa Rican luchador referee and cartoonists turned actor, best known actually for various heart throt roles during the golden age of Mexican cinema. If you look up pictures of him, you'll see a lot of like very like. Sometimes he's shirtless and doing
like a you know, muscle poses. Other times, you know, looks very dapper, with a pencil thin mustache and all. He's perhaps best known for playing the Professor in nineteen fifty sevens The as Tech Mummy and it's fifty eight sequel The Robot Versus the as Tech Mummy. He's also in nineteen sixty eight's The Batwoman Man.
I would not have guessed he played romantically. I'm not saying he's ugly or something, but just the way he's done up in this movie. They've got him in this leather tunic that again it looks like like a D and D barbarian outfit. And his hair is interesting. It's
just like straight up on top and nothing on the sides. Actually, it's kind of like some of those trendy haircuts with the kids, and I don't know if it's still today but in recent years, and the pipe and everything, it's just like it's not a heart throb look.
Yeah, yeah, kind of like a bohemian barbarian thing he's got going on here. Later on in the picture, we also meet a character by the name of Kazadar de Lobos played by Noeh Murayama who lived nineteen thirty through nineteen ninety seven. We will find out that this is in fact a wandering foreign werewolf hunter with his own special werewolf hunting dog named Jack. Murayama was a Mexican actor of Japanese and Mexican descent who often played villains.
He won a claim for his performance in nineteen sixty two's Tleo Khan and later for nineteen eighty threes Lapachanga that was the one he was nominated for an Aerial Award for. He also starred in some grimy nineteen eighty eight exploitation films that have their own following. You can look them up. I'm not going to mention the title here.
He is a cool character. I like it when he shows up. He brings a very different layer to the film, a kind of a folklore layer that's otherwise not there in what is otherwise I guess a science fiction were wolf movie. Once again brings up questions about like is this sci fi or is this fantasy horror, because like the implements that he has that can affect a where wolf feel very magical in nature, not very science fiction.
Yeah, he's he is dressed kind of like a wizard. Also, he looks very much like he could be a part of some sort of like I'm guessing like nineteen seventies heavy metal band kind of a thing, kind of like a some sort of like a Japanese Mexican Black Sabbath or something. You know, He's got all sorts of like cool occult imagery going on. And yeah, he very much brings the folk horror, the supernatural interpretation of the werewolf
to the table. And arguably has the better case compared to the scientist.
Also weird that we never learn his name. We learn his dog's name, but.
Not his Yeah. I think the name that I cited is just from the credits. I don't remember them actually referring to him by name. They're just kind of like, hey, stranger, well the.
Name you said, Casador de Lobos is just a wolf hunter, hunter of wolves.
There you go, all right? And then finally, the music is the work of raul Lo Vista. He lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen eighty Aeriel Award winning composer whose credits include nineteen fifties elombresen Rostro nineteen sixty twos, The Exterminating Angel in nineteen seventy five's Darker than Night. I have to say effective score.
Yeah, I think so. In fact, we can talk about it here in the opening if you want. You ready for the plot, Yeah, let's dive right in. So we get some great hand lettered credits playing over a misty landscape. I think at the beginning we're looking at a hill covered in vegetation. Honestly, it's kind of hard to tell, but yeah, that music is playing. It's a bunch of ominous drums. It's got skittering spider violins and horns blasting
in a minor key. So the action opens in a cemetery on a hillside, surrounded by forest, with rude grave markers leaning this way. In that you've got banks of fog blowing swiftly over the earth. And we cut away to the sky and see what I take is a full moon. But it looks almost as bright as the sun. And that makes sense because this was obviously shot in the daytime, like noonday daytime.
Yeah, yeah, I After I watched the film the next day, I showed just the opening part to my wife, and when I pointed out, like the brightness of the quote unquote moon and the day for night shooting here, she said, oh, no, that's not day for night, that's just day. And indeed, yeah, we have far less of the sort of telltale dimming of the overall opacity that you sometimes see with day
for night shots. I've grown kind of I've grown to kind of love of old old fashioned day for night shoots and these various pictures, and this one I also dug. But it is just so bright. It's so bright that I think the way I ended up processing it was like, this is just how bright the full moon is if you were a werewolf. You know, it's just like inescapable. It illuminates everything and it's just blinding in its intensity.
Oh that's a good reading on it. Yeah, you know. Sometimes you said there's no indication that it's nighttime, that there's visually no indication, but they do put some cricket sound effects, and.
Yes they do. Yeah, I mean I ended up buying it as nighttime. I knew what they were going for, and like I was able to fully suspend disbelief.
So in the Graveyard, we zoom in on a crusty topside stone vault, like a coffin vault, and suddenly the lid starts to creak open, and then out through the crack in the lid emerge two furry knob knuckled hands with huge bugle claws on each fingertip. And I thought this was a funny inversion because the coffin lid creaking open and a sinister hand coming out is a trope from vampire movies, not werewolf movies.
Yeah. Yeah, I can't think of another film where we see a werewolf crawl out of a coffin. But I like it here we're talking about it. It's turning heads.
Another thing that really sets this wolf movie apart is that it does not begin with our protagonist wandering toward an encounter with a werewolf, like you know them starting unchanged, the meeting a were wolf, getting bitten or something, and then being changed. Instead, we begin with a werewolf already in wolf mode, launching into an attack on the world from below, just like coming out like a like a missile out of a hidden silo.
Oh yeah, and boy does she ever this. I think one of the things that I love the most about this film is just the way that our she wolf is realized on the screen, the speed with which she travels like with this we'll talk about it as we proceed her, but just bounding and pouncing across the landscape with just lethal ferocity. I like, I don't I'm not used to seeing where wolves move this swiftly in just
films in general. I can't think of another one where like we had this sense of just like they're just where wolf can just shoot across the forest and just get to you like a missile. I think a missile leaving the silo is a great analogy here.
The opening rampage here is like a runaway train. She just gets right to business. So the order of events is she comes out of the coffin, runs up the hill, and then she like pushes through some brush into the camp site of a guy with a tent and a campfire. He's like cooking food on there, and she just jumps on him like he This guy's got a wide brimmed fedora again to invoke Indiana Jones, got kind of an Indiana Jones hat, and.
She like looks so confident too. He's like, oh, time to start the day or the night or whatever. But he, you know, he's like, yep, I've got a lot of work to do. Nothing's gonna stop old handsome me. But then here comes to where wolf flying across the woods like yeah, I mean yeah, pouncing from like I don't know, like what one hundred yards. I know, it's impressive.
We see her leap onto this guy from like a like a forested overhang with arms outstretched. So she's doing like a like a trapeze artist dive or like an Olympic diver or something.
Yeah, it's amazing, Like I would say, if you're on the fence about watching this film in its entirety, at least watched the first fifteen minutes, it will amaze you.
Yeah, So she tackles that guy commences clawing his face and chewing out his throat. Later we're gonna learn that she rips out his heart, but we don't see that here, and then we just move right onto the next victim. So there are a couple of peasants laboring in the woods. A man is chopping firewood with an axe, a woman gathering fallen sticks, and ooh, there's this good creepy shot where the wolf woman climbs up on the root ball of a giant fallen tree to spy on the woman
from behind. I've got a screenshot before you hear Rob. I really like the way this is framed. But once again, a flying leap from above. We just see her like like like launched across the frame, as like out of a bow or something. Yeah, it is.
It is amazing and terrifying. And yeah, and I love these sequences in between, with her crawling around and these broken fallen trees and all. Yeah, it's great.
So where wolf mauls the woman and then she lies screaming on the ground with streams of blood running across her face. The man chopping wood hears this woman crying out and then comes to help for some reason. I didn't quite understand why this happened, but he like throws his axe into a nearby tree, and then the wolf turns and begins to maul the man. But suddenly the wolf is interrupted because the full moon passes behind a cloud,
and it's like that does something. It maybe drains the wolf of motivation or power, and the werewolf suddenly runs away into the dark wood. Now on the way back to her hiding place, she crosses paths with a man driving a carriage along the forest path. And I think this is doctor Bernstein in the carriage, isn't it.
I believe so.
Yeah, And so he watches the wolf woman run by with a kind of knowing and apprehensive look and then just moves on toward his destination. And as the wolf woman is fleeing, we also see a well equipped man in the woods, a guy with a rifle and a hat, surveying the devastation at the campsite with the tent. He comes upon the first victim, and this is doctor Gonzalez played by Roberto Canedo, and this is the scene where he pulls back the tent flap and sees the dead man and is just like, oh, oh man.
So we're off to a great start here. And I want to drive home that the she Wolf costume here worn by Kitty, though probably not in the shots where she's flying like a human cannonball across the wilderness. I'm assuming that with a stunt person or a luchador or a trapeze artist or some sort of a professional stunt person.
But the costume I thought was really effective. It seems to depend on a skin type bodysuit with added hair and tail and combined with the actress's slender form, and like the ferocity of her physical performance is a real savagery to the scenes where the she Wolf is maueling her prey. There's also a carnality to the act as well, which kind of reminds me of our recent Nosferatu adaptation. You know, both feature a kind of like you know, slender being that is feasting, but in a way that
also feels kind of like erotically charged. Here.
I want to do a sidebar because I wonder if you have insights on this from this book you've been reading about the history of female werewolves. So we've talked before on the show about the different common werewolf types in movies. So one type would be the quadrupedal wolf form. This is the classic vision of the werewolf. Actually in a lot of folklore, maybe not all, but you know, in a lot of the old werewolf stories from before the cinematic era, the werewolf itself is not a hybridized form.
The hybrid element is simply that a person transforms into a wolf, usually a big, ferocious wolf.
Yeah. Like a lot of times it's like, oh, there was this deadly wolf. It was killing people and or killing livestock. We've managed to kill it and lo and behold, it turned into an old woman, or it turned into this mysterious man that we've never seen before, that sort of thing, or the skin came off and there was a person underneath.
Right. So you get versions of the quadrupedal wolf form in some werewolf movies as well. Often it's a kind of beefed up version of the quadrupedal wolf, So like in American Werewolf in London or in the Twilight series. In these movies, the werewolf is essentially canine in shape. It runs on all fours, it's got the long snout, but it is larger than any real wolf and often with the monstrosity elements beefed up.
I would say the Gomork from an Nevering story is also a good example of this, and I think all of these examples also point to the other reality here. This is a very hard one to pull off on screen because it's not a wolf, it's not a humanoid. It's somewhere in between. You're gonna have to depend on some rather elaborate special effects and is it going to be enough to fully convince me exactly?
So that's your your one type, the four foot four feet on the ground quadrupedal were wolf. Then you've got your bipedal variants. You've got the wolf Man is what I'll call him, which is bipedal, short snout, human shaped head but covered with fur and having fangs in the mouth. This is your Lawn Cheney Junior, your Paul Nashy type universal werewolf.
Can't go wrong with it. Love to see more of it. Were Wolf by Night is one of these as well, in the recent Disney TV special, which I highly recommend.
Then after that you've got what I might call the man wolf, which is bipedal also but long snout, wolf shaped head as seen in movies like The Howling or Dog Soldiers.
And I like this one too. I like all of them, but this one, this one is in a zone that I feel like is achievable by competent special effects artists.
Oh yeah, totally. But anyway, here's where I wanted to come back to the interplay between cinematic werewolves and so I think one thing that's kind of interesting is that usually in the movies, both of the bipedal forms of the werewolf are shaped in a way that is very stereotypically masculine and rob I've got images for you to look at here from like The Howling and from Dog Soldiers and The wolf Man, just a few things to survey. I was really trying to think of counter examples, and
they're not really coming to mind. I'm not saying it's never happened, but most of the bipedal movie werewolves I can think of are shaped like the typical form of male body builders. You have like massive shoulders, chest and upper body tapering down to narrow hips and waste kind of a v shape, they're structured like Arnold Schwarzenegger in
the seventies. Yeah, so it's a quite interesting variation in this film to get a bipedal humanoid werewolf where the body is shaped in a more stereotypically feminine form, even with long hair. Actually.
Yeah.
And also something about like the fur pelt worn by the Clarissa werewolf in this movie almost looks in some shots like she is wearing a short dress but made of fur.
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting the way that like the mind reads the femininity of the monster here. And this movie is mentioned at least in passing in the book I referenced earlier in the chapter by Peter Hutchings titled the she Wolves of Horror Cinema. And one of the things that he's talking about here is that we often see if we have a female character that's turning into a were wolf. Oftentimes that were wolf is just going to be a straight up wolf, and the gender of that
wolf may be ambiguous because it's a wolf. And on the other hand, sometimes they'll transform into some sort of a hybrid creature that is overtly masculine. And in this case, the way they read Leloba is that we have a feminine character turning into a more masculine form, but one that is still distinguishable as feminine.
That's interesting. So I didn't think about her transforming into a more masculine form, but I guess you could maybe read it that way. Yeah, I don't know.
I just agree with it myself, but as their techon it.
But either way, I thought it was interesting that this is a bipedal humanoid werewolf form that looks more stereotypically feminine than any basically any other examples I can think of in horror movies, and it kind of makes you wonder, like, why are all the other werewolf examples I can think of coded as masculine morphs? Like is there a particular reason for this, I guess beyond the just kind of unquestioned sexism of a lot of culture where that takes
sort of like the male as default. Is there something about the wolf form, or the werewolf form in particular, that causes people to think of human masculinity because I know that the same assumption does not go with vampires, because we get plenty of typically stereotypically feminine vampires. Though of course that's kind of different because vampires are basically
human in form anyway, So I don't know. One thing I was wondering about is if there is a general trend in the imagination, in our tendency to imagine monsters that thinks of them as when you have a creature that's becoming less human in appearance, whatever humanoid elements remain, are more likely on average to be imagined as masculine by default, or maybe more more likely to be imagined as masculine by default by men.
Yeah, that's a great point, I guess. Another. I mean, there's so many different ways to tease this apart when you get into like the way gender is treated in culture and in storytelling. One point they bring up in the book is that body hair is one way of potentially looking at it, Like there may be a resistance to want to put a bunch of hair on your female character even as they turn into the wolf, and at the very least, like maybe they have to get
a little more specific with how you're going to do it. Like, for instance, we don't see like a completely fur covered face of our she wolf here, though there is fur on her face. Likewise, there's fur on her body, but not the sense that the whole body is covered in thick fur. So there's probably a lot of just like cultural ideas of body, hair and hair and gender that get thrown into the mix when conceptualizing these things.
I think that's right. That is interesting to point out. Yeah, when we see because we get a male were wolf and a female were wolf in this movie, and the lady wolf she has a smoother face than the dude does.
Yeah, so I get the impression they put a lot of thought into this. How are we going to turn Kitty into a werewolf in a way that makes her frightening but also still like alluring to the vast majority of the audience, you know, that's still retaining her Marilyn Monroe image. How are we going to keep all of that in the mix while also transforming her into a wolf person?
Yeah, that is interesting also, So my first question was like why that trend? I think we got some good ideas there. But the second thing is, the second thing I was wondering is how does a more typically feminine humanoid werewolf work differently on film than the more kind of like beef bodybuilder guy where wolf does? I think in our opening here you may get one kind of answer about the tendencies filmmakers will have when dealing with
these different types of werewolves. In this movie, the werewolf is depicted less as one that overwhelms you with physical size and book and braun and instead as a kind of murder acrobat, like flying through the air out of hiding to claw and slash.
Yeah, and they make a convincing argument for it. I mean, it's it's so well executed on the screen. I think some other female were wolf shows definitely lean into the idea of seduction as being part of their character as well.
Like I believe that's an aspect of the Trick or Treat example where the lady where wolves are also a little seductive, at least at first before they transform, you know, kind of tying into various like you know, sort of succubus ideas of some sort of seductive creature that's actually a monster. But yeah, I do like this idea of the of the she wolf as like a swift, stealth oriented killer.
Anyway, to come back to the plot, at the end of this rampage, the wolf woman retreats to the coffin she climbed out of in the beginning. But here's where the twist comes in, because you might think it's like the vampire. You know, the vampire just lays in the coffin until at a certain point they open the lid and get out and do their business. This coffin is not merely a coffin. The wolf is not going in there to lie down. It is in fact a secret passageway.
Ah yeah, and this is going to tie into some dialogue, that monologue we referenced earlier, you know, the idea of death as a door. I don't know if they're really deliberately trying to connect these two things, but I couldn't help. But notice I.
Didn't make that connection. That's a good one. So from here, the camera retreats to a nearby mansion surrounded by a high wall that is sort of nestled at the edge of the woods. And here in the upper floors of
this house, we meet Krumba. He is not formally introduced yet, we'll get more of his backstory later, but he appears as this muscle man dressed again as the party's barbarian, and he's wearing like a leather tunic, and he shows a look of concern and then appear like he goes into a woman's bedroom and starts well, actually, no, I think I was gonna say. He goes into the bedroom and starts cranking the chain, but I think the giant
pole chain is in a different room. He like locks the door to a woman's bedroom and then goes to a room nearby and starts cranking this giant chain. And as he does this, we cut over to the hearth at the one end of the bedroom and see a panel on the back of the fireplace lift away. It's a secret door. And who should crawl out of it but our wolf woman here she comes.
Oh man, this is great and I love that. I mean, we did those whole episodes on We did a series of episodes and stuff to blow your mind about the hearth as a gateway for supernatural threats. And here we have a hearth that's an actual literal gateway for a monstrous humanoid.
Yeah, and this seems very creepy. The wolf woman crawls in on all fours, slowly creeping, as if maybe wounded or drained of energy. She comes into the room, collapses on the floor, unconscious, and here the camera stays on her as we get a slow, dissolved transformation sequence. Gradually, the claws dissolve into human fingers, and the suit of fur fades away and leaves behind only smooth human skin, and we see that it is a young woman lying
nude on the floor. So what it's like if you don't know anything at this point, you're like, this family has a chain and muscleman operated doggy door for its werewolf woman inhabitant.
Yeah, like, clearly this family has some issues. We've got that already.
Meanwhile, a guest arrives at the manor. It is the guy we saw on the road, doctor Bernstein. He's met by one of the servants and then he's brought inside and greeted by the patriarch of the house, doctor Fernandez. Again, Doctor Fernandez. That's Santa Claus from Santa Claus. Yes, Fernandez is an older man in a white lab coat. Doctor Bernstein is a young man. Both have mustaches. They all have mustaches, and we learned that they are colleagues, both
involved in cutting edge medical research. Fernandez is curious if Bernstein has come to deliver professional news from a recent conference he attended, but no, the main purpose of his visit is personal. Doctor Bernstein has come to ask to marry Clarissa, one of doctor Fernandez's two daughters. Now, to clarify once again, we mentioned this during the cast list, but the two daughters are Clarissa, who is in love with doctor Bernstein, and then Alicia. Alicia is the other daughter.
Both of the daughters are adults, but their rooms are full of creepy toys that would belong to a sickly aristocratic Victorian child. You know, they've got all these porcelain dolls and music boxes that play creepy tunes, and bird cages and that sort of.
Thing, little wind up toys that do all sorts of little tricks.
So Bernstein and Clarissa, we find out, have secretly been in love for some time, but now now he's here to ask for her hand in marriage, and he wants the blessing of her father, and the father seems torn. He likes doctor Bernstein, but he fears that if they marry, some terrible consequence will unfold, and he suggests that Bernstein stay at the house while he makes up his mind. And he says, you know, you could continue your research here anyway. I've got all of the best equipment facilities
in the world. I think he says, like, I have the best microscope on the planet.
Yeah, and there it is. It's right there on the table.
Yeah. Now I mentioned this earlier, but one kind of interesting thing is it's not immediately clear which daughter is the werewolf because I think they try to fake you out here by like the first daughter you see after the werewolf transformation scene is Alicia the other daughter. And we also have a scene where Alicia goes to her mother and like confesses having this terrible dream about like running through the woods at night and having blood on her hands.
Yeah. Yeah, we're supposed to be unsure which of the two daughters is the werewolf.
Well, we know, we know it's one of them though, as I also said earlier, of the two, Clarissa definitely feels the most dangerous in her personality, in her presence, so there's something a bit more unhinged and threatening about the way she just looks at people and talks. Yeah. Meanwhile, we got a little side plot going on at the local police station. We meet some more characters, the police inspector and his deputy, and we meet doctor Gonzalez played
by Roberto Canado. Actually we met him earlier because he was at the camp site, but they are examining the dead bodies from the werewolf rampage the say, previous night or the same night, not sure when this is all one big night. It's exactly one big night. And they notice the victims in this case were not only killed, the attacker opened up the chest and tore out the heart, and the inspector says, it's disgusting.
It is. We get a nice close up of the wound, and you know, it's all black and white, but it's it's gooey, it's it's uh, it's juicy.
In this one. Still, I got the wound looks like lips.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah, it's like a lip made out of ribs.
But the doctor says, we've got a clue. The attacker's blood is left on the victim, and he says, I can collect the attack. I don't know how he tells the difference, but he says, I can collect this blood and analyze it and determine what kind of creature it came from, so we can know if it was a you know, a wolf for a bear or whatever that attacks them, or maybe a human. Yeah.
Forensic subplot up and running.
Right, So back at the house, doctor Fernandez is showing off his lab to Bernstein and he explains his research into metaplasia, changing one form of life into another, and this research involves a giant walk in freezer, which he shows that he's used to flash freeze plants and even some animals to essentially put them into hibernation or arrest their development in a particular state. I think he says, like something was dying and he could freeze it until
it could heal without the damage progressing anymore. So he has a cryo chamber essentially, yes, and he explains what his research is really getting at. He says, mutations of nature the metamorphosis of cells. They're all equal and all succeed themselves. And he notes that through his techniques one could learn to transform the cells from one creature into that of another, even on Lobo. And then I also want to flag here Chekhov's really hard to open freezer door.
Yeah.
I don't know why you'd make it that way, but they show multiple times characters struggling intensely to open the freezer from the inside. It's hard to get this door over. Yeah.
Yeah, even Crumba has a hard time with this one we see in a subsequen scene.
For oh I like how in the lab. Here, Fernandez also explains that the moon is crucial to his experiments because of the power it exerts over the function of cells. Okay, but this is also where we learn a bit of the backstory of Crumba. We learned that Fernandez once saved Crumba's life and now Crumba has this unrepayable debt to him, and so he works for Fernandez like a watchdog. He's very very loyal, very dependable, and you know he will never give up on Fernandez to repay his life debt.
Yeah, when the bell rings in the night and someone has to go answer the front door, it's Crumba that doesn't.
Now Here, we come to this scene where Alicia explains her recurring nightmare to her mother. She says, you know, she dreams that she is awake in the night and she's running through the woods and she hears someone coming and then hides herself and then she's overcome with rage and confusion. She does understand what she's doing until she realizes that her hands are covered in blood. And so again, at this point, we don't know which daughter is the werewolf.
We're being led to think it might be Alicia. But Alicia wants to know why she and her sister are always kept locked in their rooms on the full moon. Isn't that weird?
Mom?
And Mom's like, well, it's your father's orders. We have to do what he says, And Alicia literally says the line from step Brothers, this house is a prison. Meanwhile, and I thought this was funny, Like while they're having this argument, we cut away to Clarissa in the other room and she's just like playing with cursed music boxes and grinning like a clown.
There's not a lot to do here if you're not actively engaged in mad science research.
Yeah. Oh, and also we later see Alicia. We would get like some humanizing stuff where Alicia goes to the quarters of some of the servants at the house and the servant woman's daughter is there. The daughter is named Alita, and she is deaf and mute, and so Alicia seems to be teaching Adalita to read and trying to give her some kind of speech therapy. She's like putting her fingers around her throat while she's trying to enunciate words.
So it's not all just frivolous playing around with toys and dresses and so forth. She's also doing some good in the world.
But back in the lab, the plot thickens, so Bernstein and Fernandez are still there, and Bernstein is saying, you know what, I confess you've told me you're working on metaplasia. I am also working on something rather alike metaplasia. And then Fernandez just guesses. First guess he says like aanthropy, and Bernstein says, yes, So, like, where did everybody get the metaplasia research bug? Why are they all working on werewolf science? It's implied that this is not that they
didn't coordinate on this. It's like a incidents that they're just both working on like anthropy, but their colleagues.
Yeah, I mean they both certainly have their reasons, as we'll learn, but but yeah, this kind of just kind of this kind of comes up in the conversation where it's like, like, so you're working on where wolves is like, yeah, yeah, well that's that's secretly what I'm working on too. We're in the same business.
Bernstein says, science denies the existence of like anthropy, conceptualizes it as something unreal. Do you have the same opinion, and Fernandez says no, because I have powerful reasons to believe in it. So they're on the same page here. But then the question comes up, is like aanthropy a disease? And Bernstein says, no, it is not a disease, it is something much more. Science could not understand these secrets.
Only I can decipher them. But suddenly here they're interrupted because Claressa runs in, so the lovers are reunited, and then they go off to speak privately, and once they're alone, they have an interesting conversation. Earnstein says, nothing is impossible. See I am here with you, and Clarissa says, I am afraid afraid to awaken her. Who is her afraid to awaken her? Bernstein says, it's not an illusion, Clarissa, it's reality. And then Clarissa confesses to Alejandro here that
she is also having horrible dreams. She dreams that she's kissing him, but then some confusion falls over her and she can't find him, doesn't know where he is or what's happening, and then we get this wonderful monologue. Bernstein says, in the end, it's always the same to die, but not even those who died can escape from its destiny. The life of a mortal one realizes time only in an instant because after death comes the eternity, the region
without dimension, infinite in time and space. Reaching it is the most important. It's there where our love will last forever. Life will soon pass, And oh my god, Like I was not prepared for this at this point in the movie. He's got some kind of necro erotic thing going on, like he yearns for death because that's the only place where eternity is possible, where their love can be forever. He thinks he has some kind of key to the gateway to something, some kind of expanded existence beyond death.
Yeah, this is one of the many ways of this film is so deeply weird. You know, you kind of expect of your older black and white monster pictures to have some very cut and dry morality involved in how your human characters are relating or you're presumably human characters are relating to threats. But everyone, everyone in this picture has a little bit of the madness in them, and I really like that. I mean, except for Gunzalz. Gunzalez is a rock. He's straight straight down the middle.
I'd say Alicia has kind of a straight shooter or two, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, so they get interrupted by the return of doctor Gonsalez. He's here to speak with Fernandez about the heart ripping in the woods. Apparently one of the victims was his best friend, and he stops to speak with Alicia, who is troubled by her dreams and by worries about what's happening. And this is where we learned that Gonzalez is a colleague of doctor Fernandez and that he is the beloved of Alicia. So this is where I first realized what is weird that both of this guy's daughters
are engaged to his coworkers. Yeah.
Again, they don't get to leave the compound much. These are the only men outside of their family that they get to meet.
That's a rough dating scene. Yeah. So doctor Gonzalez is here to use Fernandez's microscope because he's got to figure out what kind of blood the killer had, remember that. Yeah, and I think ultimately this plot goes nowhere, right, it's inconclusive.
Yeah, they're just like, it's not a beast, not a man. There's no possible space betweeneen those two categories, so.
We're not sure. Oh, here we also get the scene where the girl, the child Adalita, sneaks out at night. So in the anatomy of a sneak out here, because we've got a couple of scenes like this. She goes out of the window and climbs fences and goes to the woods to play with the tin soldier that bangs on a dramas like a little wind up toy, and she the place she goes out to play in the woods at night is said this like the ruins of an old house with exposed rafters.
Yeah, she's completely fearless going out into the night, into this wilderness where multiple murders have just occurred, and goes to like the spookiest location you could possibly seek out because she left a toy.
There or something. Meanwhile, doctor Bernstein is having an argument with Fernandez about marrying Clarissa. Long and short is you know. Fernandez is like, I don't know about this. I don't think it's a good idea, and Bernstein is like, well, we're going to do it in any you know, you can't stop us. But then as soon as Bernstein is left alone, uh, oh, it's a full moon, and he gets a crazy look in his eye, and the full moon just like it bugs out of the sky. And
then whoa, he is a were wolf too. We got a second werewolf in the movie.
Yeap, yeah, he starts twitching. He starts itching. You know what's gonna happen.
So I guess we should describe the setup to this attack on Adalita. Fortunately, the child is not harmed. For the for the the gene siskels in the audience, you can't stand the movie scenes where a child is threatened. Adalita is gonna be okay, but it's looking perilous for her because she's just sitting there playing with this toy and the Bernstein werewolf is creeping up on her in the woods again at the ruins of a building.
Here.
Now a new thing we get in this scene is the presence of a character who I don't think we've seen before, the werewolf Hunter and his dog, the Lee Car.
Yes, Jack Jack is the dog's name.
How would you describe the werewolf hunter when he first appears.
Again, He has kind of an outsider bohemian vibe similar to crumbas bit different. He looks like a little he looks a little metal a little occult, but it is also like clearly has some sort of an international vibe to him, and indeed we will learn in subsequent scenes that he is from across the ocean, so he is of some sort of Asiatic origin.
He's a wanderer though, Yeah, he's been everywhere.
And his business is, we will learn, hunting werewolves. And he's in the right place because we've got more than one of them running around now.
So the Bernstein werewolf is creeping up on little Italyita. But before he gets there and does anything, the werewolf is a hacked by a dog by the the werewolf hunter's dog, and they tussle around, they roll around, the dog is sort of mauling the werewolf, and then the werewolf is severely wounded and runs away and then Attalie to leaves, I think, never realizing anything that anything almost happened.
Yeah, completely oblivious like so many children.
So as the injured werewolf staggers back to the mansion, he transforms back into doctor Bernstein. Shirtless. Now he collapses into Crumba's arms and we see Fernandez and his colleagues sort of come into intervene. Actually, the first thing we see of them. Is that we just cut to them in scrubs and they're like doing surgery. They're operating on Bernstein here, and Fernandez says he is moments from death.
The only way to save him is to freeze him a giant freezer with the conspicuously difficult to open door.
That's right. Yeah, it's like our the man that we don't know is a werewolf is about to die from a like a bite to the heart from a dog. The only thing we can do is put him on ice and hopefully he'll be able to heal or we can figure out how to heal him later.
Yeah. They're also like, we cannot tell the daughters.
Yes.
So next there's a scene at the police station with the werewolf hunter, and you know, the deputy says to the chief, I think they're like, we've captured the killers. Here he is, you know, it's the guy. It's this guy and his dog. They are obviously the murderers. And the werewolf hunter says that his dog did not harm anyone. His dog likes humans. He would never hurt him, never hurt them, and he says dogs are not hypocrites like men. Instead,
he gives of some of his backstory. He says he's from very distant lands across the sea, from a small village. It's not even on the map. He says he has had this dog, Jack since he was a boy. He says, is it a crime for a man to take his dog for a ride? And then they ask what's the deal with that medel around your dog's neck? And the werewolf hunter explains this means the dog is a leakar, a dog trained to fight against a lichenthrope. The cops are,
of course incredulous. They're like, what's a lichen thrope? And one of them says to the other one, it's a werewolf, an old superstition of theirs. And I was thinking, what of who's.
The people? The non police? I guess, okay.
But they also find out this guy is in possession of a special dagger, which is engraved in Latin, says use it only at the time of revenge.
So I really love how they're laying out this basically the model for how you kill werewolves in this film. Bullets, as we'll learn, are useless. Human weapons useless. The things that work are an ivory dagger or the bite of a highly trained domesticated dog, and the dog itself is interesting choice because you're talking essentially about a tamed wolf an instrument to use against the were wolf, which is
kind of like rewilded human. I like the synergy of that, and I like the idea that in both cases, like you need a weapon of the tooth or the tusk to use against the were wolf, like you need a like a biological weapon, you need a weapon of nature, a weapon of predatory aggression. Only these weapons will actually hurt the beast.
Yeah. I like that as well, And it's more magical than the sci fi premise. It's kind of mixing all the different shades together. Now there's another line he says here that I think is interesting when he says many people traveled the world in hunt of the wolf, the wolf that killed the one they love, and pairing that with the line on the deck or about revenge, it's
really confusing. Actually, well, I don't mean this against the movie because I liked it this way, but like minute, so are the were wolves here like a project of doctor Bernstein's that is quite recent in origin, because you know, Clarissa and Bernstein are.
Not that old.
How would they have killed the person that this man loved I don't know, like, and he chased them around the world. That just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. But who knows that. I guess we do learn that Bernstein has traveled a lot. So maybe maybe Bernstein did kill the one he loved somewhere else.
Yeah. Or maybe it's just a general, you know, vow taken against all were wolves based on like a specific loss to a different were wolf, like once they were a wolf killed a member of my family, and so now I must always hunt were wolves.
That could make sense.
Also, you got that highly trained dog. I mean, you're you're kind of married to the profession. At that point, you're locked in. Yeah, I mean the dog's got to work. It's a working dog.
Sunk costs.
Yeah. Oh.
Also, at some point the cops said him free because another murder takes place while he's in custody. Yeah. Ooh, And there's a whoopsie at night. So the girl's mother in the in the mansion comes wandering down into the lab one night. Maybe this is just all one night. Who knows this is Fernandez's wife, Yes, this is the matriarch, Marcella. Yeah, yeah, she sees Bernstein frozen in the freezer. Through the window. She like looks in the people, you know, through the
little window. It's like, oh no, he's frozen in there. And she goes in to investigate. I guess because they didn't tell her, They.
Didn't tell anybody else in the household what was going on. You can peek through the window and see a body in there.
I think this is Fernandez's fault. You could argue that this could have been prevented if he'd just told his wife and daughters what was happening.
Or put a sticky note up, you know, just so like like, hey, do not open this body's supposed to be in there. I'd be where wolf do not though, But.
She goes in to investigate, and then she becomes trapped. She's like trying to open the door again to get out, but she can't get it open because it's difficult. And then I guess she's freezing at the freezer. So she turns off all the levers on the freezer, I think, to prevent herself from freezing to death. But then Bernstein starts to thaw, and we see ice crystals on his
face melting. Oh no, the werewolf awakens. That's right. So later we come back to the house and Alicia finds her mother dead on the living room floor with her heart torn out. That's no good, and Clarissa is horrified, of course and runs to her room. Though I guess it's kind of implied it was Bernstein that we never see it, right, so we don't know which werewolf it was for sure.
Yeah, yeah, I think we know. Ultimately we know we know it was Bernstein, but in general it's left a little vague.
So here, I guess we're setting up for the final showdown. We have the mother's funeral, which is at the cemetery on the hillside where we started the movie. I was thinking it would be really funny if the plot, like the spot went to bury her in was the place where you know, they start digging, and it's just there's a secret passageway they are going to the going to the fireplace. But after the mother's funeral, the werewolf hunter sets out a bear trap in the cemetery to catch
the creatures, and we see lots of characters. We kind of get the what do you call that montage where you see everybody looking kind of stern, frightened, or determined right before. We're leading up to the climax.
Yeah, yeah, everybody's kind of getting in the zone one way or another, even though they don't know exactly what's coming.
We're getting all the pieces positioned on the board. Basically, we learn that everybody is going to be in and around the mansion tonight, almost as if they suspect the climax of the film is coming. Like the police inspector decides he's got to stay with the Fernandez family for their protection tonight.
Yeah.
Oh. In the lead up to the climax, here we get another child in peril scene because Adelita goes into Clarissa's room. She sneaks out of her quarters goes in Clarissa's room secretly because she wants to play with the creepy dolls, that's right.
So she's in there playing and looking at dolls and all. Meanwhile, this is when we have Clarissa playing the piano downstairs. She's feeling a number of emotions about the death of her mother and is going to take it out on the piano. And boy does she ever. She's playing this like this furious piano number there. It's pissing off her sister. It's apparently not a morning vibe that's being created here, and even Crumba is clearly concerned about what's happening here.
Yeah, he's watching her play the piano and just looking like, oh boy, here we go. And then I think that he senses the full moon is coming out. So just before the change takes hold, Crumba grabs Clarissa and carries her up to her room and locks her inside, unfortunately not realizing that Adalita is in there. So Adalita hides under the bed and Clarissa begins to change in the light of the full moon in a scene that is
pretty scary. But so she goes through this dissolved transformation kind of like we've seen earlier, but in the opposite direction, and just as she's leaving out the secret passageway in the fireplace, she hears a toy that Adelita had been playing with is like a wind up toy that gets dropped,
and she's drawn back into the room by it. Adalita escapes by climbing down out of a window, but the she wolf chases, and this chase leads out to the ruined house with exposed rafters where Adalita was playing earlier, and this leads to a showdown between the Clarissa Wolf and the werewolf Hunter. So here's the first of our big fights and the werewolf hunter. He's got his ivory dagger there and he's trying to fend her off, but she's slashing and clawing and mauling at him and they're
rolling around on the ground. So here's the first wrestling match. That's right.
Meanwhile, back in the house's what's happening with the male were wolf. Well, he's back in action and Crumba is there to fight him, and this is where we get a big, slobbery knocker of a battle between these two with a little bit of Lucha libre esque action kind
of sprinkled in. Nothing too overt, but at one point I do love that the were wolf grabs Crumba in some form of a full nelson, kind of like a but instead of locking his fingers behind Crumba's neck, he like puts his claws on Crumbus's face, So I think it should be called the full moon nelson instead, like a were wolf variant of a hold. I like it, but this is a pretty good fight. They're throwing furniture around,
it does not end well for Crumba. Oh and I should And also it doesn't end well for the professor. This were wolf also brutally murders Professor Fernandez as well. So the body count is really beginning to stack up here, and characters are dying in graphic detail, the black and white blood everywhere.
Alicia escapes the scene out out of the house and is pursued. She does get her Oh she's she gets caught in the werewolf hunter's bear trap.
Oh does Oh god, I was not expecting that. I should have expected it. They set the trap, you know, it's it's been established. But then when she stepped in it and that thing clamped on her foot, I was like, oh god, you know that caught me off guard. Very well done.
So several more of our good characters are attacked or threatened by the two by the two werewolves. Ultimately, though, the werewolves are defeated in one case by being mauled by the leekr dog the werewolf killing dog, and then the other case being stabbed I think by the police inspector with the ivory knife that was dropped by the
werewolf Hunter is unfortunately killed in action. But then the police inspector comes along and picks up the ivory knife and is able to fit one of the two were wolves.
Yes, I believe our she wolf is killed by the knife. Our male wolf is killed by the bite. And then we get that sad scene with Jack the dog laying there by the side of his now deceased master.
And it's kind of interesting because we get multiple like it's juxtaposed with the kind of lovers isn't the right word for the guy and his dog, but kind of the companions united in the end because the dog lays down next to the were wolf hunter. They're kind of there together, and though the dog is still alive. But then the two were wolves lay down next to each other as they die, and then they both transform back into their human forms.
Yeah, and she's naked and he's I think wearing like torn pants in this. But it's really nicely framed, the bodies of our cursed lovers finally coming together, entangled in the moonlight as our survivors look on, and we get a repetition of that freedom and death monologue from earlier, and it woo it hits pretty hard, like the ending of this film takes no prisoners it's pretty brutal.
Well, yeah, that does raise the question. So Bernstein thought that they would achieve some kind of like ascension after death, like that would be an empowering thing where they could have eternity. Do they get that we never see the other side of death. Are they living on somehow? What's happening? You know?
One can imagine a cut of this picture in which we go right from this scene to a heavenly wear wolf wedding. They're both in full like hybrid werewolf form though, you know, with bow ties and veil and all, and they are wetted and they become husband and wife.
But that's not what we get here, Bernstein and Clarissa are. They're like met by Dante the sphere of Venus in the Paradiso.
Yes, and the family members in attendance, they're all like bleeding from open wounds like American werewolf in London style. But I don't I don't mean to make light of the endit here, because I think the ending here is really strong and definitely fulfills on like the vision they seem to have for the picture. It's again, it's it's grim, it's it's not pulling any punches, but we do have our three survivors, I guess four survivors, but three main survivors that we have like real attachment to.
Yeah, Alicia, Gonzalez and Adalita are all okay, and then the cop survives to Yeah, and I guess that's the end of La Loba.
Yeah. And I have to say this one is really strong. A big fan of La Looba. Again, I may have to try and find whatever kind of whatever kind of DVD is actually out there, and I'm hoping that somebody puts out a better physical release of this in the future, because I think this is a film that deserves it. Again,
it has its own cult status. Looking around, I did notice there are multiple instances in which a video game or a piece of work of written fiction has a female werewolf in it, and they name the where wolf character of Kitty, which is I think a clear reference to this picture. And it also works on another level because like Kitty Cat wear a wolf dog. It's also a little bit funny but also a nice deep cut
into Mexican horror cinema. All Right, We're gonna go ahead and close this episode up, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you have thoughts on where wolf movies in general, write in, We'd love to hear from you. Specifically, if you have some other great examples of female were wolf pictures or fiction in general, or folk tales and so forth, write in on that as well.
I do want to note there are some examples I did not bring up, because sometimes in were Wolf who Done, it's the female were wolf is the twist, because again, you get so used to your wolf man that if it's if it is a female character that's secretly the were wolf, well sometimes that's the big twist. So I didn't reference any of those by name, but maybe we could get into that in Listener Male with you know some spoiler warnings.
Yeah, playing your your gender assumptions against you in misdirection, Yeah.
That's one way to get your heart ripped out in the woods folks. All right, just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episodes on Wednesdays, which coincidentally are currently dealing with werewolves, and then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about weird films on Weird House Cinema. If you want to follow Weird House Cinema on social, go
to letterbox dot com. Our username is weird house and we have a wonderful list of all the films we've we've considered thus far. I believe we're on one ninety eight. We're about to do one ninety nine, and then we'll do the two hundredth episode or the two hundredth movie selection for Weird House Cinema.
Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
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