The Werewolf

This B horror picture from Columbia with a cast of familiar players is better than I thought it would be. At the heart of it is a truly tragic figure in Steven Ritch who is just your average guy with wife Eleanor Tanin and son Kim Charney. He gets involved in an automobile accident and unfortunately gets himself treated by a pair of deranged scientists S.John Launer and George Lynn who decide he'd make a good test subject for an experiment.

Without the aid of the full moon and other bits of werewolf lore, Ritch goes in and out of being a werewolf day or night and without warning. He's pretty invincible when he's in wolf mode.. Sheriff Don Megowan and deputy Harry Lauter are tracking him, good doctors Joyce Holden and Ken Christy want to treat him. The bad docs want to kill him as a coverup.

Horror movie fans would do well to check this one out.

This is quite a good low budget film with a new twist to the werewolf story. There is nothing supernatural here. Forget the wolfbane and the silver bullets. Steven Ritch has the lead role and does a splendid job, making the monster even more sympathetic than the long suffering Larry Talbot of the Universal Wolfman flicks. His character, Duncan Marsh, appears in a mountain town having no memory of who he is or how he got there. Leaving a tavern, he is followed by a man who intends to rob him. The man pulls him into an alley and the werewolf claims his first victim. The story plays well the rest of the way. We find out that Duncan Marsh's condition is brought on by two doctors who use him as a test subject while treating him for injuries sustained in a car accident. A supporting cast of unknowns do a decent job of being believable. Elenore Tanin is especially effective as Duncan Marsh's wife. The Big Bear Lake locations give the film a lot of help.

The Basic Plot: The unraveling of the mystery of two scientists,a werewolf, and a missing man.

The Praise: Tense, quiet, and spare, it is frightening in an amount of moments with the werewolf. The western locations are great, and the werewolf is sympathetic,plus good acting by a cast of nobodies. Not a major production, it is probably low-budget because of the no-frills look of the film and the lack of any stars. Odd because in parts it looks, feels, and acts like a western. If you detached some scenes without the Werewolf it could pass as a western. The Flaws: Ridiculous makeup. P.S : Extremely rare, it has never been released on VHS, DVD, Laserdisc etc.. Only way to see it is through TV, and I taped it off the AMC Halloween festival, and the tape has become part of my library of rare horror films.

In Mountaincrest, a stranger without memory arrives in a bar to have a drink. When he leaves the bar, a local tries to robber him but he turns into an animal and kills the attacker. Deputy Ben Clovey (Harry Lauter) hunts down the animal but is wounded by it. Sheriff Jack Haines (Don Megowan) organizes a party to find the beast. Meanwhile the nurse Amy Standish (Joyce Holden) and her father, the local doctor, receive a man called Duncan Marsh (Steven Ritch) that recalls that he had a car accident and two doctors have treated him. But he flees and Haines wants to hunt him down but Amy and her father wants to convince him to capture Duncan to see how they could treat him. When is wife Mrs. Helen Marsh (Eleanore Tanin) and her son Chris arrive in Mountaincrest, Sheriff Haines is convinced that shall capture the werewolf alive. But the doctors that conducted the experiment arrive in the town expecting to kill him.

"The Werewolf (1956)" is a film with the genre more drama than horror. The sad saga of the family man Duncan Marsh is heart breaking. The plot is interesting and the transformation is excellent for a 1956 movie. The performance of Steven Ritch is also great. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Lobisomem" ("The Werewolf")

Never seen this film before and was pleasantly surprised to see this film had some Sci-Fi effects and it involved itself with two doctors who find a man Duncan Marsh, (Steven Ritch) who was in a car accident who has no memory and they inject him with a serum which has some strange effects on his body. Duncan Marsh is a married man and has a son and he escapes from these doctors and runs into a bar and has a few drinks and tries to seek help but as he leaves the bar he is approached by a man who wants to take his money and something happens to this man. Soon after this incident, the town believes there is a wild animal on the loose because they find a man killed by a sort of wolf or wild animal. This is a rather low budget film, but it has real live background on a California park and has a great deal of realism and horror. Enjoy.