The Legend of the Wolf Woman

This is NOT a good movie. Nor is it really even "so-bad-its-good", but it is kind of interesting in a twisted, car wreck sort of way. The movie is about a young woman who due to an ancient family curse and implied childhood sexual abuse is suffering from a kind of "hysterical lycanthropy". She believes herself to be a werewolf, so she starts killing (and eventually eating) her male lovers. Her actual lycanthropic status is left kind of ambiguous throughout the movie, making this more interesting than most. It kind of aspired to be what "Ginger Snaps" was years later. But unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) it was directed by Rino DiSilvestri, a notorious Italian exploitation hack who had absolutely no sense of his own limitations. Still I vastly prefer a movie like this that tries to be serious and stumbles into camp, to one that intentionally aims at camp (like so many alleged "cult" movies do today) and fails just as miserably.

Of course, DiSivestri WAS pretty good at sexploitation, and he always had a very decent female cast. In his earlier movies he worked with a whole bevy of Euro-beauties (Anita Strindberg, Jenny Tamburi, Paola Senatore, Krista Nell, Magda Konopfka, Orchidea DiSantis, ad infinitum). Here he's reduced to the lovely Dagmar Lassander, who has probably the longest and most gratuitous sex scene of her career, and the lead, the much more obscure Anik Borel, who was cast because DiSivestri, according to his DVD commentary, thought "she looked like a wolf". She is kind of weird looking I guess, but her body is pretty impressive and you get to see a whole lot of it here. (Interestingly, her only other notable screen credit is in "Weekend with the Babysitter" a very 70's and very American sexploitation film directed by Tom "Billy Jack" McLoughlin). This movie is certainly not for everybody, but it works for me

I started watching this movie expecting some barely tolerable Hammer horror film wannabe... and I wasn't far off. There's a fair amount of glimpsed gore, and they threw in lots of nudity, but the latter half of the movie presents a few ironic twists. Holy cow, they actually put a little thought into the story, and didn't completely fall into the predictable stuff one expected at the outset. And dare I say it, some of the "gratuitous" nudity wasn't so gratuitous after all, because it fit in with the story and setting.

Don't get me wrong, it's still overall a bad movie, but as bad movies go, it's a shade more intelligent than the REALLY horrible tripe like Mesa of Lost Women and Robot Monster.

I don't know how I could explain that I like Werewolf Woman. It doesn't work logically as a movie, but does one go into a movie that's about a schizo who craves the company of men and then kills them at the instant they try and have their way with her expecting great art? It's a little like a rougher, more sexed-up cut of David Cronenberg's Rabid, only here the dead or injured don't come back to life. This time it's Annik Borel, instead of Marilyn Chambers, as the perplexed anti-heroine of the story. The catch with her is that she has werewolf ancestry in her blood, and after a cruel rape (which we may or may not see on screen, I can't remember) she goes on a killing spree.

The dubbing is bad, but maybe deliberately so; Leone didn't have dialog so bad that it made the voice-over actors cringe as they said some of their lines. And sometimes the director and crew get creative with blood and various colors: there's a shot when Daniella, after attacking a nurse whom she's snuck into the car with, gets out of the now crashed vehicle, and the first shot seen looks as though there's blood everywhere, though it's mostly just the seats and a jacket. For a moment or two, Werewolf Woman carries artistry (not to mention during a particularly steamy sex scene as Daniella watches with hungry, jealous eyes of a friend getting it on with a friend).

When all is said and done, Werewolf Woman does teeter between a hot and exciting half-farce half-serious/pretentious drama on a woman's descent into madness and murder, and it doesn't amount to any kind of 'statement' except that, um, crazy women with a disease passed down through the generations can't be stomped out so all men with penises have to pay. Yeah, that's it. But even with the laughs that are had- including a bit when Daniella is in the hospital bed and an over-affectionate nymph comes in trying to have her way with the taut were-woman that probably inspired the P**** Wagon scene in Kill Bill 1- it's not a badly made film at all, which adds to the appeal.

It's not some stupid movie put together in very cheap soft-core ways. If there is any strength to the best sex scenes it's that they seem actually erotic and not as some tedious pornographic exercise ala Porno Holocaust. And, relative to other cheesy horror flicks of the 70s (the *Italian* horror 70s), Annik Borel isn't too shabby an actress, with a quality reminiscent of Sondra Locke from Clint Eastwood's films (only, perhaps, a better actress!) She adds just that little bit of fun and danger to a part that needs it to sustain its tone wavering between exploitation and sincere horror.

So watch it under a full-moon, make sure you're tied to the bed (without any crazies around to untie the knots), and keep all sexual organs on stand-by- Werewolf Woman is a bite!

I saw this on terrestrial television here recently and found it one of the most hilariously bad films I've seen in a long while.

It's starts out with a make-up job that has to be seen to be believed (get a load of the stuck-on fur and black nipples on the were-woman) and get's progressively worse.

It's your standard Italian 70's exploitation fare with the usual contents of rape, gore and standard soft-core lesbian scenes and editing that's been done with a meat-cleaver. If MST3K ever do adult versions of their show, I'd recommend this one.

This is quite a graphically violent and explicit film. It's much more graphic than I expected. It's not really a werewolf movie. There are violent attacks where throats are ripped out, but it doesn't really have the supernatural element we might expect. This is a case study of a woman who has been so badly abused that she loses her sense of self and strikes out against all men. Even when things begin to go well, it's as if she has been singled out for some kind of demonic punishment. Unfortunately, many others suffer her wrath, some deserving, others not. The scenes are pretty explicit and ugly. This is one of those movies that kind of grabs you but it's more like going to an auto wreck than something desirable. It's not badly made and moves pretty well. Be forewarned, however, that it isn't for all tastes.