Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: La Loba (1965)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, we have
a fun one here for you today. This one originally
published three twenty eight, twenty twenty five. It is the
nineteen sixty five Mexican female werewolf film Leloba, also known
as The She Wolf. I'm a big fan of this movie.
I really hope more people watch it, and you know,

(00:26):
fingers crossed, it's my secret hope that out there, somewhere
in the world there's a pristine copy of this, something
that can be restored so we can get an even
better quality version of this out in the world. This
was fitting because we're also going to get it back
into a little more were wolf action on this Friday's
brand new episode of Weird House Cinema. So without further ado,

(00:48):
let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
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

(01:23):
just any werewolf movie. It's widely considered the first Mexican
werewolf film. Nineteen sixty five's La Loba or The she Wolf.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Really the first one in nineteen sixty five, huh.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
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 from nineteen thirteen
is considered to be the very first werewolf film period,

(01:56):
and interestingly enough, it too centers around a female werewolf.
So I've 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,

(02:16):
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,

(02:38):
of course, female werewolves also play into a number of
really good lik in films. Joe Dante is the Howling
for one. Even two thousand and seven's Trick or Treat
has some really cool female werewolves in one of its
sequences if I remember correctly, Yeah for my money. However,
none of these films are as great as a Lolova. Lalova,
I think, does a great job of telling its own

(02:59):
little mad science infused Gothic horror tale with lots of
werewolf intrigue and just some terrifying sequences.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
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

(03:32):
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 kind of like the ambiguity, as I often do.

(03:54):
And maybe I'm on record saying this about enough films
at this point that it's just a part of what
my taste is, but I kind of like it when
it's not exactly clear what the backstory is.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
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.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
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 Luca 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 wear wolves, you know,

(05:03):
dating back hundreds of years and so forth, but again,
male likingthropes 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

(05:24):
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

(05:46):
wolf tales is something that really emerged specifically during an
agricultural era. So narratives in which a male landowner is threatened,
in the case of a male werewolf, by a dangerous
outside and in the case of female werewolves, by a
threat within his own house or community. And as we'll

(06:07):
discuss it's notable, you know, perhaps by accident, that today's
film Loloba 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.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Oh that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
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

(06:43):
with our heart, but also with our skepticism, you know.
And so werewolf effects can absolutely connect with us on
a primal level in 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

(07:04):
and it doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to buy it.
It's a fine line.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
Well, yeah, and that's drue 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,

(07:29):
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

(07:50):
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, this kind
of difficult cult 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

(08:10):
as some.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
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

(08:34):
the various traditions that entail the use of a specific
animals that 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 just were wolf myths, but also
like various transformation into animals and transformation of animals into

(08:57):
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 a ritualistic embodiment and shamanistic transformation
underlying like the power of cinema in these instances. I'm

(09:20):
not saying that it's its heat 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
Lon Jenny Junior or Paul Nashi perform their art.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
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 canine morph,
like where it's just a human covered in fur that

(09:56):
feels more like a priest donning an animal skin to
do some kind of ritual.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, or when the person just turns into a full
blown German shepherd right there on the screen, which we've
seen before.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
I might come back to more about how this movie's
form of where Wolf fits more into into movie history,
but maybe later in the plot section.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
All right, moving on to elevator pitch. Mine is simply
house of usher, but make it wear wolves.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
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
click whole article, it would be quiz which of my

(10:41):
garbage wolf daughters are you.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
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 becan Tropia.

Speaker 4 (11:02):
See that's pro number in Lobo in love, lascha existential
pinotsmo no I can think about.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
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 Loba or she Wolf, make
sure you're throwing that nineteen sixty five because these titles
have been used a lot.

Speaker 4 (11:37):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
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. There's not a high qual quality physical release

(12:01):
out there as far as I can tell, and I
would love to see such a release occur in the
future for this movie.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
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

(12:29):
there and you can get the rights to this thing,
please release in the highest quality possible.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
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 picture. Starting at the top with
the director. It's Rafael Baldon, who live nineteen nineteen through

(12:58):
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,

(13:21):
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 the Monstering Crying Woman. Those
had Abel Salazar in them, who was in the Brainiac.
He also did nineteen sixty four's Museum of Horror and
nineteen sixty nine's per Verse Doll. Oh.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
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 in
the classic the Tour Johnson framing where the monster is
carrying an unconscious woman and the monster looks like a

(14:02):
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

(14:24):
the monster on it and instead it's just like a
cowboy on horseback. Why would you make that your your
Monster Movie poster.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
I don't know. Maybe in some markets you were going
more for the Cowboy film crowd as a post of
the Monster movie film crowd.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
I don't know. Well, having seen Loloba, now I'm impressed
enough that I do want to seek out these other movies.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
All right, Moving on to the story and screenplay credit,
we have Raman o'ban, who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen
sixty five, costa Rican born writer whose credits include a
number of lucha horror western in action films, including With
the Lost Monster nineteen fifty eight's The Vampire's Coffin with
Abel Salazar, nineteen fifty nine's The Black Pit of Doctor

(15:07):
m Perverse Doll, nineteen seventy six is Santo versus The
She Wolves, Oh, which yeah, we had to have some
lady were wolves 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

(15:31):
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 folk car vibe.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
When does this movie take place?

Speaker 1 (15:48):
That is a great question.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Definitely riding around in carts, yeah, like horse strong buggies.
I don't think we ever see a motor car in
the film. And yet there are industrial there's like a
walk in freezer and microscopes and.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
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

(16:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
I thought he seemed familiar. Now, wouldn't it have been
horrible if the Santa Claus movie ended with him getting
mauled by a werewolf played them this one.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Oops, all mustaches.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
So.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
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

(17:38):
Cardona's nineteen fifty eight movie pol Brisito. 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.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
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?

Speaker 1 (18:13):
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

(18:34):
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 gonna mention them several
times here, but I'm not sure we've ever stopped to

(18:57):
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

(19:19):
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 Ariel 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,

(19:40):
which was nominated for an Oscar.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Now.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
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.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
I also found that confusing the first this 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.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
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.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
It's only a werewolf who'd done it for like twenty
or thirty minutes at most. Yeah, I mean you get
to the who way before the end.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yes, all right, Now getting to the daughters, the Fernandez daughters,
We're going to 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 bill performer, Golden Age
starlett Kitty de Oios, an actress of stage and screen

(20:54):
and an enormously famous sex symbol of the day in
Mexican cinema. She's sometimes called the Marilyn mon Row of Mexico.
M 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 to us in Felis
really skyrocketer career. This is like the This is like

(21:19):
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 film

(21:39):
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 them in which she's being carried
around by some sort of a bat creature, and also

(21:59):
a 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.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
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, Kinny Doios's
character is of course the daughter who is the werewolf.

(22:31):
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 it's both understanding her as
like a known star in Mexican cinema, as kind of

(22:52):
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.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
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.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
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

(23:41):
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 beyond life and death.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
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 too as well.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
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

(24:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
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 twenty two. She was an
Aerial Award winning actress herself for nineteen seventy nine's Anacrusa

(24:53):
and twenty fourteen she Doesn't Want to Sleep Alone. She
also has a supporting part in Juan Lopez Matuzuma's nineteen
seventy seven horror film Alokarta.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
Spell that backwards, folks.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Yeah, and it's a dracula.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
A dracula means non dracula.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
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 is gonna be.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
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.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
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. You're just
gonna end up falling in love with your various like
co authors and fellow scientists. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
So the two a few other doctors who come to do
werewolf research at the manch just happens to be like, Wow,
I've never seen another man before. I guess we're gonna
get married.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah. Yeah, So Clarissa has a suitor in the form
of doctor Alejandro Bernstein, played by Jaquim 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

(26:29):
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

(26:50):
occult flavoring.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
Hmm okay.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
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
lucha movies in there, including a couple of Santo films
and nineteen sixty nine's Wrestling Women Versus the Killer Robot.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
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 by Clarissa in
a voice over later in the film. But he gives

(27:33):
this monologue about how he wants some kind of secret,
some kind of pleasure or possibility that exists only beyond life.
So like a he's got a kind of death drive embodied,
embodied in a way like he wants something that cannot
be achieved as immortal, it can only be achieved beyond death.

(27:54):
And we really don't get a lot of explanation of
what that is, except it is somehow related to likeanthropy,
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, kind

(28:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
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

(29:00):
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, you know, do all
sorts of unspeakable experiments and trans transplant. I can't remember

(29:20):
if it's I think it's Gorilla brains into or some
sort of beast brains into the bodies of luchadoras.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah, transplanting gorilla brains into women, I think, or vice versa,
maybe both. 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.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
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

(30:04):
sixty eight's The bat Woman, which is 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.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
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

(30:46):
took it?

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yes, Yeah, this guy's not in on any of 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 the local law enforcement officers about mutilated
corpses that suddenly pop up.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Yeah, He's like, I 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

(31:27):
capable Indiana Jones looking character in the film to making
the goofiest reaction face I've ever seen in a movie.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
He does. It happens pretty early on. He pulls this
wonderful face when he uncovers a mutilated corpse, and it's
it's amazing. It's like, yeah, the toilet has overflown reaction
face here.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
You know what it is. It's that face they put
on YouTube thumbnails to make people click on them.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah, oh yeah yeah, or Netflix thumbs for films like
if le Looba 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

(32:20):
stoic man, kind of dreat 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 debt.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
Crumba is cool. Every time he's on screen, I was like, Okay,
we're in good hands.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
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 Krumba 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

(32:59):
heart throb 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,

(33:20):
The Robot Versus the as Tech Mummy. He's also in
nineteen sixty eight's The Batwoman Man.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
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

(33:48):
the kids, and I don't know if it's still today,
but in recent years. Yeah, and the pipe and everything.
It's just like it's not a heart throb.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Look yeah, yeah, kind of like a bohemian barbarian thing
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

(34:18):
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 three's Lapachanga.
That was the one he was nominated for an Aerial

(34:39):
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

(35:03):
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,

(35:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
Some sort of like a Japanese Mexican Black Sabbath or something.
You know, He's got all sorts of like cool occult.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
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 them 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.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
There you go, all right, and then finally the music
is the work of Raul Lo Vista. He lived nineteen
thirteen through nineteen eighty Aeriall Award winning composer whose credits
include nineteen fifties elombresen Rostro, nineteen sixty two's The Exterminating
Angel in nineteen seventy five's Darker than Night. I have
to say effective score.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
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

(36:54):
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.

(37:16):
And that makes sense because this was obviously shot in
the daytime, like noonday daytime.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah. Yeah. 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

(37:45):
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 old fashioned day for night shoots and
these various pictures, and this one I also dug. But
it is just so bright, 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

(38:05):
were a werewolf, you know, it's just like inescapable. It
illuminates everything and it's just blinding in its intensity.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
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.

Speaker 3 (38:31):
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

(38:53):
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.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
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.

Speaker 3 (39:11):
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

(39:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
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 here, but just bounding and pouncing cross the landscape

(40:01):
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.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
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
campsite 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

(40:44):
fedora again to invoke Indiana Jones, got kind of an
Indiana Jones hat.

Speaker 1 (40:49):
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 as me.
But then here comes to where wolf flying across the woods,
like yeah, I mean, yea pouncing from like I don't know,
like what hundred yards. I know, it's impressive.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
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.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Yeah, So she tackles that guy, commences clawing his face
and chewing out his throat. Later we're going to 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,
there's a woman gathering fallen sticks, and ooh, there's this

(41:55):
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.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
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.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
So the 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

(42:50):
the wolf is interrupted because the full moon passes behind
a cloud, and it's like that does something, it like
maybe drains the wolf 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

(43:10):
a man driving a carriage along the forest path, and
I think this is doctor Bernstein in the carriage, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
I believe so.

Speaker 3 (43:18):
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,
servying the devastation at the campsite with the tent. He
comes upon the first victim, and this is doctor Gonzalez

(43:41):
played by Roberto Canedo, and this is the scene where
he pulls back the tent flap and sees the dead
man and is just.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Like, oh, oh, man, Yeah, 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 was a stunt
person or a luchador or a trapeze artist or some

(44:08):
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 maudeling her prey. There's also

(44:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (44:57):
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

(45:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
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.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
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,

(46:18):
but it is larger than any real wolf, and often
with the monstrosity elements beefed up.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
I would say the gomork from an Everening 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

(46:46):
be enough to fully convince me exactly?

Speaker 3 (46:48):
So that's your one type, the four four feet on
the ground quadrupedal werewolf. 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.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
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.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
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.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
And I like this one too. I like all of them,
but this one is in a zone that I feel
like is achievable by competent special effects artists.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Oh yeah, totally. But anyway, here's where I wanted to
come back to the interplay between cinematic werewolves and gender.
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

(48:09):
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

(48:29):
of male body builders. You have like massive shoulders, chest
and upper body tapering down to narrow hips and waiste
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

(48:52):
the body is shaped in a more stereotypically feminine form,
even with long hair. Actually, so 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.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
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

(49:34):
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,

(49:55):
the way they read le Looba is that we have
a feminine character turning into a more masculine form, but
one that is still distinguishable as feminine.

Speaker 3 (50:05):
Ah, 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.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
I don't know. I just don't agree with it myself,
but as their techon it.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
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

(50:39):
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,

(51:00):
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

(51:22):
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.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
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
in culture and in storytelling. One point they bring up
in the book is that body here is one way
of potentially looking at it. There may be a resistance

(52:02):
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 gonna 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

(52:25):
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.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
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.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Yeah, so I get the impression they put a lot
of thought into this. How are we going to turn
Kitty into a were wolf 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

(53:12):
of that in the mix while also transforming her into
a wolf person?

Speaker 3 (53:16):
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

(53:37):
beef bodybuilder guy were 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

(54:00):
her acrobat like flying through the air out of hiding
to claw and slash.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Yeah, when they make a convincing argument for it. I mean,
it's so it's so well executed on the screen. I
think some other female were wolf shows a 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

(54:27):
they transform, you know, kind of tying into various like
you know, sort of stuckubus 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.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
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 they open the
lid and get out and do their business. This coffin
is not merely a coffin. The wolf is not going

(55:06):
in there to lie down. It is, in fact a
secret passageway.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
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.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
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 Krumbaugh. He is
not formally introduced yet. We'll get more of his backstory later,
but he appears as this muscle man dressed again as

(55:45):
the party's barbarian. He's wearing like a leather tunic, and
he shows a look of concern and then appears 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 locks
the door to a woman's bedroom and then goes to

(56:07):
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.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
Oh, man, this is great and I love that.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
I mean, we did those whole episodes on We did
a series of episodes and stuff to blow your mind.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
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.

Speaker 3 (56:41):
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

(57:04):
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.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Yeah, like, clearly this family has some issues. We've got
that already.

Speaker 3 (57:29):
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

(57:49):
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

(58:11):
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

(58:33):
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

(58:55):
in marriage, and he wants the blessing of her father,
and the father seemed 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

(59:15):
of the best equipment facilities in the world, I think,
he says, like I have the best microscope on the planet.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
Yeah, and there it is, that's right there on the table. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
Now I mentioned this earlier, But one kind of interesting
thing is it's not immediately clear which daughter is the
were wolf, 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

(59:44):
mother and like confesses having this terrible dream about like
running through the woods at night and having blood on
her hands. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
Yeah, So we're supposed to be unsure which of the
two daughters is the were wolf, but.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:23):
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 campsite. 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

(01:00:44):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
It is. 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.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
In this one. Still, I got the wound looks like lips.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Yeah yeah, it does, Yeah, like a lip made out
of ribs.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Yeah, forensic subplot up and running right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
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 animal

(01:02:00):
to essentially put them into hibernation or arrest their development.
In a particular state.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
I think.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
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

(01:02:29):
techniques one could learn to transform the cells from one
creature into that of another, even un Lobo. And then
I also want to flag here Chekhov's really hard to
open freezer door.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
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 open.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Yeah, yeah, even Crumba has a hard time with this one.
We see in a subsequen scene.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
For oh, I like how in the lab here Fernandez
all 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,

(01:03:18):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
Yeah, when the bell rings in the night and someone
has to go answer the front door, it's Crumba that doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
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 doesn't understand what she's doing until she
realizes that her hands are covered in blood. And so again,

(01:03:59):
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?

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
Mom?

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
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

(01:04:31):
and grinning like a clown.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
There's not a lot to do here if you're not
actively engaged in mad science research.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
Yeah. Oh, and also we later see Alicia, we would
get like some humanizing stuff. Or 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 Adalita,
and she is deaf and mute, and so Alicia seems
to be teaching Adelita to read and try trying to

(01:05:00):
give her some kind of speech therapy. She's like putting
her fingers around her throat while she's trying to enunciate words.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
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 anthropy,

(01:05:35):
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 coincidence that they're
just both working on like aanthropy but their colleagues.

Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
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, yep, yeah,
well that's that's secretly what I'm working on too. We're
in the same business.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
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 anthropy a disease?
And Bernstein says, no, it is not a disease. It

(01:06:33):
is something much more. Science could not understand. These secrets
only I can decipher them. But suddenly here they're interrupted
because Clarissa 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. Bernstein says, nothing is impossible.

(01:06:53):
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 to Alejandro here
that she is also having horrible dreams. She dreams that

(01:07:14):
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

(01:07:35):
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,

(01:07:57):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
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 so are relating or you're presumably
human characters are relating to threats. But everyone, everyone in

(01:08:38):
this picture has a little bit of the madness in them,
and I really like that. I mean, except for Gunzalz.
Gonzalez is a rock. He's straight straight down the middle.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
I'd say Alicia has kind of a straight shooter.

Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
Two.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
I guess, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
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

(01:09:15):
is the beloved of Alicia. So this is where I
first realized what this is weird that both of this
guy's daughters are engaged to his coworkers.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
That's a rough dating scene.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Yeah, they're just like, it's not a beast, not a man.
There's no possible space between those two categories. So we're
not sure.

Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
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

(01:10:17):
she goes out to play in the woods at night,
is that this like the ruins of an old house
with exposed rafters.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:10:39):
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 gonna do
it anyway. 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

(01:11:01):
his eye, and the full moon just like it bugs
out of the sky. And then whoa, he is a
werewolf too. We got a second werewolf in the movie. Yep, yeap.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
He starts twitching, He starts itching. You know what's going
to happen.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
So I guess we should describe the setup to this
attack on Adalita. Fortunately, the child is not harmed. For
the Gene Siskols in the audience, you can't stand the
movie scenes where a child is threatened. Adalita is going
to be okay, but it's looking perilous for her because
she's just sitting there playing with this toy and the

(01:11:37):
Bernstein werewolf is creeping up on her in the woods
again at the ruins of a building.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
Here.

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Yes Jack, Jack is the dog's neck.

Speaker 3 (01:11:57):
How would you describe the werewolf hunter when he first appears.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
Again, He has kind of an outsider bohemian vibe, similar
to Crumbos but different. He looks like a little he
looks a little metal, a little occult, but it's 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

(01:12:22):
sort of Asiatic origin.

Speaker 3 (01:12:24):
He's a wanderer though, yeah, he's been everywhere, and.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:12:44):
So the Bernstein werewolf is creeping up on little Italyita.
But before he gets there and does anything, the werewolf
is attacked 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 Atalie to leaves,

(01:13:05):
I think, never realizing anything that anything almost happened.

Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
Yeah, completely oblivious, like so many children.

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
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

(01:13:33):
Bernstein here, and Fernandez says he has moments from death.
The only way to save him is to freeze him
a giant freezer with the conspicuously difficult to open door.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
That's right, Yeah, it's like 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.

Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
Yeah, they're also like, we cannot tell the daughters.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:14:07):
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

(01:14:27):
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

(01:14:48):
dog for a ride? And then they ask what's the
deal with that medallion around your dog's neck? And the
werewolf hunter explains this means the dog is a leekar,
a dog trained to fight again to 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
were wolf, an old superstition of theirs. And I was

(01:15:11):
the what of.

Speaker 1 (01:15:12):
Who's I don't know, I don't know the people, the
non police, I guess, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:15:29):
So I really love how they're laying out this basically
the model for how you kill were wolves 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

(01:15:51):
an 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 this energy
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,

(01:16:13):
a weapon of predatory aggression. Only these weapons will actually
hurt the beast.

Speaker 3 (01:16:21):
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

(01:16:44):
really confusing. Actually, well, I don't mean this against the
movie because I liked it this way, but like, wait
a minute, so are the werewolves 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

(01:17:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
That could make sense.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
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, the dog's got to work. It's
a working dog. Sunk costs.

Speaker 3 (01:17:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:17:50):
Also at some point the cops set him free because
another murder takes place while he's in custody.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:56):
Oh, 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.

Speaker 1 (01:18:04):
Who knows this is Fernandez's wife.

Speaker 3 (01:18:07):
Yes, this is the matriarch, Marcella.

Speaker 1 (01:18:11):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:18:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
Didn't tell anybody else in the household what was going on.
You can peek through the window and see a body
in there.

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):
I think this is Fernande's fault. You could argue that
this could have been prevented if he'd just told his
wife and daughters what was happening.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
Or put a sticky note up, you know, just so
like like, hey, do not open this body's supposed to
be in there might be where wolf.

Speaker 3 (01:18:45):
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
in the freezer. So she turns off all the levers
on the freezer to prevent herself from freezing to death.
But then Bernstein starts to thaw and we see ice

(01:19:07):
crystals on his face melting.

Speaker 1 (01:19:08):
Oh no, the were wolf awakens.

Speaker 3 (01:19:11):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
Yeah, yeah, I think we know. Ultimately we know we
know it was Bernstein, but in general it's left a
little vague.

Speaker 3 (01:19:40):
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 they 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

(01:20:04):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:20:20):
Yeah, everybody's kind of getting in the zone one way
or another, even though they don't know exactly what's coming.

Speaker 3 (01:20:26):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:20:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:42):
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 into
Clarissa's room secretly because she wants to play with the
creepy dolls.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
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

(01:21:19):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:21:30):
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

(01:21:51):
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

(01:22:14):
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

(01:22:35):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:22:52):
That's right. Meanwhile, back in the house, what's happening with
the mail were Wolf. Well, he's back in action and
Crumba is there to fight him, and this is where
we get a big slobber 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

(01:23:15):
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 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,

(01:23:36):
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

(01:23:57):
and white blood everywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:23:59):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:24:24):
So several more of our good characters are attacked or
threatened by the two by the two were wolves. Ultimately, though,
the werewolves are defeated in one case by being mauled
by the leecar 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

(01:24:48):
police inspector comes along and picks up the ivory knife
and is able to finish off one of the two
were wolves.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:25:07):
And it's kind of interesting because we get multiple like
it's juxtaposed with the 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 werewolf hunter. They're kind of
there together and though the dog is still alive. But
then the two werewolves lay down next to each other

(01:25:28):
as they die, and then they both transform back into
their human forms.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
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,

(01:25:53):
and it woo it hits pretty hard, like the ending
for this film takes no prisoners. It's pretty brutal.

Speaker 3 (01:25:59):
Well, yeah, that let's 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?

Speaker 1 (01:26:17):
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
wear wolf 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.

Speaker 3 (01:26:37):
Bernstein and Clarissa are. They're like met by Dante at
the sphere of Venus in the Paradiso.

Speaker 1 (01:26:44):
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 mean to make light of the ending here,
because I think the ending here is really strong and
definitely fulfills on like the vision they seem to happen
for the picture. It's again, it's it's grim, it's it's

(01:27:04):
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.

Speaker 3 (01:27:14):
Yeah, Alicia, Gonzalez and Adalita are all okay, and the
cop survives to yeah, and I guess that's the end
of La Loba.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
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

(01:27:45):
video game or a piece of work of written fiction
has a female werewolf in it, and they name the
werewolf character of Kitty, which is I think a clear,
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

(01:28:08):
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, rite in on that
as well. I do want to note there are some
examples I did not bring up because sometimes in were

(01:28:31):
wolf who done. It's the female were wolf is the twist,
because again, you get so used to your wolf man
that I 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.

Speaker 3 (01:28:50):
Yeah, playing your gender assumptions against you in misdirections.

Speaker 1 (01:28:54):
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.

(01:29:16):
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 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 where the two hundredth movie
selection for Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:29:35):
Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway.
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.

Speaker 2 (01:29:57):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. More
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: La Loba (1965)