1944’s Cry of the Werewolf opens at the LaTour museum.  I would have thought this institution would have been devoted to that 90’s electronica outfit which had a minor hit with the song “People Are Still Having Sex”.  Alas, it is instead a horror museum, devoted largely to the same-named family who lived there when a famous murder was committed.

Noir staple Nina Foch is the youngest descendant of that family.  Curiously, she and others live as gypsies in a camp nearby.  For those who might take offense at the g-word, that is simply how this group is referred to in the picture.  That their appearance and caravans would distinctly place them in rural Europe is a bit confusing.  Foch is, in fact, the princess of this group, and I found myself trying to picture her as Rose the Hat from Doctor Sleep.  Really, aren’t all gyp…Romany groups of travelers a bit like The True Knot from that book and movie?  Perhaps I’m thinking this because Foch has a line about how death brings her tribe together.

The janitor at the museum is Ivan Triessault, in an apparent break from playing Nazis in such movies as Escape in the Fog (which also starred Foch).  He runs and tells Foch her mother’s grave has been found in the house, which seemed like not of a surprise, though I don’t have much experience trying to find hidden graves.  I also wasn’t surprised she would use a secret passage next to a fireplace, but I was confused when that didn’t lead to the conservatory or the kitchen.  I feel the board game and movie of Clue have led me astray.

Anywho, Foch will turn out to be a werewolf, something I very much doubt was even supposed to be a twist, as it happens quite early in the runtime.  I found it rather novel such a movie at that time would have a female werewolf, and I wondered if it was a first.

Fritz Lieber runs the museum, and is an expert of an apparently wide range of odd subjects.  He has been writing a book on the LaTour family and Foch throws that in the fireplace after killing him.  Stephen Crane is Lieber’s son, and a fellow scientist, and he and Osa Massen supposedly use infrared light to “read” some of the burned pages.  I would have loved it if Massen, when she is looking closely at the pile of ash, had suddenly sneezed.  Instead, belligerent detective Barton MacLane is the one who scatters the ashes when he throws open a door without knocking first.

I would go into detail about the plot, but this is the kind of picture that, the more one scrutinizes it, the less it makes sense.  In some ways, it almost feels more like I’m trying to remember a dream.  Some aspects of it are bad enough that they accidentally add a touch of the uncanny, such as Crane’s curiously impassive face.  At one point, he gets mesmerized by Foch and there isn’t much of a difference from his general demeanor.  Later, Foch will enchant Massen, telling her, “You shall be my sister.  It is in my power.”  Under this spell, Massen will appear to be stuck in a loop, yelling “Don’t come near me!” even when somebody else is talking.  It is like she was hypnotized into believing she was a parrot.  She just needs to learn how to say “pretty bird!”

The lesbian overtones of Foch bewitching Massen recalls Cat People, which is clearly what this film wants to be more than anything.  That is a good goal to have, though this falls rather short of the mark.  The use of shadows for Foch’s transformation into a wolf should have been a slam dunk, but these sequences are ineptly executed.

But that is also not to say the picture fails to intrigue.  There are still a couple of moments which are surprisingly effective, most particularly museum guide John Abbott stumbling around in the beam of a flashlight.  I think he is mutting, “Here, kitty.”  Whatever he’s saying, it is like he has been lobotomized.

One thing I like about b-movie horror like Cry of the Werewolf is how it is completely aware of its ridiculousness.  In the middle of a shootout, MacLane takes off his hat and shines a flashlight through the new bullet hole it has acquired.  Another detective collects in a scrapbook newspaper clippings from cases he’s worked: “Something to show the kids!”  And I was grateful it doesn’t appear any animals would have been harmed in the production.  Still, that dog in the opening credits seems to be getting something off the roof of its mouth the entire time.  I was wondering if some cruel bastard gave it peanut butter.  So, no animals were harmed, but one was likely annoyed.

Dir: Henry Levin

Starring Nina Foch, Stephen Crane, Osa Massen

Watched as part of the Powerhouse/Indicator UK (region B) blu-ray box set Columbia Horror