Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: This week we are returning to the wild world of
Speaker 2: Mexican cinema. Six episodes ago, we watched a non lucha
Speaker 2: vampire film in the form of nineteen sixty two's The Brainiac,
Speaker 2: and so it feels fitting that today's episode is a
Speaker 2: werewolf movie, and not just any werewolf movie. It's widely
Speaker 2: considered the first Mexican werewolf film. Nineteen sixty five's La
Speaker 2: Loba or The.
Speaker 3: She Wolf really the first one in nineteen sixty five, huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah yeah, So to give that a little context
Speaker 2: in comparison, just to the wider cinematic tradition, nineteen thirteen's
Speaker 2: The Werewolf, which is now presumed to be lost in
Speaker 2: one of the studio fires. The Werewolf nineteen thirteen is
Speaker 2: considered to be the very first werewolf film period, and
Speaker 2: interestingly enough, it too centers around a female werewolf. So
Speaker 2: I'd been wanting to cover some sort of female werewolf
Speaker 2: movie for a while here. Most of your werewolf films,
Speaker 2: they tend to employ some sort of a male, hyper
Speaker 2: masculine werewolf. We'll get into some of this in a bit,
Speaker 2: and looking around, it's like some of the possibilities for
Speaker 2: like a female centered werewolf film. I mean, there are
Speaker 2: some standouts. Ginger Snaps is often held up as a
Speaker 2: kind of a classic of its own sort. There's nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six is Werewolf Woman starring Anique Borel, which is
Speaker 2: pretty great if you're looking for grindhouse ridiculousness. And then,
Speaker 2: of course, female werewolves also play into a number of
Speaker 2: really good lik in films. Joe Dante is the Howling
Speaker 2: for one. Two thousand and seven's Trick or Treat has
Speaker 2: some really cool female werewolves in one of its sequences
Speaker 2: if I remember correctly. For my money, however, none of
Speaker 2: these films are as great as a Lolova. Lelova, I think,
Speaker 2: does a great job of telling its own little mad
Speaker 2: science infused Gothic horror tale with lots of werewolf intrigue
Speaker 2: and just some terrifying sequences.
Speaker 3: In general, I have some real questions about the backstory
Speaker 3: in this movie. There are hints as to where the
Speaker 3: were wolves came from, or I'd say more than hints.
Speaker 3: It is strongly suggested where the were wolves came from,
Speaker 3: but we're not exactly told, and there are elements that
Speaker 3: don't really fit with other elements of the story, Like
Speaker 3: it is suggested that doctor Bernstein's research is what created
Speaker 3: the two main werewolves in this movie. But also there's
Speaker 3: a character who seems to have pursued a werewolf around
Speaker 3: the world searching for revenge, and that doesn't fit with
Speaker 3: the Bernstein thing. So I don't know what's going on,
Speaker 3: but I like the ambiguity, as I often do, and
Speaker 3: maybe I'm on record saying this about enough films at
Speaker 3: this point that is just a part of what my
Speaker 3: taste is. But I kind of like it when it's
Speaker 3: not exactly clear what the backstory is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this film does have its ambiguity about it, and
Speaker 2: I want to drive home that the tone is pretty
Speaker 2: serious and ultimately quite grizzly and grim, especially for the
Speaker 2: time period. This is not, again, not a luchador or
Speaker 2: luchadora movie. Nobody in a shining mask is going to
Speaker 2: show up and save the day.
Speaker 3: No, though more loosely defined, there is a good bit
Speaker 3: of wrestling in it, it doesn't have like all the
Speaker 3: definable moves that you see in a Luca film, even
Speaker 3: the Luca genre crossovers, but it does have a lot
Speaker 3: of like grappling and rolling around.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there is a brawl towards the end of
Speaker 2: the picture that I look forward to talking about. And
Speaker 2: while it is not strongly Luca in its vibe, there's
Speaker 2: a little lou just sprinkled in there. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was unavoidable. So yeah, we'll come back to that in
Speaker 2: a bit. Coming back to the female werewolf aspect of
Speaker 2: the movie, We've had plenty of tales of female were wolves,
Speaker 2: you know, dating back hundreds of years and so forth,
Speaker 2: but again, male like inthropes often receive more attention. I'm
Speaker 2: currently reading a book titled she Wolf, a Cultural History
Speaker 2: of Female Werewolves that it did by Hannah Priest, and
Speaker 2: one thing it points out is that we can often
Speaker 2: so there's sort of like two ways. There's one primary
Speaker 2: way you tend to see where wolf tales in general handled,
Speaker 2: and that is to trace it back to humanity's prehistoric history,
Speaker 2: the domestication of wild wolves, our relationship with wild wolves,
Speaker 2: looking at wild wolves, and so forth. But one thing
Speaker 2: that the authors in this book point out is that
Speaker 2: you can also, perhaps more even more accurately, look at
Speaker 2: where wolf tales is something that really emerged specifically during
Speaker 2: an agricult era, so narratives in which a male landowner
Speaker 2: is threatened in the case of a male werewolf, by
Speaker 2: a dangerous outsider and in the case of female werewolves,
Speaker 2: by a threat within his own house or community. And
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss, it's notable, you know, perhaps by accident,
Speaker 2: that today's film Lelova manages to reflect both of these models,
Speaker 2: the werewolf as a threatening outsider and the werewolf as
Speaker 2: some sort of interior threat within the family or social unit.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, another thing I want to say, and we'll come
Speaker 2: back to this as well as we can get into
Speaker 2: the specifics from the film. But cinematic werewolf visions are always,
Speaker 2: I think a careful balancing act. How are you going
Speaker 2: to stylishly deliver on a concept that is in many
Speaker 2: ways like deeply rooted in the human psyche, but do
Speaker 2: it in a believable way, make us buy into it
Speaker 2: with our heart but also with our skepticism, you know.
Speaker 2: And so werewolf effects can absolutely connect with us on
Speaker 2: a primal level and a picture, but they can also
Speaker 2: flounder and fail, and we see that occur at pretty
Speaker 2: much every budget and artistry level. You know, you can
Speaker 2: throw millions and millions of dollars at your werewolf effects
Speaker 2: and it doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to buy it.
Speaker 2: It's a fine line.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and that's true on multiple levels. I mean,
Speaker 3: in one sense, that's true of basically any monster design.
Speaker 3: Like we've talked on the show before. I think this
Speaker 3: came up in our episode on the Thing from Another World,
Speaker 3: where the presence of the monster is way more than
Speaker 3: just the monster makeup or the monster suit. It's very
Speaker 3: much in how it is framed, how it is lit,
Speaker 3: how much of it you get to see, and in
Speaker 3: what context, the kind of management of music and tension
Speaker 3: and all these things in the lead up to our
Speaker 3: glimpse of it on the screen. So, in the context
Speaker 3: of a movie, in a story, a monster is a
Speaker 3: lot more than just you know, it's costume design. So yeah,
Speaker 3: you can have cheaper costumes or cheaper makeup effects that
Speaker 3: can be used quite well, and vice versa. But I
Speaker 3: think maybe part of what you were getting at is
Speaker 3: that there's something about the werewolf in particular that's kind
Speaker 3: of difficult to manage in this way. Some movies really
Speaker 3: do pull it off well, but it's just a kind
Speaker 3: of monster design that's maybe harder not as easy as some.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's made me think about one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that I find myself preferring like an actor ensued
Speaker 2: effect as opposed to CGI stop motion animatronics. And to
Speaker 2: be clear, there are plenty of examples of CGI stop
Speaker 2: motion and animatronic werewolves that I very much enjoy. But
Speaker 2: I think, maybe you know, like I've been reading about
Speaker 2: the various traditions that entail the use of a specific
Speaker 2: animals have pelt in a werewolf transformation, or the taking
Speaker 2: on of an animal's skin or human bodies that are
Speaker 2: revealed when the skin of the wolf falls away or
Speaker 2: is peeled away from the defeated monster. And of course
Speaker 2: this goes beyond werewolf myths, but also like various transformation
Speaker 2: into animals and transformation of animals into humans that you
Speaker 2: find in various traditions. So I wonder if it is
Speaker 2: important on some level, maybe even a crucial level, to
Speaker 2: understand that we're looking at a person in a werewolf costume,
Speaker 2: at a human dressed in a skin you know, tying
Speaker 2: into ritualistic embodiment and shamanistic transformation underlying like the power
Speaker 2: of cinema in these instances. I'm not saying that it's
Speaker 2: its key to all cinema, but maybe for just Werewolf pictures,
Speaker 2: it's like a shamanistic act where we're viewing. There is
Speaker 2: a sacredness to watching someone like lan Jenny Junior or
Speaker 2: Paul Nashi perform their art.
Speaker 3: Yes, I can see what you're saying. So like the
Speaker 3: versions of Werewolf design that look more clearly like a
Speaker 3: person in a furry suit have a more religious feeling,
Speaker 3: a kind of ancient mythical feeling, than the ones where
Speaker 3: somebody is just fully transformed into a convincing cana k
Speaker 3: nine morph like where it's just a human covered in
Speaker 3: fur that feels more like a priest donning an animal
Speaker 3: skin to do some kind of ritual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or when the person just turns into a full
Speaker 2: blown German shepherd right there on the screen, which we've
Speaker 2: seen before.
Speaker 3: I might come back to more about how this movie's
Speaker 3: form of where Wolf fits more into movie history, but
Speaker 3: maybe later in the plot section.
Speaker 2: All right, moving on to elevator pitch mine is simply
Speaker 2: house of usher, but make it wear wolves.
Speaker 3: Yep, there's some weird family energy here, like arriving at
Speaker 3: a cursed mansion and somebody's you know, a suitor is
Speaker 3: there to marry various family members. There are actually multiple versions.
Speaker 3: I was thinking of it as if this were a
Speaker 3: ClickHole article, it would be quiz, which of my garbage
Speaker 3: wolf daughters are you?
Speaker 2: That's good too, all right, So, as far as I know,
Speaker 2: there's not a trailer for this picture, so maybe we'll
Speaker 2: just get a little taste of some of the Spanish dialogue.
Speaker 1: U paria sambo kan trapia.
Speaker 3: See that that's for number in Lobo.
Speaker 2: In love, La sieniocha existentialpaendpino te mismo.
Speaker 3: No what I can think about?
Speaker 2: All right, if you would like to see nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: five's La Loba, first of all, just make sure you're
Speaker 2: if you're looking for Lo Lobo or she Wolf, make
Speaker 2: sure you're throwing that nineteen sixty five. Because these titles
Speaker 2: have been used a lot. There are some DVDs floating around,
Speaker 2: but I can't speak to their quality. I think if
Speaker 2: I had to do it over again, I would have
Speaker 2: gone out of my way to try and get my
Speaker 2: hands on one of these DVDs on just the chance
Speaker 2: that the quality could be a little better because we
Speaker 2: had to depend on like archive dot org and some
Speaker 2: other streaming options. They're just there's not a high quality
Speaker 2: physical release out there as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: and I would love to see such a release occur
Speaker 2: in the future for this movie.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Crisp Blu ray of this would be really nice.
Speaker 3: I would love to see what treasures there are in
Speaker 3: all the corners of the frame. Even the version we
Speaker 3: were watching, I think, which seems like the best streaming
Speaker 3: option out there, it's kind of cropped, like you can't
Speaker 3: see the full frame, and it's certainly a little bit
Speaker 3: fuzzy around the edges everywhere. So yeah, if you're out
Speaker 3: there and you can get the rights to this thing,
Speaker 3: please release in the highest quality possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because I mean, this film does have its following.
Speaker 2: It's considered a cult classic in many regards. It just
Speaker 2: needs a better releases off. All right, let's get into
Speaker 2: the people behind this pick sure, starting at the top
Speaker 2: with the director. It's Rafael Baldon, who lived nineteen nineteen
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety four, Mexican Golden Age actor director screenwriter
Speaker 2: and producer, whose nineteen fifty seven film The Savages was
Speaker 2: nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Speaker 2: This is just one of several horror movies that he directed,
Speaker 2: including nineteen fifty seven's Swamp of the Lost Monster, which
Speaker 2: has a little creature from the Black Lagoon action going
Speaker 2: on there, nineteen fifty nine's The Man and the Monster,
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty three He's the Curse of the Crying Woman.
Speaker 2: Both of these two Man and Monster Crying Woman, those
Speaker 2: had Abel Salazar in them, who was under the Brainiac.
Speaker 2: He also did nineteen sixty four's Museum of Horror and
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine's per Verse Doll.
Speaker 3: Oh, I just realized we've talked about Swamp of the
Speaker 3: Lost Monster before. I think it was in chat one time,
Speaker 3: because it's one of the great examples of like mismatch
Speaker 3: between what the monster looks like on the poster versus
Speaker 3: in the movie. On the poster, well, you're getting the
Speaker 3: classic the Tor Johnson framing where the monster is carrying
Speaker 3: an unconscious woman and the monster looks like a cross
Speaker 3: between the brain mutant from This Island Earth and Kiff
Speaker 3: from Futurama. But in fact, in the movie it is
Speaker 3: like it looks like a killer clownfish. I guess it
Speaker 3: looks like a weird little fish with teeth going eh,
Speaker 3: nothing like it. And also there's another poster for this
Speaker 3: movie that is boring as all get out, doesn't have
Speaker 3: the monster on it and instead it's just like a
Speaker 3: cowboy on horseback. Why would you make that your your
Speaker 3: monster movie poster.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe in some markets you were going
Speaker 2: more for the cowboy film crowd as opposed to the
Speaker 2: monster movie film crowd.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Well, having seen Loloba, now I'm impressed
Speaker 3: enough that I do want to seek out these other movies.
Speaker 2: All right, Moving on to the story and screenplay credit,
Speaker 2: we have Raman o'ban, who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen
Speaker 2: six costa Rican born writer whose credits include a number
Speaker 2: of Lucca horror western in action films, including Swamp of
Speaker 2: the Lost Monster nineteen fifty Eight's The Vampire's Coffin with
Speaker 2: Abel Salazar nineteen fifty nine, is The Black Pit of
Speaker 2: Doctor m. Perverse Doll nineteen seventy six is Santo versus
Speaker 2: the She Wolves, which yeah, we had to have some
Speaker 2: Lady werewolves in that as well, seventy seven's The Black Widow,
Speaker 2: and he also directed nineteen sixty five's one hundred Cries
Speaker 2: of Terror. Just one hundred, just one hundred. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, you have to fit it all within a
Speaker 2: certain run time. But yeah, he's the historian screenplay credit here.
Speaker 2: And I have to say, I think it's a nice
Speaker 2: amalgam of gothic horror and mad science, with a kind
Speaker 2: of like provincial Mexican feel to it as well, like
Speaker 2: almost a full Carr vibe.
Speaker 3: When does this movie take place?
Speaker 2: That is a great question.
Speaker 3: Definitely riding around in cart yeah, like horse strong buggies,
Speaker 3: and I don't think we ever see a motor car
Speaker 3: in the film. And yet there are industrial freezers. There's
Speaker 3: like a walk in freezer, and microscopes and the.
Speaker 2: Most advanced microscope. We were looking at it. It just
Speaker 2: looks like a standard microscope, but we're told it's very good.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, let's move on to the cast. And
Speaker 2: this film concerns the Fernandez family, so let's meet the
Speaker 2: Fernandezes here. First of all, we have the patriarch of
Speaker 2: the Fernandez family, a brilliant scientist working in the field
Speaker 2: of Metaplasia. This is Professor Fernandez, played by Jose Eleas Moreno.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, it's Mexico Santa Claus himself. This is
Speaker 2: the guy who played Santa Claus in Santa Claus, which
Speaker 2: we previously talked about on Weird House Cinema. That film
Speaker 2: was just six years earlier.
Speaker 3: I thought he seemed familiar. Now. Wouldn't it have been
Speaker 3: horrible if the Santa Claus movie ended with him getting
Speaker 3: mauled by wolf like him this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would have been tough for the kids for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he does not have a beard in this film. I
Speaker 2: don't think he had a beard in real life. He
Speaker 2: does have a mustache, as does I think every male
Speaker 2: actor in the picture, So you can't really tell anybody
Speaker 2: apart purely based on their facial hair.
Speaker 3: Oops, all mustaches.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So. Moreno was an Aerial Award winning character actor,
Speaker 2: largely known outside of the Santa Claus role for playing
Speaker 2: heavies and sometimes villains. His other credits include nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: two is the Magnificent Beast.
Speaker 3: This is the one.
Speaker 2: He was awarded an Aerial Award for nineteen sixty nine's
Speaker 2: Night of the Bloody Apes, and he also played an
Speaker 2: ogre in Renee Cardona's nineteen fifty eight movie Polgrisito. I
Speaker 2: think it's great for me to finally see him in
Speaker 2: something other than Santa Claus, which I've seen so many times,
Speaker 2: because I think he's really good here. It's a very
Speaker 2: expressive performance. He's not a villain, but he's I guess,
Speaker 2: kind of a morally complicated character at the center of
Speaker 2: things here.
Speaker 3: Well, he's a cursed, troubled man who has maybe turned
Speaker 3: his daughter into a werewolf or just happens to be
Speaker 3: working on werewolf related research. Meanwhile, one of his colleagues
Speaker 3: fell in love with his daughter and turned her into
Speaker 3: a were wolf. Which one is it?
Speaker 2: We don't know, but he seems to hold a great
Speaker 2: deal of guilt in this. Is it because he created
Speaker 2: the lacanthropy that is in his daughter or daughters we
Speaker 2: don't know early on in the picture, or is it
Speaker 2: because he's aware of it and like out of perhaps
Speaker 2: a bit out of like professional pride and also out
Speaker 2: of love for his daughters, thinks that he can cure it,
Speaker 2: even if deep down he knows that he cannot and
Speaker 2: should have put a different stop to things earlier. You know,
Speaker 2: it's all left rather ambiguous. Now. A note on the
Speaker 2: Aerial Awards. By the way, I've mentioned them in passing
Speaker 2: on the show before, and I'm going to mention them
Speaker 2: several times here, but I'm not sure we've ever stopped
Speaker 2: to define this for those not familiar. These are in
Speaker 2: some ways the oscars of Mexican cinema, and they've been
Speaker 2: going on since nineteen forty six.
Speaker 3: All right, So.
Speaker 2: Sticking with the Fernandez family here, we're going to move
Speaker 2: on to Marcella de Fernandez. This is Professor Fernandez's wife
Speaker 2: and mother to his two daughters, played by Columba Dominguez.
Speaker 2: She lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty fourteen. Mexican actress,
Speaker 2: best known for the nineteen forty nine film Maclovia, for
Speaker 2: which she won the Best Supporting Actress Aeriel Award. Frequently
Speaker 2: worked with Roberto Conedo and once co starred with Japanese
Speaker 2: acting legend to Shira Mafuni in nineteen sixty one's The
Speaker 2: Important Man, which was nominated for an Oscar. Now, I
Speaker 2: will say it was rather confusing at times because mom
Speaker 2: in this picture does not look any older than her
Speaker 2: daughter's in fact, the actress here playing the mom is
Speaker 2: only six years older than one of the actresses playing
Speaker 2: one of the daughters.
Speaker 3: I also found that confusing. I the first time I
Speaker 3: watched it, I was mighty confused by the family relationships,
Speaker 3: especially because there is I believe intentional misdirection at first
Speaker 3: on which one of the daughters is the werewolf.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, this film we've kind of already spoiled to
Speaker 2: a certain extent. This film is sort of a werewolf
Speaker 2: who'd done it? But I have to say doesn't lean
Speaker 2: heavily enough on that gimmick to where it's it's absolutely necessary.
Speaker 3: It's only a werewolf who've done it for like twenty
Speaker 3: or thirty minutes at most. Yeah, I mean you get
Speaker 3: to the who way before the end.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, Now, getting to the daughters, the Fernandez daughters,
Speaker 2: We're gonna start with Claressa Fernandez, played by Kitty de Oyos,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen forty one through nineteen ninety nine. This
Speaker 2: is the Professor's favorite daughter, or it must be so,
Speaker 2: because she's played by our top buill performer, Golden Age
Speaker 2: starlett Kitty Dei, an actress of stage and screen and
Speaker 2: an enormously famous sex symbol of the day in Mexican cinema.
Speaker 2: She's sometimes called the Marilyn Monroe of Mexico.
Speaker 3: Hmm okay.
Speaker 2: So she was the daughter of an opera singer and
Speaker 2: she took to acting early, and her film credits go
Speaker 2: back to the mid nineteen fifties. Apparently the nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: sixth film as opposed Us in felis really Skyrocket Career.
Speaker 2: This is like the This is like a drama about infidelity,
Speaker 2: and she only has a bit part in it, but
Speaker 2: it features artistic nudity or at least, you know, topless nudity,
Speaker 2: which got a lot of people talking and ultimately Mexican
Speaker 2: censors talking, but it very much put her on the map. Afterwards,
Speaker 2: she often played fem fatale type characters, though appeared in
Speaker 2: both serious films and comedies. Her best known films include
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties to Each his Own, nineteen sixty five's Adventures
Speaker 2: at the Center of the Earth. If you look around
Speaker 2: online you can find some screenshots some promotional images from
Speaker 2: that in which she's being carried around by some sort
Speaker 2: of a bat creature, and also another couple of films
Speaker 2: from nineteen sixty six, The Witch Riders and the Crows
Speaker 2: are in mourning, the latter being I think, another gothic
Speaker 2: horror picture.
Speaker 3: Now, maybe we should have said this earlier for listeners
Speaker 3: who were new, But as usual, we're going to be
Speaker 3: talking about various twists and turns in the plot and reveal.
Speaker 3: So if you want to go into the movie unspoiled,
Speaker 3: you should probably pause and go do that now. But okay,
Speaker 3: so now on the other side of that, Kenny Doios's
Speaker 3: character is of course the daughter who is the werewolf,
Speaker 3: and one thing that I did find kind of strange
Speaker 3: was I couldn't tell exactly what they were going for,
Speaker 3: And a couple of the transformation scenes like is this
Speaker 3: supposed to be scary or is this supposed to be sexy?
Speaker 3: And I think maybe it's both. Understanding her as like
Speaker 3: a known star in Mexican cinema as the Marilyn Monroe
Speaker 3: of Mexican cinema makes more sense of like the nude
Speaker 3: transformation scenes where no significant nudity is revealed, But I
Speaker 3: think clearly these scenes are supposed to be somewhat exciting
Speaker 3: to the viewer.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I think so, And I have to say,
Speaker 2: as a performer, perfectly fine when she's a human, but
Speaker 2: I feel like she really shines when she's the were wolf,
Speaker 2: and I feel like it's a really great physical performance.
Speaker 3: Oh. I actually quite like her in some of the
Speaker 3: human drama scenes because she brings a danger to the
Speaker 3: character even when she's not in wolf mode. There is
Speaker 3: a I don't know, a kind of harshness in her
Speaker 3: eyes where there are things that are never said out
Speaker 3: loud in the film. But you since that maybe she
Speaker 3: is accepting of the idea that, yeah, she will transform
Speaker 3: and go out and kill in exchange for having some
Speaker 3: kind of some kind of other power, some kind of experience.
Speaker 3: It's beyond life and death.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, Yeah, that is a great point. I mean,
Speaker 2: she does have a terrific monologue about all of this
Speaker 2: later on in the picture. And oh and then that
Speaker 2: great piano playing sequence which you'll get to as well.
Speaker 3: The piano scene, which it's almost like the piano playing
Speaker 3: scene in Reefer Madness, but less funny and more serious
Speaker 3: where she's It's like, right when we're coming up to
Speaker 3: the climax of the film, she is furiously madly playing
Speaker 3: the piano, and the lead up to win the Full
Speaker 3: Moon is going to be revealed and she I think
Speaker 3: it's implied that she knows she is going to change
Speaker 3: and that she is going to kill, that she's going
Speaker 3: to kill innocence.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Meanwhile, her sister, Alicia Fernandez is complaining, like, you
Speaker 2: shouldn't be playing the piano. You're supposed to be mourning
Speaker 2: and yeah. Alicia is played by Adriana Roel. She lived
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty four through twenty and twenty two. She was
Speaker 2: an Aerial Award winning actress herself for nineteen seventy nine's
Speaker 2: Anacrusa and twenty fourteen She doesn't want to sleep Alone.
Speaker 2: She also has a supporting part in One Lopez Mantuzuma's
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven horror film A Lookarta.
Speaker 3: Spell that backwards, folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a Dracula.
Speaker 3: A dracula means non Dracula.
Speaker 2: I need to watch that one for myself. But I've
Speaker 2: seen at least one film by one Lopez Mantuzuma and
Speaker 2: I was very impressed by it. So at some point
Speaker 2: I'd like to watch one of his films for weird House,
Speaker 2: but I'm not sure just yet which one it's gonna be.
Speaker 3: But wait, Okay, so that's the Fernandez family, but both
Speaker 3: of the adult daughters in the Fernandez family. I was
Speaker 3: gonna have to mention this at some point because it's
Speaker 3: a weird plot decision. Both of the daughters, the adult
Speaker 3: daughters are dating coworkers of the father.
Speaker 2: Well, this is what happens when you lock your suspected
Speaker 2: werewolf daughters up all the time. You don't let them
Speaker 2: go out into the world and meet people. They're just
Speaker 2: gonna end up following in love with your various like
Speaker 2: co authors and fellow scientists.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the two other doctors who come to do
Speaker 3: werewolf research at the mansion just happens to be like, Wow,
Speaker 3: I've never seen another man before. I guess we're gonna
Speaker 3: get married. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Clarissa has a suitor in the form of
Speaker 2: doctor Alejandro Bernstein played by Joaquim Cordero, who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty three through twenty thirteen. Mexican actor of stage, screen
Speaker 2: and TV actor for active from the mid forties through
Speaker 2: twenty eleven. His career particularly picked up in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties when he won nineteen fifty one Aerial Award for
Speaker 2: The Two Little Orphans. His credits include nineteen fifty four's
Speaker 2: The River and Death. Nineteen sixty six is Doctor Satan,
Speaker 2: in which he plays the title character Doctor Satan, who
Speaker 2: I'm to understand is kind of like a super criminal
Speaker 2: character and a bit of a hypnotist with maybe some
Speaker 2: occult flavor hm okay. He returns to play Doctor Satan
Speaker 2: Wants More in nineteen sixty eight Doctor Satan Versus Black Magic.
Speaker 2: Then there's nineteen sixty nine's The Book of Stone, and
Speaker 2: certainly a few Luca movies in there, including a couple
Speaker 2: of Santo films and nineteen sixty nine's Wrestling Women Versus
Speaker 2: The Killer Robot.
Speaker 3: I liked this guy as well, so he is again.
Speaker 3: He's kiddy to OOS's character's suitor, and they play well
Speaker 3: together in their scenes. There's one of their scenes is
Speaker 3: sort of the central motivation scene in the movie, where
Speaker 3: he sort of explains what he wants. I'll talk about
Speaker 3: the monologue later on, which is echoed Mike Clarissa in
Speaker 3: a voiceover later in the film. But he gives this
Speaker 3: monologue about how he wants some kind of secret, some
Speaker 3: kind of pleasure or possibility that exists only beyond life.
Speaker 3: So he's a he's got a kind of death drive embodied,
Speaker 3: embodied in a way like he wants something that cannot
Speaker 3: be achieved as a mortal, only be achieved beyond death.
Speaker 3: And we really don't get a lot of explanation of
Speaker 3: what that is except it is somehow related to lycanthropy.
Speaker 3: And in the way he announces his desire for this
Speaker 3: thing beyond death, he has a quality that reminds me
Speaker 3: of some other cool characters in movies we've watched. It,
Speaker 3: kind of like the antagonist beater Beck in the Doctor
Speaker 3: Fibes sequel. You know, this character who is strong, driven, focused,
Speaker 3: and kind of beyond good and evil. Not quite a villain,
Speaker 3: but not necessarily good either, just like on a kind
Speaker 3: of amoral quest that has no precedent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a good way of framing it.
Speaker 2: So that's Clarisis suitor. But then we have another suitor
Speaker 2: in the mix, and that is doctor Gonzalez played by
Speaker 2: Roberto Canado who lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen ninety ninety eight.
Speaker 2: This is an actor we've talked about on the show
Speaker 2: before because he played the Doctor of Doom in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three's Doctor of Doom the Luchadora picture. He's the
Speaker 2: mad scientist in that one, which is a bit of
Speaker 2: a spoiler, but a really fun role for him because
Speaker 2: he got to play like the meek, friendly scientist but
Speaker 2: also like his secret, true identity, that of a raving
Speaker 2: mad man who wants to do all sorts of unspeakable
Speaker 2: experiments and transplant I can't remember if it's I think
Speaker 2: it's gorilla brains into or some sort of beast brains
Speaker 2: into the bodies of luchadoras.
Speaker 3: Yeah, transplanting gorilla brains into women, I think, or vice versa,
Speaker 3: maybe both. Yeah, But this is a great role. It's
Speaker 3: a great double role in that it's not that he's
Speaker 3: playing Clark Kent and Superman is playing He's playing Clark
Speaker 3: Kent and doctor Doom.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's a fun one. Go back and watch
Speaker 2: that one slash listening to our episode on it if
Speaker 2: you haven't already. But Canado was a talented Mexican performer
Speaker 2: during the golden age of Mexican cinema. He acted in
Speaker 2: over three hundred pictures, which included a lot of B
Speaker 2: films but also some serious dramas. On the B cinema
Speaker 2: end of things, he pops up in several Santo Pictures,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight's The bat Woman, which is pretty great,
Speaker 2: as well as a nineteen eighty six slasher film called
Speaker 2: Bestia Nocturna in the nineteen eighty nine Mexican slasher film
Speaker 2: Grave Robbers. Two of his most well received films include
Speaker 2: Pulverina from nineteen forty nine and an adaptation of Crime
Speaker 2: and Punishment from nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 3: So I may have misspoke earlier when I framed both
Speaker 3: of the medical colleagues of doctor Fernandez as like werewolf researchers.
Speaker 3: Rob corrects me if you disagree, But I think Gonzalez
Speaker 3: is not a werewolf researcher. I think he's just a
Speaker 3: general medical colleague and it's only Bernstein who is working
Speaker 3: on the werewolf frequency with Fernandez. Is that how you
Speaker 3: took it?
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, this guy's not in on any of like
Speaker 2: the more scandalous research operations that are going on. He's
Speaker 2: just a doctor. He's doing doctory type business in the
Speaker 2: area and beyond, including advising the local law enforcement officers
Speaker 2: about mutilated corpses that suddenly pop up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like, here is the attacker's blood. I can
Speaker 3: tell you what kind of creature it came from that
Speaker 3: sort of thing. Actually, though, in keeping with his role
Speaker 3: in Doctor of Doom, where I said he was a
Speaker 3: Clark Kent slash Doctor Doom. In this movie, he really
Speaker 3: has an impressive range, which is he goes from I
Speaker 3: would say the most kind of like handsome and capable
Speaker 3: Indiana Jones looking character in the film to making the
Speaker 3: goofiest reaction face I've ever seen in a movie.
Speaker 2: He does. It happens pretty early on. He pulls this
Speaker 2: wonderful face when he uncovers a mutilated corpse, and it's amazing.
Speaker 2: It's like the toilet has overflown reaction face here.
Speaker 3: Oohoo, you know what it is. It's that face they
Speaker 3: put on YouTube thumbnails to make people click on them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah yeah, or Netflix thumbs for films like
Speaker 2: if l Loba was a modern film and was featured
Speaker 2: on Netflix, it would be this face or some other
Speaker 2: ridiculous face that somebody's pulling. All right, we have two
Speaker 2: more characters, two more actors. Really to highlight here. We
Speaker 2: have a character by the name of Krumba. He's a
Speaker 2: stoic man, kind of dread. We were talking about this
Speaker 2: off Mike kind of dressed like a barbarian who aids
Speaker 2: Professor Fernandez and owes him some sort of mysterious life dead.
Speaker 3: Crumba is cool. Every time he's on screen. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're in good hands. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He mostly just stands around, smokes a pipe. Occasionally, man's
Speaker 2: the Secret Passage cranks, but he has a very chill,
Speaker 2: intimidating five So. Crumba is played by Crux Alvarado, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen ten through nineteen eighty four, costa Rican luchador
Speaker 2: referee and cartoonists turned actor, best known actually for various
Speaker 2: heart throt roles during the golden age of Mexican cinema.
Speaker 2: If you look up pictures of him, you'll see a
Speaker 2: lot of like very like. Sometimes he's shirtless and doing
Speaker 2: like a you know, muscle poses. Other times, you know,
Speaker 2: looks very dapper, with a pencil thin mustache and all.
Speaker 2: He's perhaps best known for playing the Professor in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty sevens The as Tech Mummy and it's fifty eight
Speaker 2: sequel The Robot Versus the as Tech Mummy. He's also
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty eight's The Batwoman Man.
Speaker 3: I would not have guessed he played romantically. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying he's ugly or something, but just the way he's
Speaker 3: done up in this movie. They've got him in this
Speaker 3: leather tunic that again it looks like like a D
Speaker 3: and D barbarian outfit. And his hair is interesting. It's
Speaker 3: just like straight up on top and nothing on the sides. Actually,
Speaker 3: it's kind of like some of those trendy haircuts with
Speaker 3: the kids, and I don't know if it's still today
Speaker 3: but in recent years, and the pipe and everything, it's
Speaker 3: just like it's not a heart throb look.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, kind of like a bohemian barbarian thing he's
Speaker 2: got going on here. Later on in the picture, we
Speaker 2: also meet a character by the name of Kazadar de
Speaker 2: Lobos played by Noeh Murayama who lived nineteen thirty through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven. We will find out that this is
Speaker 2: in fact a wandering foreign werewolf hunter with his own
Speaker 2: special werewolf hunting dog named Jack. Murayama was a Mexican
Speaker 2: actor of Japanese and Mexican descent who often played villains.
Speaker 2: He won a claim for his performance in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: two's Tleo Khan and later for nineteen eighty threes Lapachanga
Speaker 2: that was the one he was nominated for an Aerial
Speaker 2: Award for. He also starred in some grimy nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: eight exploitation films that have their own following. You can
Speaker 2: look them up. I'm not going to mention the title here.
Speaker 3: He is a cool character. I like it when he
Speaker 3: shows up. He brings a very different layer to the film,
Speaker 3: a kind of a folklore layer that's otherwise not there
Speaker 3: in what is otherwise I guess a science fiction were
Speaker 3: wolf movie. Once again brings up questions about like is
Speaker 3: this sci fi or is this fantasy horror, because like
Speaker 3: the implements that he has that can affect a where
Speaker 3: wolf feel very magical in nature, not very science fiction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he is dressed kind of like a wizard. Also,
Speaker 2: he looks very much like he could be a part
Speaker 2: of some sort of like I'm guessing like nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: heavy metal band kind of a thing, kind of like
Speaker 2: a some sort of like a Japanese Mexican Black Sabbath
Speaker 2: or something. You know, He's got all sorts of like
Speaker 2: cool occult imagery going on. And yeah, he very much
Speaker 2: brings the folk horror, the supernatural interpretation of the werewolf
Speaker 2: to the table. And arguably has the better case compared
Speaker 2: to the scientist.
Speaker 3: Also weird that we never learn his name. We learn
Speaker 3: his dog's name, but.
Speaker 2: Not his Yeah. I think the name that I cited
Speaker 2: is just from the credits. I don't remember them actually
Speaker 2: referring to him by name. They're just kind of like, hey, stranger,
Speaker 2: well the.
Speaker 3: Name you said, Casador de Lobos is just a wolf hunter,
Speaker 3: hunter of wolves.
Speaker 2: There you go, all right? And then finally, the music
Speaker 2: is the work of raul Lo Vista. He lived nineteen
Speaker 2: thirteen through nineteen eighty Aeriel Award winning composer whose credits
Speaker 2: include nineteen fifties elombresen Rostro nineteen sixty twos, The Exterminating
Speaker 2: Angel in nineteen seventy five's Darker than Night. I have
Speaker 2: to say effective score.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. In fact, we can talk about
Speaker 3: it here in the opening if you want. You ready
Speaker 3: for the plot, Yeah, let's dive right in. So we
Speaker 3: get some great hand lettered credits playing over a misty landscape.
Speaker 3: I think at the beginning we're looking at a hill
Speaker 3: covered in vegetation. Honestly, it's kind of hard to tell,
Speaker 3: but yeah, that music is playing. It's a bunch of
Speaker 3: ominous drums. It's got skittering spider violins and horns blasting
Speaker 3: in a minor key. So the action opens in a
Speaker 3: cemetery on a hillside, surrounded by forest, with rude grave
Speaker 3: markers leaning this way. In that you've got banks of
Speaker 3: fog blowing swiftly over the earth. And we cut away
Speaker 3: to the sky and see what I take is a
Speaker 3: full moon. But it looks almost as bright as the sun.
Speaker 3: And that makes sense because this was obviously shot in
Speaker 3: the daytime, like noonday daytime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I After I watched the film the next day,
Speaker 2: I showed just the opening part to my wife, and
Speaker 2: when I pointed out, like the brightness of the quote
Speaker 2: unquote moon and the day for night shooting here, she said, oh, no,
Speaker 2: that's not day for night, that's just day. And indeed, yeah,
Speaker 2: we have far less of the sort of telltale dimming
Speaker 2: of the overall opacity that you sometimes see with day
Speaker 2: for night shots. I've grown kind of I've grown to
Speaker 2: kind of love of old old fashioned day for night
Speaker 2: shoots and these various pictures, and this one I also dug.
Speaker 2: But it is just so bright. It's so bright that
Speaker 2: I think the way I ended up processing it was like,
Speaker 2: this is just how bright the full moon is if
Speaker 2: you were a werewolf. You know, it's just like inescapable.
Speaker 2: It illuminates everything and it's just blinding in its intensity.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a good reading on it. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you said there's no indication that it's nighttime, that
Speaker 3: there's visually no indication, but they do put some cricket
Speaker 3: sound effects, and.
Speaker 2: Yes they do. Yeah, I mean I ended up buying
Speaker 2: it as nighttime. I knew what they were going for,
Speaker 2: and like I was able to fully suspend disbelief.
Speaker 3: So in the Graveyard, we zoom in on a crusty
Speaker 3: topside stone vault, like a coffin vault, and suddenly the
Speaker 3: lid starts to creak open, and then out through the
Speaker 3: crack in the lid emerge two furry knob knuckled hands
Speaker 3: with huge bugle claws on each fingertip. And I thought
Speaker 3: this was a funny inversion because the coffin lid creaking
Speaker 3: open and a sinister hand coming out is a trope
Speaker 3: from vampire movies, not werewolf movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I can't think of another film where we
Speaker 2: see a werewolf crawl out of a coffin. But I
Speaker 2: like it here we're talking about it. It's turning heads.
Speaker 3: Another thing that really sets this wolf movie apart is
Speaker 3: that it does not begin with our protagonist wandering toward
Speaker 3: an encounter with a werewolf, like you know them starting unchanged,
Speaker 3: the meeting a were wolf, getting bitten or something, and
Speaker 3: then being changed. Instead, we begin with a werewolf already
Speaker 3: in wolf mode, launching into an attack on the world
Speaker 3: from below, just like coming out like a like a
Speaker 3: missile out of a hidden silo.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and boy does she ever this. I think
Speaker 2: one of the things that I love the most about
Speaker 2: this film is just the way that our she wolf
Speaker 2: is realized on the screen, the speed with which she
Speaker 2: travels like with this we'll talk about it as we
Speaker 2: proceed her, but just bounding and pouncing across the landscape
Speaker 2: with just lethal ferocity. I like, I don't I'm not
Speaker 2: used to seeing where wolves move this swiftly in just
Speaker 2: films in general. I can't think of another one where
Speaker 2: like we had this sense of just like they're just
Speaker 2: where wolf can just shoot across the forest and just
Speaker 2: get to you like a missile. I think a missile
Speaker 2: leaving the silo is a great analogy here.
Speaker 3: The opening rampage here is like a runaway train. She
Speaker 3: just gets right to business. So the order of events
Speaker 3: is she comes out of the coffin, runs up the hill,
Speaker 3: and then she like pushes through some brush into the
Speaker 3: camp site of a guy with a tent and a campfire.
Speaker 3: He's like cooking food on there, and she just jumps
Speaker 3: on him like he This guy's got a wide brimmed
Speaker 3: fedora again to invoke Indiana Jones, got kind of an
Speaker 3: Indiana Jones hat, and.
Speaker 2: She like looks so confident too. He's like, oh, time
Speaker 2: to start the day or the night or whatever. But he,
Speaker 2: you know, he's like, yep, I've got a lot of
Speaker 2: work to do. Nothing's gonna stop old handsome me. But
Speaker 2: then here comes to where wolf flying across the woods
Speaker 2: like yeah, I mean yeah, pouncing from like I don't know,
Speaker 2: like what one hundred yards. I know, it's impressive.
Speaker 3: We see her leap onto this guy from like a
Speaker 3: like a forested overhang with arms outstretched. So she's doing
Speaker 3: like a like a trapeze artist dive or like an
Speaker 3: Olympic diver or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing, Like I would say, if you're on
Speaker 2: the fence about watching this film in its entirety, at
Speaker 2: least watched the first fifteen minutes, it will amaze you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So she tackles that guy commences clawing his face
Speaker 3: and chewing out his throat. Later we're gonna learn that
Speaker 3: she rips out his heart, but we don't see that here,
Speaker 3: and then we just move right onto the next victim.
Speaker 3: So there are a couple of peasants laboring in the woods.
Speaker 3: A man is chopping firewood with an axe, a woman
Speaker 3: gathering fallen sticks, and ooh, there's this good creepy shot
Speaker 3: where the wolf woman climbs up on the root ball
Speaker 3: of a giant fallen tree to spy on the woman
Speaker 3: from behind. I've got a screenshot before you hear Rob.
Speaker 3: I really like the way this is framed. But once again,
Speaker 3: a flying leap from above. We just see her like
Speaker 3: like like launched across the frame, as like out of
Speaker 3: a bow or something. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: It is amazing and terrifying. And yeah, and I love
Speaker 2: these sequences in between, with her crawling around and these
Speaker 2: broken fallen trees and all. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3: So where wolf mauls the woman and then she lies
Speaker 3: screaming on the ground with streams of blood running across
Speaker 3: her face. The man chopping wood hears this woman crying
Speaker 3: out and then comes to help for some reason. I
Speaker 3: didn't quite understand why this happened, but he like throws
Speaker 3: his axe into a nearby tree, and then the wolf
Speaker 3: turns and begins to maul the man. But suddenly the
Speaker 3: wolf is interrupted because the full moon passes behind a cloud,
Speaker 3: and it's like that does something. It maybe drains the
Speaker 3: wolf of motivation or power, and the werewolf suddenly runs
Speaker 3: away into the dark wood. Now on the way back
Speaker 3: to her hiding place, she crosses paths with a man
Speaker 3: driving a carriage along the forest path. And I think
Speaker 3: this is doctor Bernstein in the carriage, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I believe so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so he watches the wolf woman run by
Speaker 3: with a kind of knowing and apprehensive look and then
Speaker 3: just moves on toward his destination. And as the wolf
Speaker 3: woman is fleeing, we also see a well equipped man
Speaker 3: in the woods, a guy with a rifle and a hat,
Speaker 3: surveying the devastation at the campsite with the tent. He
Speaker 3: comes upon the first victim, and this is doctor Gonzalez
Speaker 3: played by Roberto Canedo, and this is the scene where
Speaker 3: he pulls back the tent flap and sees the dead
Speaker 3: man and is just like, oh, oh man.
Speaker 2: So we're off to a great start here. And I
Speaker 2: want to drive home that the she Wolf costume here
Speaker 2: worn by Kitty, though probably not in the shots where
Speaker 2: she's flying like a human cannonball across the wilderness. I'm
Speaker 2: assuming that with a stunt person or a luchador or
Speaker 2: a trapeze artist or some sort of a professional stunt person.
Speaker 2: But the costume I thought was really effective. It seems
Speaker 2: to depend on a skin type bodysuit with added hair
Speaker 2: and tail and combined with the actress's slender form, and
Speaker 2: like the ferocity of her physical performance is a real
Speaker 2: savagery to the scenes where the she Wolf is maueling
Speaker 2: her prey. There's also a carnality to the act as well,
Speaker 2: which kind of reminds me of our recent Nosferatu adaptation.
Speaker 2: You know, both feature a kind of like you know,
Speaker 2: slender being that is feasting, but in a way that
Speaker 2: also feels kind of like erotically charged. Here.
Speaker 3: I want to do a sidebar because I wonder if
Speaker 3: you have insights on this from this book you've been
Speaker 3: reading about the history of female werewolves. So we've talked
Speaker 3: before on the show about the different common werewolf types
Speaker 3: in movies. So one type would be the quadrupedal wolf form.
Speaker 3: This is the classic vision of the werewolf. Actually in
Speaker 3: a lot of folklore, maybe not all, but you know,
Speaker 3: in a lot of the old werewolf stories from before
Speaker 3: the cinematic era, the werewolf itself is not a hybridized form.
Speaker 3: The hybrid element is simply that a person transforms into
Speaker 3: a wolf, usually a big, ferocious wolf.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like a lot of times it's like, oh, there
Speaker 2: was this deadly wolf. It was killing people and or
Speaker 2: killing livestock. We've managed to kill it and lo and behold,
Speaker 2: it turned into an old woman, or it turned into
Speaker 2: this mysterious man that we've never seen before, that sort
Speaker 2: of thing, or the skin came off and there was
Speaker 2: a person underneath.
Speaker 3: Right. So you get versions of the quadrupedal wolf form
Speaker 3: in some werewolf movies as well. Often it's a kind
Speaker 3: of beefed up version of the quadrupedal wolf, So like
Speaker 3: in American Werewolf in London or in the Twilight series.
Speaker 3: In these movies, the werewolf is essentially canine in shape.
Speaker 3: It runs on all fours, it's got the long snout,
Speaker 3: but it is larger than any real wolf and often
Speaker 3: with the monstrosity elements beefed up.
Speaker 2: I would say the Gomork from an Nevering story is
Speaker 2: also a good example of this, and I think all
Speaker 2: of these examples also point to the other reality here.
Speaker 2: This is a very hard one to pull off on
Speaker 2: screen because it's not a wolf, it's not a humanoid.
Speaker 2: It's somewhere in between. You're gonna have to depend on
Speaker 2: some rather elaborate special effects and is it going to
Speaker 2: be enough to fully convince me exactly?
Speaker 3: So that's your your one type, the four foot four
Speaker 3: feet on the ground quadrupedal were wolf. Then you've got
Speaker 3: your bipedal variants. You've got the wolf Man is what
Speaker 3: I'll call him, which is bipedal, short snout, human shaped
Speaker 3: head but covered with fur and having fangs in the mouth.
Speaker 3: This is your Lawn Cheney Junior, your Paul Nashy type
Speaker 3: universal werewolf.
Speaker 2: Can't go wrong with it. Love to see more of it.
Speaker 2: Were Wolf by Night is one of these as well,
Speaker 2: in the recent Disney TV special, which I highly recommend.
Speaker 3: Then after that you've got what I might call the
Speaker 3: man wolf, which is bipedal also but long snout, wolf
Speaker 3: shaped head as seen in movies like The Howling or
Speaker 3: Dog Soldiers.
Speaker 2: And I like this one too. I like all of them,
Speaker 2: but this one, this one is in a zone that
Speaker 2: I feel like is achievable by competent special effects artists.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, totally. But anyway, here's where I wanted to
Speaker 3: come back to the interplay between cinematic werewolves and so
Speaker 3: I think one thing that's kind of interesting is that
Speaker 3: usually in the movies, both of the bipedal forms of
Speaker 3: the werewolf are shaped in a way that is very
Speaker 3: stereotypically masculine and rob I've got images for you to
Speaker 3: look at here from like The Howling and from Dog
Speaker 3: Soldiers and The wolf Man, just a few things to survey.
Speaker 3: I was really trying to think of counter examples, and
Speaker 3: they're not really coming to mind. I'm not saying it's
Speaker 3: never happened, but most of the bipedal movie werewolves I
Speaker 3: can think of are shaped like the typical form of
Speaker 3: male body builders. You have like massive shoulders, chest and
Speaker 3: upper body tapering down to narrow hips and waste kind
Speaker 3: of a v shape, they're structured like Arnold Schwarzenegger in
Speaker 3: the seventies. Yeah, so it's a quite interesting variation in
Speaker 3: this film to get a bipedal humanoid werewolf where the
Speaker 3: body is shaped in a more stereotypically feminine form, even
Speaker 3: with long hair. Actually.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also something about like the fur pelt worn by
Speaker 3: the Clarissa werewolf in this movie almost looks in some
Speaker 3: shots like she is wearing a short dress but made
Speaker 3: of fur.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting the way that like the mind
Speaker 2: reads the femininity of the monster here. And this movie
Speaker 2: is mentioned at least in passing in the book I
Speaker 2: referenced earlier in the chapter by Peter Hutchings titled the
Speaker 2: she Wolves of Horror Cinema. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that he's talking about here is that we often see
Speaker 2: if we have a female character that's turning into a
Speaker 2: were wolf. Oftentimes that were wolf is just going to
Speaker 2: be a straight up wolf, and the gender of that
Speaker 2: wolf may be ambiguous because it's a wolf. And on
Speaker 2: the other hand, sometimes they'll transform into some sort of
Speaker 2: a hybrid creature that is overtly masculine. And in this case,
Speaker 2: the way they read Leloba is that we have a
Speaker 2: feminine character turning into a more masculine form, but one
Speaker 2: that is still distinguishable as feminine.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. So I didn't think about her transforming into
Speaker 3: a more masculine form, but I guess you could maybe
Speaker 3: read it that way. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just agree with it myself, but as their techon it.
Speaker 3: But either way, I thought it was interesting that this
Speaker 3: is a bipedal humanoid werewolf form that looks more stereotypically
Speaker 3: feminine than any basically any other examples I can think
Speaker 3: of in horror movies, and it kind of makes you wonder, like,
Speaker 3: why are all the other werewolf examples I can think
Speaker 3: of coded as masculine morphs? Like is there a particular
Speaker 3: reason for this, I guess beyond the just kind of
Speaker 3: unquestioned sexism of a lot of culture where that takes
Speaker 3: sort of like the male as default. Is there something
Speaker 3: about the wolf form, or the werewolf form in particular,
Speaker 3: that causes people to think of human masculinity because I
Speaker 3: know that the same assumption does not go with vampires,
Speaker 3: because we get plenty of typically stereotypically feminine vampires. Though
Speaker 3: of course that's kind of different because vampires are basically
Speaker 3: human in form anyway, So I don't know. One thing
Speaker 3: I was wondering about is if there is a general
Speaker 3: trend in the imagination, in our tendency to imagine monsters
Speaker 3: that thinks of them as when you have a creature
Speaker 3: that's becoming less human in appearance, whatever humanoid elements remain,
Speaker 3: are more likely on average to be imagined as masculine
Speaker 3: by default, or maybe more more likely to be imagined
Speaker 3: as masculine by default by men.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point, I guess. Another. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's so many different ways to tease this apart when
Speaker 2: you get into like the way gender is treated in
Speaker 2: culture and in storytelling. One point they bring up in
Speaker 2: the book is that body hair is one way of
Speaker 2: potentially looking at it, Like there may be a resistance
Speaker 2: to want to put a bunch of hair on your
Speaker 2: female character even as they turn into the wolf, and
Speaker 2: at the very least, like maybe they have to get
Speaker 2: a little more specific with how you're going to do it. Like,
Speaker 2: for instance, we don't see like a completely fur covered
Speaker 2: face of our she wolf here, though there is fur
Speaker 2: on her face. Likewise, there's fur on her body, but
Speaker 2: not the sense that the whole body is covered in
Speaker 2: thick fur. So there's probably a lot of just like
Speaker 2: cultural ideas of body, hair and hair and gender that
Speaker 2: get thrown into the mix when conceptualizing these things.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. That is interesting to point out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: when we see because we get a male were wolf
Speaker 3: and a female were wolf in this movie, and the
Speaker 3: lady wolf she has a smoother face than the dude does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I get the impression they put a lot
Speaker 2: of thought into this. How are we going to turn
Speaker 2: Kitty into a werewolf in a way that makes her
Speaker 2: frightening but also still like alluring to the vast majority
Speaker 2: of the audience, you know, that's still retaining her Marilyn
Speaker 2: Monroe image. How are we going to keep all of
Speaker 2: that in the mix while also transforming her into a
Speaker 2: wolf person?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is interesting also, So my first question was
Speaker 3: like why that trend? I think we got some good
Speaker 3: ideas there. But the second thing is, the second thing
Speaker 3: I was wondering is how does a more typically feminine
Speaker 3: humanoid werewolf work differently on film than the more kind
Speaker 3: of like beef bodybuilder guy where wolf does? I think
Speaker 3: in our opening here you may get one kind of
Speaker 3: answer about the tendencies filmmakers will have when dealing with
Speaker 3: these different types of werewolves. In this movie, the werewolf
Speaker 3: is depicted less as one that overwhelms you with physical
Speaker 3: size and book and braun and instead as a kind
Speaker 3: of murder acrobat, like flying through the air out of
Speaker 3: hiding to claw and slash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they make a convincing argument for it. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's so well executed on the screen. I think
Speaker 2: some other female were wolf shows definitely lean into the
Speaker 2: idea of seduction as being part of their character as well.
Speaker 2: Like I believe that's an aspect of the Trick or
Speaker 2: Treat example where the lady where wolves are also a
Speaker 2: little seductive, at least at first before they transform, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of tying into various like you know, sort of
Speaker 2: succubus ideas of some sort of seductive creature that's actually
Speaker 2: a monster. But yeah, I do like this idea of
Speaker 2: the of the she wolf as like a swift, stealth
Speaker 2: oriented killer.
Speaker 3: Anyway, to come back to the plot, at the end
Speaker 3: of this rampage, the wolf woman retreats to the coffin
Speaker 3: she climbed out of in the beginning. But here's where
Speaker 3: the twist comes in, because you might think it's like
Speaker 3: the vampire. You know, the vampire just lays in the
Speaker 3: coffin until at a certain point they open the lid
Speaker 3: and get out and do their business. This coffin is
Speaker 3: not merely a coffin. The wolf is not going in
Speaker 3: there to lie down. It is in fact a secret passageway.
Speaker 2: Ah yeah, and this is going to tie into some dialogue,
Speaker 2: that monologue we referenced earlier, you know, the idea of
Speaker 2: death as a door. I don't know if they're really
Speaker 2: deliberately trying to connect these two things, but I couldn't help.
Speaker 2: But notice I.
Speaker 3: Didn't make that connection. That's a good one. So from here,
Speaker 3: the camera retreats to a nearby mansion surrounded by a
Speaker 3: high wall that is sort of nestled at the edge
Speaker 3: of the woods. And here in the upper floors of
Speaker 3: this house, we meet Krumba. He is not formally introduced yet,
Speaker 3: we'll get more of his backstory later, but he appears
Speaker 3: as this muscle man dressed again as the party's barbarian,
Speaker 3: and he's wearing like a leather tunic, and he shows
Speaker 3: a look of concern and then appear like he goes
Speaker 3: into a woman's bedroom and starts well, actually, no, I
Speaker 3: think I was gonna say. He goes into the bedroom
Speaker 3: and starts cranking the chain, but I think the giant
Speaker 3: pole chain is in a different room. He like locks
Speaker 3: the door to a woman's bedroom and then goes to
Speaker 3: a room nearby and starts cranking this giant chain. And
Speaker 3: as he does this, we cut over to the hearth
Speaker 3: at the one end of the bedroom and see a
Speaker 3: panel on the back of the fireplace lift away. It's
Speaker 3: a secret door. And who should crawl out of it
Speaker 3: but our wolf woman here she comes.
Speaker 2: Oh man, this is great and I love that. I mean,
Speaker 2: we did those whole episodes on We did a series
Speaker 2: of episodes and stuff to blow your mind about the
Speaker 2: hearth as a gateway for supernatural threats. And here we
Speaker 2: have a hearth that's an actual literal gateway for a
Speaker 2: monstrous humanoid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this seems very creepy. The wolf woman crawls
Speaker 3: in on all fours, slowly creeping, as if maybe wounded
Speaker 3: or drained of energy. She comes into the room, collapses
Speaker 3: on the floor, unconscious, and here the camera stays on
Speaker 3: her as we get a slow, dissolved transformation sequence. Gradually,
Speaker 3: the claws dissolve into human fingers, and the suit of
Speaker 3: fur fades away and leaves behind only smooth human skin,
Speaker 3: and we see that it is a young woman lying
Speaker 3: nude on the floor. So what it's like if you
Speaker 3: don't know anything at this point, you're like, this family
Speaker 3: has a chain and muscleman operated doggy door for its
Speaker 3: werewolf woman inhabitant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, clearly this family has some issues. We've got
Speaker 2: that already.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, a guest arrives at the manor. It is the
Speaker 3: guy we saw on the road, doctor Bernstein. He's met
Speaker 3: by one of the servants and then he's brought inside
Speaker 3: and greeted by the patriarch of the house, doctor Fernandez. Again,
Speaker 3: Doctor Fernandez. That's Santa Claus from Santa Claus. Yes, Fernandez
Speaker 3: is an older man in a white lab coat. Doctor
Speaker 3: Bernstein is a young man. Both have mustaches. They all
Speaker 3: have mustaches, and we learned that they are colleagues, both
Speaker 3: involved in cutting edge medical research. Fernandez is curious if
Speaker 3: Bernstein has come to deliver professional news from a recent
Speaker 3: conference he attended, but no, the main purpose of his
Speaker 3: visit is personal. Doctor Bernstein has come to ask to
Speaker 3: marry Clarissa, one of doctor Fernandez's two daughters. Now, to
Speaker 3: clarify once again, we mentioned this during the cast list,
Speaker 3: but the two daughters are Clarissa, who is in love
Speaker 3: with doctor Bernstein, and then Alicia. Alicia is the other daughter.
Speaker 3: Both of the daughters are adults, but their rooms are
Speaker 3: full of creepy toys that would belong to a sickly
Speaker 3: aristocratic Victorian child. You know, they've got all these porcelain
Speaker 3: dolls and music boxes that play creepy tunes, and bird
Speaker 3: cages and that sort of.
Speaker 2: Thing, little wind up toys that do all sorts of
Speaker 2: little tricks.
Speaker 3: So Bernstein and Clarissa, we find out, have secretly been
Speaker 3: in love for some time, but now now he's here
Speaker 3: to ask for her hand in marriage, and he wants
Speaker 3: the blessing of her father, and the father seems torn.
Speaker 3: He likes doctor Bernstein, but he fears that if they marry,
Speaker 3: some terrible consequence will unfold, and he suggests that Bernstein
Speaker 3: stay at the house while he makes up his mind.
Speaker 3: And he says, you know, you could continue your research
Speaker 3: here anyway. I've got all of the best equipment facilities
Speaker 3: in the world. I think he says, like, I have
Speaker 3: the best microscope on the planet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there it is. It's right there on the table.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now I mentioned this earlier, but one kind of
Speaker 3: interesting thing is it's not immediately clear which daughter is
Speaker 3: the werewolf because I think they try to fake you
Speaker 3: out here by like the first daughter you see after
Speaker 3: the werewolf transformation scene is Alicia the other daughter. And
Speaker 3: we also have a scene where Alicia goes to her
Speaker 3: mother and like confesses having this terrible dream about like
Speaker 3: running through the woods at night and having blood on
Speaker 3: her hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we're supposed to be unsure which of the
Speaker 2: two daughters is the werewolf.
Speaker 3: Well, we know, we know it's one of them though,
Speaker 3: as I also said earlier, of the two, Clarissa definitely
Speaker 3: feels the most dangerous in her personality, in her presence,
Speaker 3: so there's something a bit more unhinged and threatening about
Speaker 3: the way she just looks at people and talks. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: we got a little side plot going on at the
Speaker 3: local police station. We meet some more characters, the police
Speaker 3: inspector and his deputy, and we meet doctor Gonzalez played
Speaker 3: by Roberto Canado. Actually we met him earlier because he
Speaker 3: was at the camp site, but they are examining the
Speaker 3: dead bodies from the werewolf rampage the say, previous night
Speaker 3: or the same night, not sure when this is all
Speaker 3: one big night. It's exactly one big night. And they
Speaker 3: notice the victims in this case were not only killed,
Speaker 3: the attacker opened up the chest and tore out the heart,
Speaker 3: and the inspector says, it's disgusting.
Speaker 2: It is. We get a nice close up of the wound,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's all black and white, but it's
Speaker 2: it's gooey, it's it's uh, it's juicy.
Speaker 3: In this one. Still, I got the wound looks like lips.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah, it's like a lip
Speaker 2: made out of ribs.
Speaker 3: But the doctor says, we've got a clue. The attacker's
Speaker 3: blood is left on the victim, and he says, I
Speaker 3: can collect the attack. I don't know how he tells
Speaker 3: the difference, but he says, I can collect this blood
Speaker 3: and analyze it and determine what kind of creature it
Speaker 3: came from, so we can know if it was a
Speaker 3: you know, a wolf for a bear or whatever that
Speaker 3: attacks them, or maybe a human. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Forensic subplot up and running.
Speaker 3: Right, So back at the house, doctor Fernandez is showing
Speaker 3: off his lab to Bernstein and he explains his research
Speaker 3: into metaplasia, changing one form of life into another, and
Speaker 3: this research involves a giant walk in freezer, which he
Speaker 3: shows that he's used to flash freeze plants and even
Speaker 3: some animals to essentially put them into hibernation or arrest
Speaker 3: their development in a particular state. I think he says,
Speaker 3: like something was dying and he could freeze it until
Speaker 3: it could heal without the damage progressing anymore. So he
Speaker 3: has a cryo chamber essentially, yes, and he explains what
Speaker 3: his research is really getting at. He says, mutations of
Speaker 3: nature the metamorphosis of cells. They're all equal and all
Speaker 3: succeed themselves. And he notes that through his techniques one
Speaker 3: could learn to transform the cells from one creature into
Speaker 3: that of another, even on Lobo. And then I also
Speaker 3: want to flag here Chekhov's really hard to open freezer door.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know why you'd make it that way, but
Speaker 3: they show multiple times characters struggling intensely to open the
Speaker 3: freezer from the inside. It's hard to get this door over. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even Crumba has a hard time with this one
Speaker 2: we see in a subsequen scene.
Speaker 3: For oh I like how in the lab. Here, Fernandez
Speaker 3: also explains that the moon is crucial to his experiments
Speaker 3: because of the power it exerts over the function of cells. Okay,
Speaker 3: but this is also where we learn a bit of
Speaker 3: the backstory of Crumba. We learned that Fernandez once saved
Speaker 3: Crumba's life and now Crumba has this unrepayable debt to him,
Speaker 3: and so he works for Fernandez like a watchdog. He's
Speaker 3: very very loyal, very dependable, and you know he will
Speaker 3: never give up on Fernandez to repay his life debt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when the bell rings in the night and someone
Speaker 2: has to go answer the front door, it's Crumba that doesn't.
Speaker 3: Now Here, we come to this scene where Alicia explains
Speaker 3: her recurring nightmare to her mother. She says, you know,
Speaker 3: she dreams that she is awake in the night and
Speaker 3: she's running through the woods and she hears someone coming
Speaker 3: and then hides herself and then she's overcome with rage
Speaker 3: and confusion. She does understand what she's doing until she
Speaker 3: realizes that her hands are covered in blood. And so again,
Speaker 3: at this point, we don't know which daughter is the werewolf.
Speaker 3: We're being led to think it might be Alicia. But
Speaker 3: Alicia wants to know why she and her sister are
Speaker 3: always kept locked in their rooms on the full moon.
Speaker 3: Isn't that weird?
Speaker 2: Mom?
Speaker 3: And Mom's like, well, it's your father's orders. We have
Speaker 3: to do what he says, And Alicia literally says the
Speaker 3: line from step Brothers, this house is a prison. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: and I thought this was funny, Like while they're having
Speaker 3: this argument, we cut away to Clarissa in the other
Speaker 3: room and she's just like playing with cursed music boxes
Speaker 3: and grinning like a clown.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot to do here if you're not
Speaker 2: actively engaged in mad science research.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, and also we later see Alicia. We would
Speaker 3: get like some humanizing stuff where Alicia goes to the
Speaker 3: quarters of some of the servants at the house and
Speaker 3: the servant woman's daughter is there. The daughter is named Alita,
Speaker 3: and she is deaf and mute, and so Alicia seems
Speaker 3: to be teaching Adalita to read and trying to give
Speaker 3: her some kind of speech therapy. She's like putting her
Speaker 3: fingers around her throat while she's trying to enunciate words.
Speaker 2: So it's not all just frivolous playing around with toys
Speaker 2: and dresses and so forth. She's also doing some good
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 3: But back in the lab, the plot thickens, so Bernstein
Speaker 3: and Fernandez are still there, and Bernstein is saying, you
Speaker 3: know what, I confess you've told me you're working on metaplasia.
Speaker 3: I am also working on something rather alike metaplasia. And
Speaker 3: then Fernandez just guesses. First guess he says like aanthropy,
Speaker 3: and Bernstein says, yes, So, like, where did everybody get
Speaker 3: the metaplasia research bug? Why are they all working on
Speaker 3: werewolf science? It's implied that this is not that they
Speaker 3: didn't coordinate on this. It's like a incidents that they're
Speaker 3: just both working on like anthropy, but their colleagues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they both certainly have their reasons, as
Speaker 2: we'll learn, but but yeah, this kind of just kind
Speaker 2: of this kind of comes up in the conversation where
Speaker 2: it's like, like, so you're working on where wolves is like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: well that's that's secretly what I'm working on too. We're
Speaker 2: in the same business.
Speaker 3: Bernstein says, science denies the existence of like anthropy, conceptualizes
Speaker 3: it as something unreal. Do you have the same opinion,
Speaker 3: and Fernandez says no, because I have powerful reasons to
Speaker 3: believe in it. So they're on the same page here.
Speaker 3: But then the question comes up, is like aanthropy a disease?
Speaker 3: And Bernstein says, no, it is not a disease, it
Speaker 3: is something much more. Science could not understand these secrets.
Speaker 3: Only I can decipher them. But suddenly here they're interrupted
Speaker 3: because Claressa runs in, so the lovers are reunited, and
Speaker 3: then they go off to speak privately, and once they're alone,
Speaker 3: they have an interesting conversation. Earnstein says, nothing is impossible.
Speaker 3: See I am here with you, and Clarissa says, I
Speaker 3: am afraid afraid to awaken her. Who is her afraid
Speaker 3: to awaken her? Bernstein says, it's not an illusion, Clarissa,
Speaker 3: it's reality. And then Clarissa confesses to Alejandro here that
Speaker 3: she is also having horrible dreams. She dreams that she's
Speaker 3: kissing him, but then some confusion falls over her and
Speaker 3: she can't find him, doesn't know where he is or
Speaker 3: what's happening, and then we get this wonderful monologue. Bernstein says,
Speaker 3: in the end, it's always the same to die, but
Speaker 3: not even those who died can escape from its destiny.
Speaker 3: The life of a mortal one realizes time only in
Speaker 3: an instant because after death comes the eternity, the region
Speaker 3: without dimension, infinite in time and space. Reaching it is
Speaker 3: the most important. It's there where our love will last forever.
Speaker 3: Life will soon pass, And oh my god, Like I
Speaker 3: was not prepared for this at this point in the movie.
Speaker 3: He's got some kind of necro erotic thing going on,
Speaker 3: like he yearns for death because that's the only place
Speaker 3: where eternity is possible, where their love can be forever.
Speaker 3: He thinks he has some kind of key to the
Speaker 3: gateway to something, some kind of expanded existence beyond death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of the many ways of this
Speaker 2: film is so deeply weird. You know, you kind of
Speaker 2: expect of your older black and white monster pictures to
Speaker 2: have some very cut and dry morality involved in how
Speaker 2: your human characters are relating or you're presumably human characters
Speaker 2: are relating to threats. But everyone, everyone in this picture
Speaker 2: has a little bit of the madness in them, and
Speaker 2: I really like that. I mean, except for Gunzalz. Gunzalez
Speaker 2: is a rock. He's straight straight down the middle.
Speaker 3: I'd say Alicia has kind of a straight shooter or two,
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, so they get interrupted by the return of
Speaker 3: doctor Gonsalez. He's here to speak with Fernandez about the
Speaker 3: heart ripping in the woods. Apparently one of the victims
Speaker 3: was his best friend, and he stops to speak with Alicia,
Speaker 3: who is troubled by her dreams and by worries about
Speaker 3: what's happening. And this is where we learned that Gonzalez
Speaker 3: is a colleague of doctor Fernandez and that he is
Speaker 3: the beloved of Alicia. So this is where I first
Speaker 3: realized what is weird that both of this guy's daughters
Speaker 3: are engaged to his coworkers. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again, they don't get to leave the compound much. These
Speaker 2: are the only men outside of their family that they
Speaker 2: get to meet.
Speaker 3: That's a rough dating scene. Yeah. So doctor Gonzalez is
Speaker 3: here to use Fernandez's microscope because he's got to figure
Speaker 3: out what kind of blood the killer had, remember that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think ultimately this plot goes nowhere, right, it's inconclusive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're just like, it's not a beast, not a man.
Speaker 2: There's no possible space betweeneen those two categories, so.
Speaker 3: We're not sure. Oh, here we also get the scene
Speaker 3: where the girl, the child Adalita, sneaks out at night.
Speaker 3: So in the anatomy of a sneak out here, because
Speaker 3: we've got a couple of scenes like this. She goes
Speaker 3: out of the window and climbs fences and goes to
Speaker 3: the woods to play with the tin soldier that bangs
Speaker 3: on a dramas like a little wind up toy, and
Speaker 3: she the place she goes out to play in the
Speaker 3: woods at night is said this like the ruins of
Speaker 3: an old house with exposed rafters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's completely fearless going out into the night, into
Speaker 2: this wilderness where multiple murders have just occurred, and goes
Speaker 2: to like the spookiest location you could possibly seek out
Speaker 2: because she left a toy.
Speaker 3: There or something. Meanwhile, doctor Bernstein is having an argument
Speaker 3: with Fernandez about marrying Clarissa. Long and short is you know.
Speaker 3: Fernandez is like, I don't know about this. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's a good idea, and Bernstein is like, well,
Speaker 3: we're going to do it in any you know, you
Speaker 3: can't stop us. But then as soon as Bernstein is
Speaker 3: left alone, uh, oh, it's a full moon, and he
Speaker 3: gets a crazy look in his eye, and the full
Speaker 3: moon just like it bugs out of the sky. And
Speaker 3: then whoa, he is a were wolf too. We got
Speaker 3: a second werewolf in the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeap, yeah, he starts twitching. He starts itching. You know
Speaker 2: what's gonna happen.
Speaker 3: So I guess we should describe the setup to this
Speaker 3: attack on Adalita. Fortunately, the child is not harmed. For
Speaker 3: the for the the gene siskels in the audience, you
Speaker 3: can't stand the movie scenes where a child is threatened.
Speaker 3: Adalita is gonna be okay, but it's looking perilous for
Speaker 3: her because she's just sitting there playing with this toy
Speaker 3: and the Bernstein werewolf is creeping up on her in
Speaker 3: the woods again at the ruins of a building.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: Now a new thing we get in this scene is
Speaker 3: the presence of a character who I don't think we've
Speaker 3: seen before, the werewolf Hunter and his dog, the Lee Car.
Speaker 2: Yes, Jack Jack is the dog's name.
Speaker 3: How would you describe the werewolf hunter when he first appears.
Speaker 2: Again, He has kind of an outsider bohemian vibe similar
Speaker 2: to crumbas bit different. He looks like a little he
Speaker 2: looks a little metal a little occult, but it is
Speaker 2: also like clearly has some sort of an international vibe
Speaker 2: to him, and indeed we will learn in subsequent scenes
Speaker 2: that he is from across the ocean, so he is
Speaker 2: of some sort of Asiatic origin.
Speaker 3: He's a wanderer though, Yeah, he's been everywhere.
Speaker 2: And his business is, we will learn, hunting werewolves. And
Speaker 2: he's in the right place because we've got more than
Speaker 2: one of them running around now.
Speaker 3: So the Bernstein werewolf is creeping up on little Italyita.
Speaker 3: But before he gets there and does anything, the werewolf
Speaker 3: is a hacked by a dog by the the werewolf
Speaker 3: hunter's dog, and they tussle around, they roll around, the
Speaker 3: dog is sort of mauling the werewolf, and then the
Speaker 3: werewolf is severely wounded and runs away and then Attalie
Speaker 3: to leaves, I think, never realizing anything that anything almost happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, completely oblivious like so many children.
Speaker 3: So as the injured werewolf staggers back to the mansion,
Speaker 3: he transforms back into doctor Bernstein. Shirtless. Now he collapses
Speaker 3: into Crumba's arms and we see Fernandez and his colleagues
Speaker 3: sort of come into intervene. Actually, the first thing we
Speaker 3: see of them. Is that we just cut to them
Speaker 3: in scrubs and they're like doing surgery. They're operating on
Speaker 3: Bernstein here, and Fernandez says he is moments from death.
Speaker 3: The only way to save him is to freeze him
Speaker 3: a giant freezer with the conspicuously difficult to open door.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, it's like our the man that we
Speaker 2: don't know is a werewolf is about to die from
Speaker 2: a like a bite to the heart from a dog.
Speaker 2: The only thing we can do is put him on
Speaker 2: ice and hopefully he'll be able to heal or we
Speaker 2: can figure out how to heal him later.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They're also like, we cannot tell the daughters.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So next there's a scene at the police station with
Speaker 3: the werewolf hunter, and you know, the deputy says to
Speaker 3: the chief, I think they're like, we've captured the killers.
Speaker 3: Here he is, you know, it's the guy. It's this
Speaker 3: guy and his dog. They are obviously the murderers. And
Speaker 3: the werewolf hunter says that his dog did not harm anyone.
Speaker 3: His dog likes humans. He would never hurt him, never
Speaker 3: hurt them, and he says dogs are not hypocrites like men. Instead,
Speaker 3: he gives of some of his backstory. He says he's
Speaker 3: from very distant lands across the sea, from a small village.
Speaker 3: It's not even on the map. He says he has
Speaker 3: had this dog, Jack since he was a boy. He says,
Speaker 3: is it a crime for a man to take his
Speaker 3: dog for a ride? And then they ask what's the
Speaker 3: deal with that medel around your dog's neck? And the
Speaker 3: werewolf hunter explains this means the dog is a leakar,
Speaker 3: a dog trained to fight against a lichenthrope. The cops are,
Speaker 3: of course incredulous. They're like, what's a lichen thrope? And
Speaker 3: one of them says to the other one, it's a werewolf,
Speaker 3: an old superstition of theirs. And I was thinking, what
Speaker 3: of who's.
Speaker 2: The people? The non police? I guess, okay.
Speaker 3: But they also find out this guy is in possession
Speaker 3: of a special dagger, which is engraved in Latin, says
Speaker 3: use it only at the time of revenge.
Speaker 2: So I really love how they're laying out this basically
Speaker 2: the model for how you kill werewolves in this film. Bullets,
Speaker 2: as we'll learn, are useless. Human weapons useless. The things
Speaker 2: that work are an ivory dagger or the bite of
Speaker 2: a highly trained domesticated dog, and the dog itself is
Speaker 2: interesting choice because you're talking essentially about a tamed wolf
Speaker 2: an instrument to use against the were wolf, which is
Speaker 2: kind of like rewilded human. I like the synergy of that,
Speaker 2: and I like the idea that in both cases, like
Speaker 2: you need a weapon of the tooth or the tusk
Speaker 2: to use against the were wolf, like you need a
Speaker 2: like a biological weapon, you need a weapon of nature,
Speaker 2: a weapon of predatory aggression. Only these weapons will actually
Speaker 2: hurt the beast.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I like that as well, And it's more magical
Speaker 3: than the sci fi premise. It's kind of mixing all
Speaker 3: the different shades together. Now there's another line he says
Speaker 3: here that I think is interesting when he says many
Speaker 3: people traveled the world in hunt of the wolf, the
Speaker 3: wolf that killed the one they love, and pairing that
Speaker 3: with the line on the deck or about revenge, it's
Speaker 3: really confusing. Actually, well, I don't mean this against the
Speaker 3: movie because I liked it this way, but like minute,
Speaker 3: so are the were wolves here like a project of
Speaker 3: doctor Bernstein's that is quite recent in origin, because you know,
Speaker 3: Clarissa and Bernstein are.
Speaker 2: Not that old.
Speaker 3: How would they have killed the person that this man
Speaker 3: loved I don't know, like, and he chased them around
Speaker 3: the world. That just doesn't seem to make a lot
Speaker 3: of sense. But who knows that. I guess we do
Speaker 3: learn that Bernstein has traveled a lot. So maybe maybe
Speaker 3: Bernstein did kill the one he loved somewhere else.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or maybe it's just a general, you know, vow
Speaker 2: taken against all were wolves based on like a specific
Speaker 2: loss to a different were wolf, like once they were
Speaker 2: a wolf killed a member of my family, and so
Speaker 2: now I must always hunt were wolves.
Speaker 3: That could make sense.
Speaker 2: Also, you got that highly trained dog. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: you're kind of married to the profession. At that point,
Speaker 2: you're locked in. Yeah, I mean the dog's got to work.
Speaker 2: It's a working dog.
Speaker 3: Sunk costs.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh.
Speaker 3: Also, at some point the cops said him free because
Speaker 3: another murder takes place while he's in custody. Yeah. Ooh,
Speaker 3: And there's a whoopsie at night. So the girl's mother
Speaker 3: in the in the mansion comes wandering down into the
Speaker 3: lab one night. Maybe this is just all one night.
Speaker 3: Who knows this is Fernandez's wife, Yes, this is the matriarch, Marcella. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: she sees Bernstein frozen in the freezer. Through the window.
Speaker 3: She like looks in the people, you know, through the
Speaker 3: little window. It's like, oh no, he's frozen in there.
Speaker 3: And she goes in to investigate. I guess because they
Speaker 3: didn't tell her, They.
Speaker 2: Didn't tell anybody else in the household what was going on.
Speaker 2: You can peek through the window and see a body
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 3: I think this is Fernandez's fault. You could argue that
Speaker 3: this could have been prevented if he'd just told his
Speaker 3: wife and daughters what was happening.
Speaker 2: Or put a sticky note up, you know, just so
Speaker 2: like like, hey, do not open this body's supposed to
Speaker 2: be in there. I'd be where wolf do not though, But.
Speaker 3: She goes in to investigate, and then she becomes trapped.
Speaker 3: She's like trying to open the door again to get out,
Speaker 3: but she can't get it open because it's difficult. And
Speaker 3: then I guess she's freezing at the freezer. So she
Speaker 3: turns off all the levers on the freezer, I think,
Speaker 3: to prevent herself from freezing to death. But then Bernstein
Speaker 3: starts to thaw, and we see ice crystals on his
Speaker 3: face melting. Oh no, the werewolf awakens. That's right. So
Speaker 3: later we come back to the house and Alicia finds
Speaker 3: her mother dead on the living room floor with her
Speaker 3: heart torn out. That's no good, and Clarissa is horrified,
Speaker 3: of course and runs to her room. Though I guess
Speaker 3: it's kind of implied it was Bernstein that we never
Speaker 3: see it, right, so we don't know which werewolf it
Speaker 3: was for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think we know. Ultimately we know we
Speaker 2: know it was Bernstein, but in general it's left a
Speaker 2: little vague.
Speaker 3: So here, I guess we're setting up for the final showdown.
Speaker 3: We have the mother's funeral, which is at the cemetery
Speaker 3: on the hillside where we started the movie. I was
Speaker 3: thinking it would be really funny if the plot, like
Speaker 3: the spot went to bury her in was the place
Speaker 3: where you know, they start digging, and it's just there's
Speaker 3: a secret passageway they are going to the going to
Speaker 3: the fireplace. But after the mother's funeral, the werewolf hunter
Speaker 3: sets out a bear trap in the cemetery to catch
Speaker 3: the creatures, and we see lots of characters. We kind
Speaker 3: of get the what do you call that montage where
Speaker 3: you see everybody looking kind of stern, frightened, or determined
Speaker 3: right before. We're leading up to the climax.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, everybody's kind of getting in the zone one
Speaker 2: way or another, even though they don't know exactly what's coming.
Speaker 3: We're getting all the pieces positioned on the board. Basically,
Speaker 3: we learn that everybody is going to be in and
Speaker 3: around the mansion tonight, almost as if they suspect the
Speaker 3: climax of the film is coming. Like the police inspector
Speaker 3: decides he's got to stay with the Fernandez family for
Speaker 3: their protection tonight.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh. In the lead up to the climax, here we
Speaker 3: get another child in peril scene because Adelita goes into
Speaker 3: Clarissa's room. She sneaks out of her quarters goes in
Speaker 3: Clarissa's room secretly because she wants to play with the
Speaker 3: creepy dolls, that's right.
Speaker 2: So she's in there playing and looking at dolls and all. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: this is when we have Clarissa playing the piano downstairs.
Speaker 2: She's feeling a number of emotions about the death of
Speaker 2: her mother and is going to take it out on
Speaker 2: the piano. And boy does she ever. She's playing this
Speaker 2: like this furious piano number there. It's pissing off her sister.
Speaker 2: It's apparently not a morning vibe that's being created here,
Speaker 2: and even Crumba is clearly concerned about what's happening here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's watching her play the piano and just looking like,
Speaker 3: oh boy, here we go. And then I think that
Speaker 3: he senses the full moon is coming out. So just
Speaker 3: before the change takes hold, Crumba grabs Clarissa and carries
Speaker 3: her up to her room and locks her inside, unfortunately
Speaker 3: not realizing that Adalita is in there. So Adalita hides
Speaker 3: under the bed and Clarissa begins to change in the
Speaker 3: light of the full moon in a scene that is
Speaker 3: pretty scary. But so she goes through this dissolved transformation
Speaker 3: kind of like we've seen earlier, but in the opposite direction,
Speaker 3: and just as she's leaving out the secret passageway in
Speaker 3: the fireplace, she hears a toy that Adelita had been
Speaker 3: playing with is like a wind up toy that gets dropped,
Speaker 3: and she's drawn back into the room by it. Adalita
Speaker 3: escapes by climbing down out of a window, but the
Speaker 3: she wolf chases, and this chase leads out to the
Speaker 3: ruined house with exposed rafters where Adalita was playing earlier,
Speaker 3: and this leads to a showdown between the Clarissa Wolf
Speaker 3: and the werewolf Hunter. So here's the first of our
Speaker 3: big fights and the werewolf hunter. He's got his ivory
Speaker 3: dagger there and he's trying to fend her off, but
Speaker 3: she's slashing and clawing and mauling at him and they're
Speaker 3: rolling around on the ground. So here's the first wrestling match.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, back in the house's what's happening with the male
Speaker 2: were wolf. Well, he's back in action and Crumba is
Speaker 2: there to fight him, and this is where we get
Speaker 2: a big, slobbery knocker of a battle between these two
Speaker 2: with a little bit of Lucha libre esque action kind
Speaker 2: of sprinkled in. Nothing too overt, but at one point
Speaker 2: I do love that the were wolf grabs Crumba in
Speaker 2: some form of a full nelson, kind of like a
Speaker 2: but instead of locking his fingers behind Crumba's neck, he
Speaker 2: like puts his claws on Crumbus's face, So I think
Speaker 2: it should be called the full moon nelson instead, like
Speaker 2: a were wolf variant of a hold. I like it,
Speaker 2: but this is a pretty good fight. They're throwing furniture around,
Speaker 2: it does not end well for Crumba. Oh and I
Speaker 2: should And also it doesn't end well for the professor.
Speaker 2: This were wolf also brutally murders Professor Fernandez as well.
Speaker 2: So the body count is really beginning to stack up here,
Speaker 2: and characters are dying in graphic detail, the black and
Speaker 2: white blood everywhere.
Speaker 3: Alicia escapes the scene out out of the house and
Speaker 3: is pursued. She does get her Oh she's she gets
Speaker 3: caught in the werewolf hunter's bear trap.
Speaker 2: Oh does Oh god, I was not expecting that. I
Speaker 2: should have expected it. They set the trap, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's been established. But then when she stepped in
Speaker 2: it and that thing clamped on her foot, I was like,
Speaker 2: oh god, you know that caught me off guard. Very
Speaker 2: well done.
Speaker 3: So several more of our good characters are attacked or
Speaker 3: threatened by the two by the two werewolves. Ultimately, though,
Speaker 3: the werewolves are defeated in one case by being mauled
Speaker 3: by the leekr dog the werewolf killing dog, and then
Speaker 3: the other case being stabbed I think by the police
Speaker 3: inspector with the ivory knife that was dropped by the
Speaker 3: werewolf Hunter is unfortunately killed in action. But then the
Speaker 3: police inspector comes along and picks up the ivory knife
Speaker 3: and is able to fit one of the two were wolves.
Speaker 2: Yes, I believe our she wolf is killed by the knife.
Speaker 2: Our male wolf is killed by the bite. And then
Speaker 2: we get that sad scene with Jack the dog laying
Speaker 2: there by the side of his now deceased master.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of interesting because we get multiple like
Speaker 3: it's juxtaposed with the kind of lovers isn't the right
Speaker 3: word for the guy and his dog, but kind of
Speaker 3: the companions united in the end because the dog lays
Speaker 3: down next to the were wolf hunter. They're kind of
Speaker 3: there together, and though the dog is still alive. But
Speaker 3: then the two were wolves lay down next to each
Speaker 3: other as they die, and then they both transform back
Speaker 3: into their human forms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's naked and he's I think wearing like
Speaker 2: torn pants in this. But it's really nicely framed, the
Speaker 2: bodies of our cursed lovers finally coming together, entangled in
Speaker 2: the moonlight as our survivors look on, and we get
Speaker 2: a repetition of that freedom and death monologue from earlier,
Speaker 2: and it woo it hits pretty hard, like the ending
Speaker 2: of this film takes no prisoners it's pretty brutal.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that does raise the question. So Bernstein thought
Speaker 3: that they would achieve some kind of like ascension after death,
Speaker 3: like that would be an empowering thing where they could
Speaker 3: have eternity. Do they get that we never see the
Speaker 3: other side of death. Are they living on somehow? What's happening?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: One can imagine a cut of this picture in which
Speaker 2: we go right from this scene to a heavenly wear
Speaker 2: wolf wedding. They're both in full like hybrid werewolf form though,
Speaker 2: you know, with bow ties and veil and all, and
Speaker 2: they are wetted and they become husband and wife.
Speaker 3: But that's not what we get here, Bernstein and Clarissa are.
Speaker 3: They're like met by Dante the sphere of Venus in
Speaker 3: the Paradiso.
Speaker 2: Yes, and the family members in attendance, they're all like
Speaker 2: bleeding from open wounds like American werewolf in London style.
Speaker 2: But I don't I don't mean to make light of
Speaker 2: the endit here, because I think the ending here is
Speaker 2: really strong and definitely fulfills on like the vision they
Speaker 2: seem to have for the picture. It's again, it's it's grim,
Speaker 2: it's it's not pulling any punches, but we do have
Speaker 2: our three survivors, I guess four survivors, but three main
Speaker 2: survivors that we have like real attachment to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Alicia, Gonzalez and Adalita are all okay, and then
Speaker 3: the cop survives to Yeah, and I guess that's the
Speaker 3: end of La Loba.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I have to say this one is really strong.
Speaker 2: A big fan of La Looba. Again, I may have
Speaker 2: to try and find whatever kind of whatever kind of
Speaker 2: DVD is actually out there, and I'm hoping that somebody
Speaker 2: puts out a better physical release of this in the future,
Speaker 2: because I think this is a film that deserves it. Again,
Speaker 2: it has its own cult status. Looking around, I did
Speaker 2: notice there are multiple instances in which a video game
Speaker 2: or a piece of work of written fiction has a
Speaker 2: female werewolf in it, and they name the where wolf
Speaker 2: character of Kitty, which is I think a clear reference
Speaker 2: to this picture. And it also works on another level
Speaker 2: because like Kitty Cat wear a wolf dog. It's also
Speaker 2: a little bit funny but also a nice deep cut
Speaker 2: into Mexican horror cinema. All Right, We're gonna go ahead
Speaker 2: and close this episode up, but we'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from everyone out there. If you have thoughts on where
Speaker 2: wolf movies in general, write in, We'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from you. Specifically, if you have some other great examples
Speaker 2: of female were wolf pictures or fiction in general, or
Speaker 2: folk tales and so forth, write in on that as well.
Speaker 2: I do want to note there are some examples I
Speaker 2: did not bring up, because sometimes in were Wolf who Done,
Speaker 2: it's the female were wolf is the twist, because again,
Speaker 2: you get so used to your wolf man that if
Speaker 2: it's if it is a female character that's secretly the
Speaker 2: were wolf, well sometimes that's the big twist. So I
Speaker 2: didn't reference any of those by name, but maybe we
Speaker 2: could get into that in Listener Male with you know
Speaker 2: some spoiler warnings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, playing your your gender assumptions against you in misdirection, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's one way to get your heart ripped out in
Speaker 2: the woods folks. All right, just a reminder that Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episodes
Speaker 2: on Wednesdays, which coincidentally are currently dealing with werewolves, and
Speaker 2: then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about weird films on Weird House Cinema. If
Speaker 2: you want to follow Weird House Cinema on social, go
Speaker 2: to letterbox dot com. Our username is weird house and
Speaker 2: we have a wonderful list of all the films we've
Speaker 2: we've considered thus far. I believe we're on one ninety eight.
Speaker 2: We're about to do one ninety nine, and then we'll
Speaker 2: do the two hundredth episode or the two hundredth movie
Speaker 2: selection for Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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