Weirdhouse Cinema: La Loba (1965)

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss Mexico’s first werewolf movie “La Loba” (AKA “The She-Wolf”) from 1965, starring Kitty de Hoyos as a female lycanthrope and co-starring Roberto Cañedo and José Elías Moreno. Draw blood!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
And this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
This week we are returning to the wild world of
Mexican cinema. Six episodes ago, we watched a non lucha
vampire film in the form of nineteen sixty two's The Brainiac,
and so it feels fitting that today's episode is a
werewolf movie, and not just any werewolf movie. It's widely
considered the first Mexican werewolf film. Nineteen sixty five's La

(00:38):
Loba or The.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
She Wolf really the first one in nineteen sixty five, huh.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, yeah yeah, So to give that a little context
in comparison, just to the wider cinematic tradition, nineteen thirteen's
The Werewolf, which is now presumed to be lost in
one of the studio fires. The Werewolf nineteen thirteen is
considered to be the very first werewolf film period, and

(01:04):
interestingly enough, it too centers around a female werewolf. So
I'd been wanting to cover some sort of female werewolf
movie for a while here. Most of your werewolf films,
they tend to employ some sort of a male, hyper
masculine werewolf. We'll get into some of this in a bit,

(01:24):
and looking around, it's like some of the possibilities for
like a female centered werewolf film. I mean, there are
some standouts. Ginger Snaps is often held up as a
kind of a classic of its own sort. There's nineteen
seventy six is Werewolf Woman starring Anique Borel, which is
pretty great if you're looking for grindhouse ridiculousness. And then,

(01:46):
of course, female werewolves also play into a number of
really good lik in films. Joe Dante is the Howling
for one. Two thousand and seven's Trick or Treat has
some really cool female werewolves in one of its sequences
if I remember correctly. For my money, however, none of
these films are as great as a Lolova. Lelova, I think,
does a great job of telling its own little mad

(02:08):
science infused Gothic horror tale with lots of werewolf intrigue
and just some terrifying sequences.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
In general, I have some real questions about the backstory
in this movie. There are hints as to where the
were wolves came from, or I'd say more than hints.
It is strongly suggested where the were wolves came from,
but we're not exactly told, and there are elements that
don't really fit with other elements of the story, Like

(02:40):
it is suggested that doctor Bernstein's research is what created
the two main werewolves in this movie. But also there's
a character who seems to have pursued a werewolf around
the world searching for revenge, and that doesn't fit with
the Bernstein thing. So I don't know what's going on,
but I like the ambiguity, as I often do, and

(03:02):
maybe I'm on record saying this about enough films at
this point that is just a part of what my
taste is. But I kind of like it when it's
not exactly clear what the backstory is.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, this film does have its ambiguity about it, and
I want to drive home that the tone is pretty
serious and ultimately quite grizzly and grim, especially for the
time period. This is not, again, not a luchador or
luchadora movie. Nobody in a shining mask is going to
show up and save the day.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
No, though more loosely defined, there is a good bit
of wrestling in it, it doesn't have like all the
definable moves that you see in a Luca film, even
the Luca genre crossovers, but it does have a lot
of like grappling and rolling around.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Yeah. Yeah, there is a brawl towards the end of
the picture that I look forward to talking about. And
while it is not strongly Luca in its vibe, there's
a little lou just sprinkled in there. I mean, it
was unavoidable. So yeah, we'll come back to that in
a bit. Coming back to the female werewolf aspect of
the movie, We've had plenty of tales of female were wolves,

(04:11):
you know, dating back hundreds of years and so forth,
but again, male like inthropes often receive more attention. I'm
currently reading a book titled she Wolf, a Cultural History
of Female Werewolves that it did by Hannah Priest, and
one thing it points out is that we can often
so there's sort of like two ways. There's one primary

(04:31):
way you tend to see where wolf tales in general handled,
and that is to trace it back to humanity's prehistoric history,
the domestication of wild wolves, our relationship with wild wolves,
looking at wild wolves, and so forth. But one thing
that the authors in this book point out is that
you can also, perhaps more even more accurately, look at

(04:54):
where wolf tales is something that really emerged specifically during
an agricult era, so narratives in which a male landowner
is threatened in the case of a male werewolf, by
a dangerous outsider and in the case of female werewolves,
by a threat within his own house or community. And

(05:15):
as we'll discuss, it's notable, you know, perhaps by accident,
that today's film Lelova manages to reflect both of these models,
the werewolf as a threatening outsider and the werewolf as
some sort of interior threat within the family or social unit.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
Oh that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, another thing I want to say, and we'll come
back to this as well as we can get into
the specifics from the film. But cinematic werewolf visions are always,
I think a careful balancing act. How are you going
to stylishly deliver on a concept that is in many
ways like deeply rooted in the human psyche, but do
it in a believable way, make us buy into it

(05:52):
with our heart but also with our skepticism, you know.
And so werewolf effects can absolutely connect with us on
a primal level and a picture, but they can also
flounder and fail, and we see that occur at pretty
much every budget and artistry level. You know, you can
throw millions and millions of dollars at your werewolf effects

(06:12):
and it doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to buy it.
It's a fine line.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Well, yeah, and that's true on multiple levels. I mean,
in one sense, that's true of basically any monster design.
Like we've talked on the show before. I think this
came up in our episode on the Thing from Another World,
where the presence of the monster is way more than
just the monster makeup or the monster suit. It's very
much in how it is framed, how it is lit,

(06:37):
how much of it you get to see, and in
what context, the kind of management of music and tension
and all these things in the lead up to our
glimpse of it on the screen. So, in the context
of a movie, in a story, a monster is a
lot more than just you know, it's costume design. So yeah,
you can have cheaper costumes or cheaper makeup effects that

(06:58):
can be used quite well, and vice versa. But I
think maybe part of what you were getting at is
that there's something about the werewolf in particular that's kind
of difficult to manage in this way. Some movies really
do pull it off well, but it's just a kind
of monster design that's maybe harder not as easy as some.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, And it's made me think about one of the
reasons that I find myself preferring like an actor ensued
effect as opposed to CGI stop motion animatronics. And to
be clear, there are plenty of examples of CGI stop
motion and animatronic werewolves that I very much enjoy. But
I think, maybe you know, like I've been reading about

(07:42):
the various traditions that entail the use of a specific
animals have pelt in a werewolf transformation, or the taking
on of an animal's skin or human bodies that are
revealed when the skin of the wolf falls away or
is peeled away from the defeated monster. And of course
this goes beyond werewolf myths, but also like various transformation

(08:03):
into animals and transformation of animals into humans that you
find in various traditions. So I wonder if it is
important on some level, maybe even a crucial level, to
understand that we're looking at a person in a werewolf costume,
at a human dressed in a skin you know, tying
into ritualistic embodiment and shamanistic transformation underlying like the power

(08:26):
of cinema in these instances. I'm not saying that it's
its key to all cinema, but maybe for just Werewolf pictures,
it's like a shamanistic act where we're viewing. There is
a sacredness to watching someone like lan Jenny Junior or
Paul Nashi perform their art.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yes, I can see what you're saying. So like the
versions of Werewolf design that look more clearly like a
person in a furry suit have a more religious feeling,
a kind of ancient mythical feeling, than the ones where
somebody is just fully transformed into a convincing cana k
nine morph like where it's just a human covered in

(09:03):
fur that feels more like a priest donning an animal
skin to do some kind of ritual.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, or when the person just turns into a full
blown German shepherd right there on the screen, which we've
seen before.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
I might come back to more about how this movie's
form of where Wolf fits more into movie history, but
maybe later in the plot section.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
All right, moving on to elevator pitch mine is simply
house of usher, but make it wear wolves.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Yep, there's some weird family energy here, like arriving at
a cursed mansion and somebody's you know, a suitor is
there to marry various family members. There are actually multiple versions.
I was thinking of it as if this were a
ClickHole article, it would be quiz, which of my garbage

(09:49):
wolf daughters are you?

Speaker 2 (09:52):
That's good too, all right, So, as far as I know,
there's not a trailer for this picture, so maybe we'll
just get a little taste of some of the Spanish dialogue.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
U paria sambo kan trapia.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
See that that's for number in Lobo.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
In love, La sieniocha existentialpaendpino te mismo.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
No what I can think about?

Speaker 2 (10:34):
All right, if you would like to see nineteen sixty
five's La Loba, first of all, just make sure you're
if you're looking for Lo Lobo or she Wolf, make
sure you're throwing that nineteen sixty five. Because these titles
have been used a lot. There are some DVDs floating around,
but I can't speak to their quality. I think if
I had to do it over again, I would have
gone out of my way to try and get my

(10:55):
hands on one of these DVDs on just the chance
that the quality could be a little better because we
had to depend on like archive dot org and some
other streaming options. They're just there's not a high quality
physical release out there as far as I can tell,
and I would love to see such a release occur
in the future for this movie.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Oh yeah, Crisp Blu ray of this would be really nice.
I would love to see what treasures there are in
all the corners of the frame. Even the version we
were watching, I think, which seems like the best streaming
option out there, it's kind of cropped, like you can't
see the full frame, and it's certainly a little bit
fuzzy around the edges everywhere. So yeah, if you're out

(11:37):
there and you can get the rights to this thing,
please release in the highest quality possible.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, Because I mean, this film does have its following.
It's considered a cult classic in many regards. It just
needs a better releases off. All right, let's get into
the people behind this pick sure, starting at the top
with the director. It's Rafael Baldon, who lived nineteen nineteen

(12:06):
through nineteen ninety four, Mexican Golden Age actor director screenwriter
and producer, whose nineteen fifty seven film The Savages was
nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
This is just one of several horror movies that he directed,
including nineteen fifty seven's Swamp of the Lost Monster, which
has a little creature from the Black Lagoon action going

(12:28):
on there, nineteen fifty nine's The Man and the Monster,
in nineteen sixty three He's the Curse of the Crying Woman.
Both of these two Man and Monster Crying Woman, those
had Abel Salazar in them, who was under the Brainiac.
He also did nineteen sixty four's Museum of Horror and
nineteen sixty nine's per Verse Doll.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Oh, I just realized we've talked about Swamp of the
Lost Monster before. I think it was in chat one time,
because it's one of the great examples of like mismatch
between what the monster looks like on the poster versus
in the movie. On the poster, well, you're getting the
classic the Tor Johnson framing where the monster is carrying
an unconscious woman and the monster looks like a cross

(13:11):
between the brain mutant from This Island Earth and Kiff
from Futurama. But in fact, in the movie it is
like it looks like a killer clownfish. I guess it
looks like a weird little fish with teeth going eh,
nothing like it. And also there's another poster for this
movie that is boring as all get out, doesn't have

(13:32):
the monster on it and instead it's just like a
cowboy on horseback. Why would you make that your your
monster movie poster.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
I don't know. Maybe in some markets you were going
more for the cowboy film crowd as opposed to the
monster movie film crowd.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
I don't know. Well, having seen Loloba, now I'm impressed
enough that I do want to seek out these other movies.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
All right, Moving on to the story and screenplay credit,
we have Raman o'ban, who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen
six costa Rican born writer whose credits include a number
of Lucca horror western in action films, including Swamp of
the Lost Monster nineteen fifty Eight's The Vampire's Coffin with
Abel Salazar nineteen fifty nine, is The Black Pit of

(14:15):
Doctor m. Perverse Doll nineteen seventy six is Santo versus
the She Wolves, which yeah, we had to have some
Lady werewolves in that as well, seventy seven's The Black Widow,
and he also directed nineteen sixty five's one hundred Cries
of Terror. Just one hundred, just one hundred. I mean,
you know, you have to fit it all within a

(14:35):
certain run time. But yeah, he's the historian screenplay credit here.
And I have to say, I think it's a nice
amalgam of gothic horror and mad science, with a kind
of like provincial Mexican feel to it as well, like
almost a full Carr vibe.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
When does this movie take place?

Speaker 2 (14:56):
That is a great question.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
Definitely riding around in cart yeah, like horse strong buggies,
and I don't think we ever see a motor car
in the film. And yet there are industrial freezers. There's
like a walk in freezer, and microscopes and the.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Most advanced microscope. We were looking at it. It just
looks like a standard microscope, but we're told it's very good.
All right. Well, let's move on to the cast. And
this film concerns the Fernandez family, so let's meet the
Fernandezes here. First of all, we have the patriarch of
the Fernandez family, a brilliant scientist working in the field

(15:32):
of Metaplasia. This is Professor Fernandez, played by Jose Eleas Moreno.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's Mexico Santa Claus himself. This is
the guy who played Santa Claus in Santa Claus, which
we previously talked about on Weird House Cinema. That film
was just six years earlier.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
I thought he seemed familiar. Now. Wouldn't it have been
horrible if the Santa Claus movie ended with him getting
mauled by wolf like him this one.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, that would have been tough for the kids for sure. Yeah,
he does not have a beard in this film. I
don't think he had a beard in real life. He
does have a mustache, as does I think every male
actor in the picture, So you can't really tell anybody
apart purely based on their facial hair.

Speaker 3 (16:20):
Oops, all mustaches.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah. So. Moreno was an Aerial Award winning character actor,
largely known outside of the Santa Claus role for playing
heavies and sometimes villains. His other credits include nineteen fifty
two is the Magnificent Beast.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
This is the one.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
He was awarded an Aerial Award for nineteen sixty nine's
Night of the Bloody Apes, and he also played an
ogre in Renee Cardona's nineteen fifty eight movie Polgrisito. I
think it's great for me to finally see him in
something other than Santa Claus, which I've seen so many times,
because I think he's really good here. It's a very
expressive performance. He's not a villain, but he's I guess,

(17:01):
kind of a morally complicated character at the center of
things here.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Well, he's a cursed, troubled man who has maybe turned
his daughter into a werewolf or just happens to be
working on werewolf related research. Meanwhile, one of his colleagues
fell in love with his daughter and turned her into
a were wolf. Which one is it?

Speaker 2 (17:21):
We don't know, but he seems to hold a great
deal of guilt in this. Is it because he created
the lacanthropy that is in his daughter or daughters we
don't know early on in the picture, or is it
because he's aware of it and like out of perhaps
a bit out of like professional pride and also out

(17:42):
of love for his daughters, thinks that he can cure it,
even if deep down he knows that he cannot and
should have put a different stop to things earlier. You know,
it's all left rather ambiguous. Now. A note on the
Aerial Awards. By the way, I've mentioned them in passing
on the show before, and I'm going to mention them
several times here, but I'm not sure we've ever stopped

(18:05):
to define this for those not familiar. These are in
some ways the oscars of Mexican cinema, and they've been
going on since nineteen forty six.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
All right, So.

Speaker 2 (18:13):
Sticking with the Fernandez family here, we're going to move
on to Marcella de Fernandez. This is Professor Fernandez's wife
and mother to his two daughters, played by Columba Dominguez.
She lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty fourteen. Mexican actress,
best known for the nineteen forty nine film Maclovia, for

(18:35):
which she won the Best Supporting Actress Aeriel Award. Frequently
worked with Roberto Conedo and once co starred with Japanese
acting legend to Shira Mafuni in nineteen sixty one's The
Important Man, which was nominated for an Oscar. Now, I
will say it was rather confusing at times because mom
in this picture does not look any older than her

(18:57):
daughter's in fact, the actress here playing the mom is
only six years older than one of the actresses playing
one of the daughters.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
I also found that confusing. I the first time I
watched it, I was mighty confused by the family relationships,
especially because there is I believe intentional misdirection at first
on which one of the daughters is the werewolf.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Right, Yeah, this film we've kind of already spoiled to
a certain extent. This film is sort of a werewolf
who'd done it? But I have to say doesn't lean
heavily enough on that gimmick to where it's it's absolutely necessary.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
It's only a werewolf who've done it for like twenty
or thirty minutes at most. Yeah, I mean you get
to the who way before the end.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
Yes, all right, Now, getting to the daughters, the Fernandez daughters,
We're gonna start with Claressa Fernandez, played by Kitty de Oyos,
who lived nineteen forty one through nineteen ninety nine. This
is the Professor's favorite daughter, or it must be so,
because she's played by our top buill performer, Golden Age
starlett Kitty Dei, an actress of stage and screen and

(20:02):
an enormously famous sex symbol of the day in Mexican cinema.
She's sometimes called the Marilyn Monroe of Mexico.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
Hmm okay.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
So she was the daughter of an opera singer and
she took to acting early, and her film credits go
back to the mid nineteen fifties. Apparently the nineteen fifty
sixth film as opposed Us in felis really Skyrocket Career.
This is like the This is like a drama about infidelity,
and she only has a bit part in it, but

(20:32):
it features artistic nudity or at least, you know, topless nudity,
which got a lot of people talking and ultimately Mexican
censors talking, but it very much put her on the map. Afterwards,
she often played fem fatale type characters, though appeared in
both serious films and comedies. Her best known films include

(20:53):
nineteen sixties to Each his Own, nineteen sixty five's Adventures
at the Center of the Earth. If you look around
online you can find some screenshots some promotional images from
that in which she's being carried around by some sort
of a bat creature, and also another couple of films
from nineteen sixty six, The Witch Riders and the Crows
are in mourning, the latter being I think, another gothic

(21:16):
horror picture.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Now, maybe we should have said this earlier for listeners
who were new, But as usual, we're going to be
talking about various twists and turns in the plot and reveal.
So if you want to go into the movie unspoiled,
you should probably pause and go do that now. But okay,
so now on the other side of that, Kenny Doios's
character is of course the daughter who is the werewolf,

(21:39):
and one thing that I did find kind of strange
was I couldn't tell exactly what they were going for,
And a couple of the transformation scenes like is this
supposed to be scary or is this supposed to be sexy?
And I think maybe it's both. Understanding her as like
a known star in Mexican cinema as the Marilyn Monroe

(22:01):
of Mexican cinema makes more sense of like the nude
transformation scenes where no significant nudity is revealed, But I
think clearly these scenes are supposed to be somewhat exciting
to the viewer.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yes, yeah, I think so, And I have to say,
as a performer, perfectly fine when she's a human, but
I feel like she really shines when she's the were wolf,
and I feel like it's a really great physical performance.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Oh. I actually quite like her in some of the
human drama scenes because she brings a danger to the
character even when she's not in wolf mode. There is
a I don't know, a kind of harshness in her
eyes where there are things that are never said out
loud in the film. But you since that maybe she

(22:49):
is accepting of the idea that, yeah, she will transform
and go out and kill in exchange for having some
kind of some kind of other power, some kind of experience.
It's beyond life and death.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Oh. Absolutely, Yeah, that is a great point. I mean,
she does have a terrific monologue about all of this
later on in the picture. And oh and then that
great piano playing sequence which you'll get to as well.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
The piano scene, which it's almost like the piano playing
scene in Reefer Madness, but less funny and more serious
where she's It's like, right when we're coming up to
the climax of the film, she is furiously madly playing
the piano, and the lead up to win the Full
Moon is going to be revealed and she I think

(23:34):
it's implied that she knows she is going to change
and that she is going to kill, that she's going
to kill innocence.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yeah. Meanwhile, her sister, Alicia Fernandez is complaining, like, you
shouldn't be playing the piano. You're supposed to be mourning
and yeah. Alicia is played by Adriana Roel. She lived
nineteen thirty four through twenty and twenty two. She was
an Aerial Award winning actress herself for nineteen seventy nine's

(24:00):
Anacrusa and twenty fourteen She doesn't want to sleep Alone.
She also has a supporting part in One Lopez Mantuzuma's
nineteen seventy seven horror film A Lookarta.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Spell that backwards, folks.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, and it's a Dracula.

Speaker 3 (24:17):
A dracula means non Dracula.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
I need to watch that one for myself. But I've
seen at least one film by one Lopez Mantuzuma and
I was very impressed by it. So at some point
I'd like to watch one of his films for weird House,
but I'm not sure just yet which one it's gonna be.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
But wait, Okay, so that's the Fernandez family, but both
of the adult daughters in the Fernandez family. I was
gonna have to mention this at some point because it's
a weird plot decision. Both of the daughters, the adult
daughters are dating coworkers of the father.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Well, this is what happens when you lock your suspected
werewolf daughters up all the time. You don't let them
go out into the world and meet people. They're just
gonna end up following in love with your various like
co authors and fellow scientists.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
Yeah. So the two other doctors who come to do
werewolf research at the mansion just happens to be like, Wow,
I've never seen another man before. I guess we're gonna
get married. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, So Clarissa has a suitor in the form of
doctor Alejandro Bernstein played by Joaquim Cordero, who lived nineteen
twenty three through twenty thirteen. Mexican actor of stage, screen
and TV actor for active from the mid forties through
twenty eleven. His career particularly picked up in the nineteen

(25:37):
fifties when he won nineteen fifty one Aerial Award for
The Two Little Orphans. His credits include nineteen fifty four's
The River and Death. Nineteen sixty six is Doctor Satan,
in which he plays the title character Doctor Satan, who
I'm to understand is kind of like a super criminal
character and a bit of a hypnotist with maybe some

(25:58):
occult flavor hm okay. He returns to play Doctor Satan
Wants More in nineteen sixty eight Doctor Satan Versus Black Magic.
Then there's nineteen sixty nine's The Book of Stone, and
certainly a few Luca movies in there, including a couple
of Santo films and nineteen sixty nine's Wrestling Women Versus
The Killer Robot.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
I liked this guy as well, so he is again.
He's kiddy to OOS's character's suitor, and they play well
together in their scenes. There's one of their scenes is
sort of the central motivation scene in the movie, where
he sort of explains what he wants. I'll talk about
the monologue later on, which is echoed Mike Clarissa in
a voiceover later in the film. But he gives this

(26:41):
monologue about how he wants some kind of secret, some
kind of pleasure or possibility that exists only beyond life.
So he's a he's got a kind of death drive embodied,
embodied in a way like he wants something that cannot
be achieved as a mortal, only be achieved beyond death.

(27:02):
And we really don't get a lot of explanation of
what that is except it is somehow related to lycanthropy.
And in the way he announces his desire for this
thing beyond death, he has a quality that reminds me
of some other cool characters in movies we've watched. It,
kind of like the antagonist beater Beck in the Doctor

(27:25):
Fibes sequel. You know, this character who is strong, driven, focused,
and kind of beyond good and evil. Not quite a villain,
but not necessarily good either, just like on a kind
of amoral quest that has no precedent.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, I think that's a good way of framing it.
So that's Clarisis suitor. But then we have another suitor
in the mix, and that is doctor Gonzalez played by
Roberto Canado who lived nineteen eighteen through nineteen ninety ninety eight.
This is an actor we've talked about on the show
before because he played the Doctor of Doom in nineteen
sixty three's Doctor of Doom the Luchadora picture. He's the

(28:08):
mad scientist in that one, which is a bit of
a spoiler, but a really fun role for him because
he got to play like the meek, friendly scientist but
also like his secret, true identity, that of a raving
mad man who wants to do all sorts of unspeakable
experiments and transplant I can't remember if it's I think

(28:29):
it's gorilla brains into or some sort of beast brains
into the bodies of luchadoras.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, transplanting gorilla brains into women, I think, or vice versa,
maybe both. Yeah, But this is a great role. It's
a great double role in that it's not that he's
playing Clark Kent and Superman is playing He's playing Clark
Kent and doctor Doom.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Yeah. So that's a fun one. Go back and watch
that one slash listening to our episode on it if
you haven't already. But Canado was a talented Mexican performer
during the golden age of Mexican cinema. He acted in
over three hundred pictures, which included a lot of B
films but also some serious dramas. On the B cinema
end of things, he pops up in several Santo Pictures,

(29:12):
nineteen sixty eight's The bat Woman, which is pretty great,
as well as a nineteen eighty six slasher film called
Bestia Nocturna in the nineteen eighty nine Mexican slasher film
Grave Robbers. Two of his most well received films include
Pulverina from nineteen forty nine and an adaptation of Crime
and Punishment from nineteen fifty one.

Speaker 3 (29:33):
So I may have misspoke earlier when I framed both
of the medical colleagues of doctor Fernandez as like werewolf researchers.
Rob corrects me if you disagree, But I think Gonzalez
is not a werewolf researcher. I think he's just a
general medical colleague and it's only Bernstein who is working
on the werewolf frequency with Fernandez. Is that how you

(29:54):
took it?

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yes, Yeah, this guy's not in on any of like
the more scandalous research operations that are going on. He's
just a doctor. He's doing doctory type business in the
area and beyond, including advising the local law enforcement officers
about mutilated corpses that suddenly pop up.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yeah, he's like, here is the attacker's blood. I can
tell you what kind of creature it came from that
sort of thing. Actually, though, in keeping with his role
in Doctor of Doom, where I said he was a
Clark Kent slash Doctor Doom. In this movie, he really
has an impressive range, which is he goes from I
would say the most kind of like handsome and capable

(30:37):
Indiana Jones looking character in the film to making the
goofiest reaction face I've ever seen in a movie.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
He does. It happens pretty early on. He pulls this
wonderful face when he uncovers a mutilated corpse, and it's amazing.
It's like the toilet has overflown reaction face here.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
Oohoo, you know what it is. It's that face they
put on YouTube thumbnails to make people click on them.

Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah, oh yeah yeah, or Netflix thumbs for films like
if l Loba was a modern film and was featured
on Netflix, it would be this face or some other
ridiculous face that somebody's pulling. All right, we have two
more characters, two more actors. Really to highlight here. We
have a character by the name of Krumba. He's a

(31:28):
stoic man, kind of dread. We were talking about this
off Mike kind of dressed like a barbarian who aids
Professor Fernandez and owes him some sort of mysterious life dead.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
Crumba is cool. Every time he's on screen. I was like, Okay,
we're in good hands. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
He mostly just stands around, smokes a pipe. Occasionally, man's
the Secret Passage cranks, but he has a very chill,
intimidating five So. Crumba is played by Crux Alvarado, who
lived nineteen ten through nineteen eighty four, costa Rican luchador
referee and cartoonists turned actor, best known actually for various

(32:07):
heart throt roles during the golden age of Mexican cinema.
If you look up pictures of him, you'll see a
lot of like very like. Sometimes he's shirtless and doing
like a you know, muscle poses. Other times, you know,
looks very dapper, with a pencil thin mustache and all.
He's perhaps best known for playing the Professor in nineteen
fifty sevens The as Tech Mummy and it's fifty eight

(32:28):
sequel The Robot Versus the as Tech Mummy. He's also
in nineteen sixty eight's The Batwoman Man.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
I would not have guessed he played romantically. I'm not
saying he's ugly or something, but just the way he's
done up in this movie. They've got him in this
leather tunic that again it looks like like a D
and D barbarian outfit. And his hair is interesting. It's
just like straight up on top and nothing on the sides. Actually,
it's kind of like some of those trendy haircuts with

(32:56):
the kids, and I don't know if it's still today
but in recent years, and the pipe and everything, it's
just like it's not a heart throb look.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
Yeah, yeah, kind of like a bohemian barbarian thing he's
got going on here. Later on in the picture, we
also meet a character by the name of Kazadar de
Lobos played by Noeh Murayama who lived nineteen thirty through
nineteen ninety seven. We will find out that this is
in fact a wandering foreign werewolf hunter with his own

(33:26):
special werewolf hunting dog named Jack. Murayama was a Mexican
actor of Japanese and Mexican descent who often played villains.
He won a claim for his performance in nineteen sixty
two's Tleo Khan and later for nineteen eighty threes Lapachanga
that was the one he was nominated for an Aerial

(33:47):
Award for. He also starred in some grimy nineteen eighty
eight exploitation films that have their own following. You can
look them up. I'm not going to mention the title here.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
He is a cool character. I like it when he
shows up. He brings a very different layer to the film,
a kind of a folklore layer that's otherwise not there
in what is otherwise I guess a science fiction were
wolf movie. Once again brings up questions about like is
this sci fi or is this fantasy horror, because like

(34:19):
the implements that he has that can affect a where
wolf feel very magical in nature, not very science fiction.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, he's he is dressed kind of like a wizard. Also,
he looks very much like he could be a part
of some sort of like I'm guessing like nineteen seventies
heavy metal band kind of a thing, kind of like
a some sort of like a Japanese Mexican Black Sabbath
or something. You know, He's got all sorts of like

(34:49):
cool occult imagery going on. And yeah, he very much
brings the folk horror, the supernatural interpretation of the werewolf
to the table. And arguably has the better case compared
to the scientist.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Also weird that we never learn his name. We learn
his dog's name, but.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Not his Yeah. I think the name that I cited
is just from the credits. I don't remember them actually
referring to him by name. They're just kind of like, hey, stranger,
well the.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
Name you said, Casador de Lobos is just a wolf hunter,
hunter of wolves.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
There you go, all right? And then finally, the music
is the work of raul Lo Vista. He lived nineteen
thirteen through nineteen eighty Aeriel Award winning composer whose credits
include nineteen fifties elombresen Rostro nineteen sixty twos, The Exterminating
Angel in nineteen seventy five's Darker than Night. I have
to say effective score.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yeah, I think so. In fact, we can talk about
it here in the opening if you want. You ready
for the plot, Yeah, let's dive right in. So we
get some great hand lettered credits playing over a misty landscape.
I think at the beginning we're looking at a hill
covered in vegetation. Honestly, it's kind of hard to tell,
but yeah, that music is playing. It's a bunch of
ominous drums. It's got skittering spider violins and horns blasting

(36:02):
in a minor key. So the action opens in a
cemetery on a hillside, surrounded by forest, with rude grave
markers leaning this way. In that you've got banks of
fog blowing swiftly over the earth. And we cut away
to the sky and see what I take is a
full moon. But it looks almost as bright as the sun.

(36:24):
And that makes sense because this was obviously shot in
the daytime, like noonday daytime.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, yeah, I After I watched the film the next day,
I showed just the opening part to my wife, and
when I pointed out, like the brightness of the quote
unquote moon and the day for night shooting here, she said, oh, no,
that's not day for night, that's just day. And indeed, yeah,
we have far less of the sort of telltale dimming

(36:53):
of the overall opacity that you sometimes see with day
for night shots. I've grown kind of I've grown to
kind of love of old old fashioned day for night
shoots and these various pictures, and this one I also dug.
But it is just so bright. It's so bright that
I think the way I ended up processing it was like,
this is just how bright the full moon is if

(37:13):
you were a werewolf. You know, it's just like inescapable.
It illuminates everything and it's just blinding in its intensity.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Oh that's a good reading on it. Yeah, you know.
Sometimes you said there's no indication that it's nighttime, that
there's visually no indication, but they do put some cricket
sound effects, and.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Yes they do. Yeah, I mean I ended up buying
it as nighttime. I knew what they were going for,
and like I was able to fully suspend disbelief.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
So in the Graveyard, we zoom in on a crusty
topside stone vault, like a coffin vault, and suddenly the
lid starts to creak open, and then out through the
crack in the lid emerge two furry knob knuckled hands
with huge bugle claws on each fingertip. And I thought

(38:01):
this was a funny inversion because the coffin lid creaking
open and a sinister hand coming out is a trope
from vampire movies, not werewolf movies.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yeah. Yeah, I can't think of another film where we
see a werewolf crawl out of a coffin. But I
like it here we're talking about it. It's turning heads.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
Another thing that really sets this wolf movie apart is
that it does not begin with our protagonist wandering toward
an encounter with a werewolf, like you know them starting unchanged,
the meeting a were wolf, getting bitten or something, and
then being changed. Instead, we begin with a werewolf already

(38:39):
in wolf mode, launching into an attack on the world
from below, just like coming out like a like a
missile out of a hidden silo.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Oh yeah, and boy does she ever this. I think
one of the things that I love the most about
this film is just the way that our she wolf
is realized on the screen, the speed with which she
travels like with this we'll talk about it as we
proceed her, but just bounding and pouncing across the landscape

(39:09):
with just lethal ferocity. I like, I don't I'm not
used to seeing where wolves move this swiftly in just
films in general. I can't think of another one where
like we had this sense of just like they're just
where wolf can just shoot across the forest and just
get to you like a missile. I think a missile
leaving the silo is a great analogy here.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
The opening rampage here is like a runaway train. She
just gets right to business. So the order of events
is she comes out of the coffin, runs up the hill,
and then she like pushes through some brush into the
camp site of a guy with a tent and a campfire.
He's like cooking food on there, and she just jumps
on him like he This guy's got a wide brimmed

(39:52):
fedora again to invoke Indiana Jones, got kind of an
Indiana Jones hat, and.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
She like looks so confident too. He's like, oh, time
to start the day or the night or whatever. But he,
you know, he's like, yep, I've got a lot of
work to do. Nothing's gonna stop old handsome me. But
then here comes to where wolf flying across the woods
like yeah, I mean yeah, pouncing from like I don't know,
like what one hundred yards. I know, it's impressive.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
We see her leap onto this guy from like a
like a forested overhang with arms outstretched. So she's doing
like a like a trapeze artist dive or like an
Olympic diver or something.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yeah, it's amazing, Like I would say, if you're on
the fence about watching this film in its entirety, at
least watched the first fifteen minutes, it will amaze you.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
Yeah, So she tackles that guy commences clawing his face
and chewing out his throat. Later we're gonna learn that
she rips out his heart, but we don't see that here,
and then we just move right onto the next victim.
So there are a couple of peasants laboring in the woods.
A man is chopping firewood with an axe, a woman
gathering fallen sticks, and ooh, there's this good creepy shot

(41:04):
where the wolf woman climbs up on the root ball
of a giant fallen tree to spy on the woman
from behind. I've got a screenshot before you hear Rob.
I really like the way this is framed. But once again,
a flying leap from above. We just see her like
like like launched across the frame, as like out of
a bow or something. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
It is amazing and terrifying. And yeah, and I love
these sequences in between, with her crawling around and these
broken fallen trees and all. Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
So where wolf mauls the woman and then she lies
screaming on the ground with streams of blood running across
her face. The man chopping wood hears this woman crying
out and then comes to help for some reason. I
didn't quite understand why this happened, but he like throws
his axe into a nearby tree, and then the wolf
turns and begins to maul the man. But suddenly the

(41:58):
wolf is interrupted because the full moon passes behind a cloud,
and it's like that does something. It maybe drains the
wolf of motivation or power, and the werewolf suddenly runs
away into the dark wood. Now on the way back
to her hiding place, she crosses paths with a man

(42:18):
driving a carriage along the forest path. And I think
this is doctor Bernstein in the carriage, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
I believe so.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
Yeah, And so he watches the wolf woman run by
with a kind of knowing and apprehensive look and then
just moves on toward his destination. And as the wolf
woman is fleeing, we also see a well equipped man
in the woods, a guy with a rifle and a hat,
surveying the devastation at the campsite with the tent. He
comes upon the first victim, and this is doctor Gonzalez

(42:49):
played by Roberto Canedo, and this is the scene where
he pulls back the tent flap and sees the dead
man and is just like, oh, oh man.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
So we're off to a great start here. And I
want to drive home that the she Wolf costume here
worn by Kitty, though probably not in the shots where
she's flying like a human cannonball across the wilderness. I'm
assuming that with a stunt person or a luchador or
a trapeze artist or some sort of a professional stunt person.
But the costume I thought was really effective. It seems

(43:22):
to depend on a skin type bodysuit with added hair
and tail and combined with the actress's slender form, and
like the ferocity of her physical performance is a real
savagery to the scenes where the she Wolf is maueling
her prey. There's also a carnality to the act as well,
which kind of reminds me of our recent Nosferatu adaptation.

(43:46):
You know, both feature a kind of like you know,
slender being that is feasting, but in a way that
also feels kind of like erotically charged. Here.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
I want to do a sidebar because I wonder if
you have insights on this from this book you've been
reading about the history of female werewolves. So we've talked
before on the show about the different common werewolf types
in movies. So one type would be the quadrupedal wolf form.

(44:26):
This is the classic vision of the werewolf. Actually in
a lot of folklore, maybe not all, but you know,
in a lot of the old werewolf stories from before
the cinematic era, the werewolf itself is not a hybridized form.
The hybrid element is simply that a person transforms into
a wolf, usually a big, ferocious wolf.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah. Like a lot of times it's like, oh, there
was this deadly wolf. It was killing people and or
killing livestock. We've managed to kill it and lo and behold,
it turned into an old woman, or it turned into
this mysterious man that we've never seen before, that sort
of thing, or the skin came off and there was
a person underneath.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
Right. So you get versions of the quadrupedal wolf form
in some werewolf movies as well. Often it's a kind
of beefed up version of the quadrupedal wolf, So like
in American Werewolf in London or in the Twilight series.
In these movies, the werewolf is essentially canine in shape.
It runs on all fours, it's got the long snout,

(45:26):
but it is larger than any real wolf and often
with the monstrosity elements beefed up.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
I would say the Gomork from an Nevering story is
also a good example of this, and I think all
of these examples also point to the other reality here.
This is a very hard one to pull off on
screen because it's not a wolf, it's not a humanoid.
It's somewhere in between. You're gonna have to depend on
some rather elaborate special effects and is it going to

(45:54):
be enough to fully convince me exactly?

Speaker 3 (45:57):
So that's your your one type, the four foot four
feet on the ground quadrupedal were wolf. Then you've got
your bipedal variants. You've got the wolf Man is what
I'll call him, which is bipedal, short snout, human shaped
head but covered with fur and having fangs in the mouth.
This is your Lawn Cheney Junior, your Paul Nashy type

(46:18):
universal werewolf.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Can't go wrong with it. Love to see more of it.
Were Wolf by Night is one of these as well,
in the recent Disney TV special, which I highly recommend.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Then after that you've got what I might call the
man wolf, which is bipedal also but long snout, wolf
shaped head as seen in movies like The Howling or
Dog Soldiers.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
And I like this one too. I like all of them,
but this one, this one is in a zone that
I feel like is achievable by competent special effects artists.

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Oh yeah, totally. But anyway, here's where I wanted to
come back to the interplay between cinematic werewolves and so
I think one thing that's kind of interesting is that
usually in the movies, both of the bipedal forms of
the werewolf are shaped in a way that is very
stereotypically masculine and rob I've got images for you to

(47:17):
look at here from like The Howling and from Dog
Soldiers and The wolf Man, just a few things to survey.
I was really trying to think of counter examples, and
they're not really coming to mind. I'm not saying it's
never happened, but most of the bipedal movie werewolves I
can think of are shaped like the typical form of

(47:38):
male body builders. You have like massive shoulders, chest and
upper body tapering down to narrow hips and waste kind
of a v shape, they're structured like Arnold Schwarzenegger in
the seventies. Yeah, so it's a quite interesting variation in
this film to get a bipedal humanoid werewolf where the

(48:00):
body is shaped in a more stereotypically feminine form, even
with long hair. Actually.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
And also something about like the fur pelt worn by
the Clarissa werewolf in this movie almost looks in some
shots like she is wearing a short dress but made
of fur.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting the way that like the mind
reads the femininity of the monster here. And this movie
is mentioned at least in passing in the book I
referenced earlier in the chapter by Peter Hutchings titled the
she Wolves of Horror Cinema. And one of the things
that he's talking about here is that we often see

(48:42):
if we have a female character that's turning into a
were wolf. Oftentimes that were wolf is just going to
be a straight up wolf, and the gender of that
wolf may be ambiguous because it's a wolf. And on
the other hand, sometimes they'll transform into some sort of
a hybrid creature that is overtly masculine. And in this case,

(49:03):
the way they read Leloba is that we have a
feminine character turning into a more masculine form, but one
that is still distinguishable as feminine.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
That's interesting. So I didn't think about her transforming into
a more masculine form, but I guess you could maybe
read it that way. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
I just agree with it myself, but as their techon it.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
But either way, I thought it was interesting that this
is a bipedal humanoid werewolf form that looks more stereotypically
feminine than any basically any other examples I can think
of in horror movies, and it kind of makes you wonder, like,
why are all the other werewolf examples I can think
of coded as masculine morphs? Like is there a particular

(49:47):
reason for this, I guess beyond the just kind of
unquestioned sexism of a lot of culture where that takes
sort of like the male as default. Is there something
about the wolf form, or the werewolf form in particular,
that causes people to think of human masculinity because I
know that the same assumption does not go with vampires,

(50:08):
because we get plenty of typically stereotypically feminine vampires. Though
of course that's kind of different because vampires are basically
human in form anyway, So I don't know. One thing
I was wondering about is if there is a general
trend in the imagination, in our tendency to imagine monsters

(50:30):
that thinks of them as when you have a creature
that's becoming less human in appearance, whatever humanoid elements remain,
are more likely on average to be imagined as masculine
by default, or maybe more more likely to be imagined
as masculine by default by men.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, that's a great point, I guess. Another. I mean,
there's so many different ways to tease this apart when
you get into like the way gender is treated in
culture and in storytelling. One point they bring up in
the book is that body hair is one way of
potentially looking at it, Like there may be a resistance

(51:10):
to want to put a bunch of hair on your
female character even as they turn into the wolf, and
at the very least, like maybe they have to get
a little more specific with how you're going to do it. Like,
for instance, we don't see like a completely fur covered
face of our she wolf here, though there is fur
on her face. Likewise, there's fur on her body, but

(51:33):
not the sense that the whole body is covered in
thick fur. So there's probably a lot of just like
cultural ideas of body, hair and hair and gender that
get thrown into the mix when conceptualizing these things.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
I think that's right. That is interesting to point out. Yeah,
when we see because we get a male were wolf
and a female were wolf in this movie, and the
lady wolf she has a smoother face than the dude does.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Yeah, so I get the impression they put a lot
of thought into this. How are we going to turn
Kitty into a werewolf in a way that makes her
frightening but also still like alluring to the vast majority
of the audience, you know, that's still retaining her Marilyn
Monroe image. How are we going to keep all of

(52:20):
that in the mix while also transforming her into a
wolf person?

Speaker 3 (52:24):
Yeah, that is interesting also, So my first question was
like why that trend? I think we got some good
ideas there. But the second thing is, the second thing
I was wondering is how does a more typically feminine
humanoid werewolf work differently on film than the more kind

(52:45):
of like beef bodybuilder guy where wolf does? I think
in our opening here you may get one kind of
answer about the tendencies filmmakers will have when dealing with
these different types of werewolves. In this movie, the werewolf
is depicted less as one that overwhelms you with physical
size and book and braun and instead as a kind

(53:07):
of murder acrobat, like flying through the air out of
hiding to claw and slash.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Yeah, and they make a convincing argument for it. I mean,
it's it's so well executed on the screen. I think
some other female were wolf shows definitely lean into the
idea of seduction as being part of their character as well.
Like I believe that's an aspect of the Trick or
Treat example where the lady where wolves are also a

(53:33):
little seductive, at least at first before they transform, you know,
kind of tying into various like you know, sort of
succubus ideas of some sort of seductive creature that's actually
a monster. But yeah, I do like this idea of
the of the she wolf as like a swift, stealth
oriented killer.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
Anyway, to come back to the plot, at the end
of this rampage, the wolf woman retreats to the coffin
she climbed out of in the beginning. But here's where
the twist comes in, because you might think it's like
the vampire. You know, the vampire just lays in the
coffin until at a certain point they open the lid
and get out and do their business. This coffin is
not merely a coffin. The wolf is not going in

(54:14):
there to lie down. It is in fact a secret passageway.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Ah yeah, and this is going to tie into some dialogue,
that monologue we referenced earlier, you know, the idea of
death as a door. I don't know if they're really
deliberately trying to connect these two things, but I couldn't help.
But notice I.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
Didn't make that connection. That's a good one. So from here,
the camera retreats to a nearby mansion surrounded by a
high wall that is sort of nestled at the edge
of the woods. And here in the upper floors of
this house, we meet Krumba. He is not formally introduced yet,
we'll get more of his backstory later, but he appears
as this muscle man dressed again as the party's barbarian,

(54:54):
and he's wearing like a leather tunic, and he shows
a look of concern and then appear like he goes
into a woman's bedroom and starts well, actually, no, I
think I was gonna say. He goes into the bedroom
and starts cranking the chain, but I think the giant
pole chain is in a different room. He like locks
the door to a woman's bedroom and then goes to

(55:15):
a room nearby and starts cranking this giant chain. And
as he does this, we cut over to the hearth
at the one end of the bedroom and see a
panel on the back of the fireplace lift away. It's
a secret door. And who should crawl out of it
but our wolf woman here she comes.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Oh man, this is great and I love that. I mean,
we did those whole episodes on We did a series
of episodes and stuff to blow your mind about the
hearth as a gateway for supernatural threats. And here we
have a hearth that's an actual literal gateway for a
monstrous humanoid.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
Yeah, and this seems very creepy. The wolf woman crawls
in on all fours, slowly creeping, as if maybe wounded
or drained of energy. She comes into the room, collapses
on the floor, unconscious, and here the camera stays on
her as we get a slow, dissolved transformation sequence. Gradually,
the claws dissolve into human fingers, and the suit of

(56:12):
fur fades away and leaves behind only smooth human skin,
and we see that it is a young woman lying
nude on the floor. So what it's like if you
don't know anything at this point, you're like, this family
has a chain and muscleman operated doggy door for its
werewolf woman inhabitant.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah, like, clearly this family has some issues. We've got
that already.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
Meanwhile, a guest arrives at the manor. It is the
guy we saw on the road, doctor Bernstein. He's met
by one of the servants and then he's brought inside
and greeted by the patriarch of the house, doctor Fernandez. Again,
Doctor Fernandez. That's Santa Claus from Santa Claus. Yes, Fernandez
is an older man in a white lab coat. Doctor

(56:58):
Bernstein is a young man. Both have mustaches. They all
have mustaches, and we learned that they are colleagues, both
involved in cutting edge medical research. Fernandez is curious if
Bernstein has come to deliver professional news from a recent
conference he attended, but no, the main purpose of his
visit is personal. Doctor Bernstein has come to ask to

(57:20):
marry Clarissa, one of doctor Fernandez's two daughters. Now, to
clarify once again, we mentioned this during the cast list,
but the two daughters are Clarissa, who is in love
with doctor Bernstein, and then Alicia. Alicia is the other daughter.
Both of the daughters are adults, but their rooms are
full of creepy toys that would belong to a sickly

(57:41):
aristocratic Victorian child. You know, they've got all these porcelain
dolls and music boxes that play creepy tunes, and bird
cages and that sort of.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Thing, little wind up toys that do all sorts of
little tricks.

Speaker 3 (57:56):
So Bernstein and Clarissa, we find out, have secretly been
in love for some time, but now now he's here
to ask for her hand in marriage, and he wants
the blessing of her father, and the father seems torn.
He likes doctor Bernstein, but he fears that if they marry,
some terrible consequence will unfold, and he suggests that Bernstein

(58:17):
stay at the house while he makes up his mind.
And he says, you know, you could continue your research
here anyway. I've got all of the best equipment facilities
in the world. I think he says, like, I have
the best microscope on the planet.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
Yeah, and there it is. It's right there on the table.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
Yeah. Now I mentioned this earlier, but one kind of
interesting thing is it's not immediately clear which daughter is
the werewolf because I think they try to fake you
out here by like the first daughter you see after
the werewolf transformation scene is Alicia the other daughter. And
we also have a scene where Alicia goes to her

(58:52):
mother and like confesses having this terrible dream about like
running through the woods at night and having blood on
her hands.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
Yeah. Yeah, we're supposed to be unsure which of the
two daughters is the werewolf.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
Well, we know, we know it's one of them though,
as I also said earlier, of the two, Clarissa definitely
feels the most dangerous in her personality, in her presence,
so there's something a bit more unhinged and threatening about
the way she just looks at people and talks. Yeah. Meanwhile,

(59:32):
we got a little side plot going on at the
local police station. We meet some more characters, the police
inspector and his deputy, and we meet doctor Gonzalez played
by Roberto Canado. Actually we met him earlier because he
was at the camp site, but they are examining the
dead bodies from the werewolf rampage the say, previous night
or the same night, not sure when this is all

(59:52):
one big night. It's exactly one big night. And they
notice the victims in this case were not only killed,
the attacker opened up the chest and tore out the heart,
and the inspector says, it's disgusting.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
It is. We get a nice close up of the wound,
and you know, it's all black and white, but it's
it's gooey, it's it's uh, it's juicy.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
In this one. Still, I got the wound looks like lips.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does. Yeah, it's like a lip
made out of ribs.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
But the doctor says, we've got a clue. The attacker's
blood is left on the victim, and he says, I
can collect the attack. I don't know how he tells
the difference, but he says, I can collect this blood
and analyze it and determine what kind of creature it
came from, so we can know if it was a
you know, a wolf for a bear or whatever that
attacks them, or maybe a human. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
Forensic subplot up and running.

Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
Right, So back at the house, doctor Fernandez is showing
off his lab to Bernstein and he explains his research
into metaplasia, changing one form of life into another, and
this research involves a giant walk in freezer, which he
shows that he's used to flash freeze plants and even

(01:01:06):
some animals to essentially put them into hibernation or arrest
their development in a particular state. I think he says,
like something was dying and he could freeze it until
it could heal without the damage progressing anymore. So he
has a cryo chamber essentially, yes, and he explains what
his research is really getting at. He says, mutations of

(01:01:29):
nature the metamorphosis of cells. They're all equal and all
succeed themselves. And he notes that through his techniques one
could learn to transform the cells from one creature into
that of another, even on Lobo. And then I also
want to flag here Chekhov's really hard to open freezer door.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
I don't know why you'd make it that way, but
they show multiple times characters struggling intensely to open the
freezer from the inside. It's hard to get this door over. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
Yeah, even Crumba has a hard time with this one
we see in a subsequen scene.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
For oh I like how in the lab. Here, Fernandez
also explains that the moon is crucial to his experiments
because of the power it exerts over the function of cells. Okay,
but this is also where we learn a bit of
the backstory of Crumba. We learned that Fernandez once saved
Crumba's life and now Crumba has this unrepayable debt to him,

(01:02:26):
and so he works for Fernandez like a watchdog. He's
very very loyal, very dependable, and you know he will
never give up on Fernandez to repay his life debt.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Yeah, when the bell rings in the night and someone
has to go answer the front door, it's Crumba that doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
Now Here, we come to this scene where Alicia explains
her recurring nightmare to her mother. She says, you know,
she dreams that she is awake in the night and
she's running through the woods and she hears someone coming
and then hides herself and then she's overcome with rage
and confusion. She does understand what she's doing until she
realizes that her hands are covered in blood. And so again,

(01:03:07):
at this point, we don't know which daughter is the werewolf.
We're being led to think it might be Alicia. But
Alicia wants to know why she and her sister are
always kept locked in their rooms on the full moon.
Isn't that weird?

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Mom?

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
And Mom's like, well, it's your father's orders. We have
to do what he says, And Alicia literally says the
line from step Brothers, this house is a prison. Meanwhile,
and I thought this was funny, Like while they're having
this argument, we cut away to Clarissa in the other
room and she's just like playing with cursed music boxes

(01:03:39):
and grinning like a clown.

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
There's not a lot to do here if you're not
actively engaged in mad science research.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
Yeah. Oh, and also we later see Alicia. We would
get like some humanizing stuff where Alicia goes to the
quarters of some of the servants at the house and
the servant woman's daughter is there. The daughter is named Alita,
and she is deaf and mute, and so Alicia seems
to be teaching Adalita to read and trying to give

(01:04:08):
her some kind of speech therapy. She's like putting her
fingers around her throat while she's trying to enunciate words.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
So it's not all just frivolous playing around with toys
and dresses and so forth. She's also doing some good
in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
But back in the lab, the plot thickens, so Bernstein
and Fernandez are still there, and Bernstein is saying, you
know what, I confess you've told me you're working on metaplasia.
I am also working on something rather alike metaplasia. And
then Fernandez just guesses. First guess he says like aanthropy,

(01:04:43):
and Bernstein says, yes, So, like, where did everybody get
the metaplasia research bug? Why are they all working on
werewolf science? It's implied that this is not that they
didn't coordinate on this. It's like a incidents that they're
just both working on like anthropy, but their colleagues.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
Yeah, I mean they both certainly have their reasons, as
we'll learn, but but yeah, this kind of just kind
of this kind of comes up in the conversation where
it's like, like, so you're working on where wolves is like, yeah, yeah,
well that's that's secretly what I'm working on too. We're
in the same business.

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
Bernstein says, science denies the existence of like anthropy, conceptualizes
it as something unreal. Do you have the same opinion,
and Fernandez says no, because I have powerful reasons to
believe in it. So they're on the same page here.
But then the question comes up, is like aanthropy a disease?
And Bernstein says, no, it is not a disease, it

(01:05:41):
is something much more. Science could not understand these secrets.
Only I can decipher them. But suddenly here they're interrupted
because Claressa runs in, so the lovers are reunited, and
then they go off to speak privately, and once they're alone,
they have an interesting conversation. Earnstein says, nothing is impossible.

(01:06:02):
See I am here with you, and Clarissa says, I
am afraid afraid to awaken her. Who is her afraid
to awaken her? Bernstein says, it's not an illusion, Clarissa,
it's reality. And then Clarissa confesses to Alejandro here that
she is also having horrible dreams. She dreams that she's

(01:06:22):
kissing him, but then some confusion falls over her and
she can't find him, doesn't know where he is or
what's happening, and then we get this wonderful monologue. Bernstein says,
in the end, it's always the same to die, but
not even those who died can escape from its destiny.
The life of a mortal one realizes time only in

(01:06:44):
an instant because after death comes the eternity, the region
without dimension, infinite in time and space. Reaching it is
the most important. It's there where our love will last forever.
Life will soon pass, And oh my god, Like I
was not prepared for this at this point in the movie.

(01:07:05):
He's got some kind of necro erotic thing going on,
like he yearns for death because that's the only place
where eternity is possible, where their love can be forever.
He thinks he has some kind of key to the
gateway to something, some kind of expanded existence beyond death.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
Yeah, this is one of the many ways of this
film is so deeply weird. You know, you kind of
expect of your older black and white monster pictures to
have some very cut and dry morality involved in how
your human characters are relating or you're presumably human characters
are relating to threats. But everyone, everyone in this picture

(01:07:47):
has a little bit of the madness in them, and
I really like that. I mean, except for Gunzalz. Gunzalez
is a rock. He's straight straight down the middle.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
I'd say Alicia has kind of a straight shooter or two,
I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
Yeah. Anyway, so they get interrupted by the return of
doctor Gonsalez. He's here to speak with Fernandez about the
heart ripping in the woods. Apparently one of the victims
was his best friend, and he stops to speak with Alicia,
who is troubled by her dreams and by worries about
what's happening. And this is where we learned that Gonzalez

(01:08:19):
is a colleague of doctor Fernandez and that he is
the beloved of Alicia. So this is where I first
realized what is weird that both of this guy's daughters
are engaged to his coworkers. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
Again, they don't get to leave the compound much. These
are the only men outside of their family that they
get to meet.

Speaker 3 (01:08:39):
That's a rough dating scene. Yeah. So doctor Gonzalez is
here to use Fernandez's microscope because he's got to figure
out what kind of blood the killer had, remember that. Yeah,
and I think ultimately this plot goes nowhere, right, it's inconclusive.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
Yeah, they're just like, it's not a beast, not a man.
There's no possible space betweeneen those two categories, so.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
We're not sure. Oh, here we also get the scene
where the girl, the child Adalita, sneaks out at night.
So in the anatomy of a sneak out here, because
we've got a couple of scenes like this. She goes
out of the window and climbs fences and goes to
the woods to play with the tin soldier that bangs
on a dramas like a little wind up toy, and

(01:09:24):
she the place she goes out to play in the
woods at night is said this like the ruins of
an old house with exposed rafters.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
Yeah, she's completely fearless going out into the night, into
this wilderness where multiple murders have just occurred, and goes
to like the spookiest location you could possibly seek out
because she left a toy.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
There or something. Meanwhile, doctor Bernstein is having an argument
with Fernandez about marrying Clarissa. Long and short is you know.
Fernandez is like, I don't know about this. I don't
think it's a good idea, and Bernstein is like, well,
we're going to do it in any you know, you
can't stop us. But then as soon as Bernstein is
left alone, uh, oh, it's a full moon, and he

(01:10:08):
gets a crazy look in his eye, and the full
moon just like it bugs out of the sky. And
then whoa, he is a were wolf too. We got
a second werewolf in the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Yeap, yeah, he starts twitching. He starts itching. You know
what's gonna happen.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
So I guess we should describe the setup to this
attack on Adalita. Fortunately, the child is not harmed. For
the for the the gene siskels in the audience, you
can't stand the movie scenes where a child is threatened.
Adalita is gonna be okay, but it's looking perilous for
her because she's just sitting there playing with this toy

(01:10:43):
and the Bernstein werewolf is creeping up on her in
the woods again at the ruins of a building.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
Here.

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
Now a new thing we get in this scene is
the presence of a character who I don't think we've
seen before, the werewolf Hunter and his dog, the Lee Car.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
Yes, Jack Jack is the dog's name.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
How would you describe the werewolf hunter when he first appears.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Again, He has kind of an outsider bohemian vibe similar
to crumbas bit different. He looks like a little he
looks a little metal a little occult, but it is
also like clearly has some sort of an international vibe
to him, and indeed we will learn in subsequent scenes
that he is from across the ocean, so he is
of some sort of Asiatic origin.

Speaker 3 (01:11:32):
He's a wanderer though, Yeah, he's been everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
And his business is, we will learn, hunting werewolves. And
he's in the right place because we've got more than
one of them running around now.

Speaker 3 (01:11:52):
So the Bernstein werewolf is creeping up on little Italyita.
But before he gets there and does anything, the werewolf
is a hacked by a dog by the the werewolf
hunter's dog, and they tussle around, they roll around, the
dog is sort of mauling the werewolf, and then the
werewolf is severely wounded and runs away and then Attalie

(01:12:13):
to leaves, I think, never realizing anything that anything almost happened.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
Yeah, completely oblivious like so many children.

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
So as the injured werewolf staggers back to the mansion,
he transforms back into doctor Bernstein. Shirtless. Now he collapses
into Crumba's arms and we see Fernandez and his colleagues
sort of come into intervene. Actually, the first thing we
see of them. Is that we just cut to them
in scrubs and they're like doing surgery. They're operating on

(01:12:41):
Bernstein here, and Fernandez says he is moments from death.
The only way to save him is to freeze him
a giant freezer with the conspicuously difficult to open door.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
That's right. Yeah, it's like our the man that we
don't know is a werewolf is about to die from
a like a bite to the heart from a dog.
The only thing we can do is put him on
ice and hopefully he'll be able to heal or we
can figure out how to heal him later.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
Yeah. They're also like, we cannot tell the daughters.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
So next there's a scene at the police station with
the werewolf hunter, and you know, the deputy says to
the chief, I think they're like, we've captured the killers.
Here he is, you know, it's the guy. It's this
guy and his dog. They are obviously the murderers. And
the werewolf hunter says that his dog did not harm anyone.
His dog likes humans. He would never hurt him, never

(01:13:36):
hurt them, and he says dogs are not hypocrites like men. Instead,
he gives of some of his backstory. He says he's
from very distant lands across the sea, from a small village.
It's not even on the map. He says he has
had this dog, Jack since he was a boy. He says,
is it a crime for a man to take his

(01:13:56):
dog for a ride? And then they ask what's the
deal with that medel around your dog's neck? And the
werewolf hunter explains this means the dog is a leakar,
a dog trained to fight against a lichenthrope. The cops are,
of course incredulous. They're like, what's a lichen thrope? And
one of them says to the other one, it's a werewolf,

(01:14:16):
an old superstition of theirs. And I was thinking, what
of who's.

Speaker 2 (01:14:23):
The people? The non police? I guess, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
But they also find out this guy is in possession
of a special dagger, which is engraved in Latin, says
use it only at the time of revenge.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
So I really love how they're laying out this basically
the model for how you kill werewolves in this film. Bullets,
as we'll learn, are useless. Human weapons useless. The things
that work are an ivory dagger or the bite of
a highly trained domesticated dog, and the dog itself is

(01:15:00):
interesting choice because you're talking essentially about a tamed wolf
an instrument to use against the were wolf, which is
kind of like rewilded human. I like the synergy of that,
and I like the idea that in both cases, like
you need a weapon of the tooth or the tusk
to use against the were wolf, like you need a
like a biological weapon, you need a weapon of nature,

(01:15:21):
a weapon of predatory aggression. Only these weapons will actually
hurt the beast.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
Yeah. I like that as well, And it's more magical
than the sci fi premise. It's kind of mixing all
the different shades together. Now there's another line he says
here that I think is interesting when he says many
people traveled the world in hunt of the wolf, the
wolf that killed the one they love, and pairing that
with the line on the deck or about revenge, it's

(01:15:52):
really confusing. Actually, well, I don't mean this against the
movie because I liked it this way, but like minute,
so are the were wolves here like a project of
doctor Bernstein's that is quite recent in origin, because you know,
Clarissa and Bernstein are.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
Not that old.

Speaker 3 (01:16:13):
How would they have killed the person that this man
loved I don't know, like, and he chased them around
the world. That just doesn't seem to make a lot
of sense. But who knows that. I guess we do
learn that Bernstein has traveled a lot. So maybe maybe
Bernstein did kill the one he loved somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (01:16:31):
Yeah. Or maybe it's just a general, you know, vow
taken against all were wolves based on like a specific
loss to a different were wolf, like once they were
a wolf killed a member of my family, and so
now I must always hunt were wolves.

Speaker 3 (01:16:47):
That could make sense.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
Also, you got that highly trained dog. I mean, you're
you're kind of married to the profession. At that point,
you're locked in. Yeah, I mean the dog's got to work.
It's a working dog.

Speaker 3 (01:16:56):
Sunk costs.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
Yeah. Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:16:58):
Also, at some point the cops said him free because
another murder takes place while he's in custody. Yeah. Ooh,
And there's a whoopsie at night. So the girl's mother
in the in the mansion comes wandering down into the
lab one night. Maybe this is just all one night.
Who knows this is Fernandez's wife, Yes, this is the matriarch, Marcella. Yeah, yeah,

(01:17:20):
she sees Bernstein frozen in the freezer. Through the window.
She like looks in the people, you know, through the
little window. It's like, oh no, he's frozen in there.
And she goes in to investigate. I guess because they
didn't tell her, They.

Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
Didn't tell anybody else in the household what was going on.
You can peek through the window and see a body
in there.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
I think this is Fernandez's fault. You could argue that
this could have been prevented if he'd just told his
wife and daughters what was happening.

Speaker 2 (01:17:46):
Or put a sticky note up, you know, just so
like like, hey, do not open this body's supposed to
be in there. I'd be where wolf do not though, But.

Speaker 3 (01:17:55):
She goes in to investigate, and then she becomes trapped.
She's like trying to open the door again to get out,
but she can't get it open because it's difficult. And
then I guess she's freezing at the freezer. So she
turns off all the levers on the freezer, I think,
to prevent herself from freezing to death. But then Bernstein
starts to thaw, and we see ice crystals on his

(01:18:16):
face melting. Oh no, the werewolf awakens. That's right. So
later we come back to the house and Alicia finds
her mother dead on the living room floor with her
heart torn out. That's no good, and Clarissa is horrified,
of course and runs to her room. Though I guess
it's kind of implied it was Bernstein that we never

(01:18:37):
see it, right, so we don't know which werewolf it
was for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:18:41):
Yeah, yeah, I think we know. Ultimately we know we
know it was Bernstein, but in general it's left a
little vague.

Speaker 3 (01:18:48):
So here, I guess we're setting up for the final showdown.
We have the mother's funeral, which is at the cemetery
on the hillside where we started the movie. I was
thinking it would be really funny if the plot, like
the spot went to bury her in was the place
where you know, they start digging, and it's just there's
a secret passageway they are going to the going to
the fireplace. But after the mother's funeral, the werewolf hunter

(01:19:13):
sets out a bear trap in the cemetery to catch
the creatures, and we see lots of characters. We kind
of get the what do you call that montage where
you see everybody looking kind of stern, frightened, or determined
right before. We're leading up to the climax.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Yeah, yeah, everybody's kind of getting in the zone one
way or another, even though they don't know exactly what's coming.

Speaker 3 (01:19:34):
We're getting all the pieces positioned on the board. Basically,
we learn that everybody is going to be in and
around the mansion tonight, almost as if they suspect the
climax of the film is coming. Like the police inspector
decides he's got to stay with the Fernandez family for
their protection tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:19:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:50):
Oh. In the lead up to the climax, here we
get another child in peril scene because Adelita goes into
Clarissa's room. She sneaks out of her quarters goes in
Clarissa's room secretly because she wants to play with the
creepy dolls, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:20:04):
So she's in there playing and looking at dolls and all. Meanwhile,
this is when we have Clarissa playing the piano downstairs.
She's feeling a number of emotions about the death of
her mother and is going to take it out on
the piano. And boy does she ever. She's playing this
like this furious piano number there. It's pissing off her sister.

(01:20:29):
It's apparently not a morning vibe that's being created here,
and even Crumba is clearly concerned about what's happening here.

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
Yeah, he's watching her play the piano and just looking like,
oh boy, here we go. And then I think that
he senses the full moon is coming out. So just
before the change takes hold, Crumba grabs Clarissa and carries
her up to her room and locks her inside, unfortunately
not realizing that Adalita is in there. So Adalita hides

(01:20:59):
under the bed and Clarissa begins to change in the
light of the full moon in a scene that is
pretty scary. But so she goes through this dissolved transformation
kind of like we've seen earlier, but in the opposite direction,
and just as she's leaving out the secret passageway in
the fireplace, she hears a toy that Adelita had been

(01:21:22):
playing with is like a wind up toy that gets dropped,
and she's drawn back into the room by it. Adalita
escapes by climbing down out of a window, but the
she wolf chases, and this chase leads out to the
ruined house with exposed rafters where Adalita was playing earlier,
and this leads to a showdown between the Clarissa Wolf

(01:21:43):
and the werewolf Hunter. So here's the first of our
big fights and the werewolf hunter. He's got his ivory
dagger there and he's trying to fend her off, but
she's slashing and clawing and mauling at him and they're
rolling around on the ground. So here's the first wrestling match.
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:22:01):
Meanwhile, back in the house's what's happening with the male
were wolf. Well, he's back in action and Crumba is
there to fight him, and this is where we get
a big, slobbery knocker of a battle between these two
with a little bit of Lucha libre esque action kind
of sprinkled in. Nothing too overt, but at one point

(01:22:24):
I do love that the were wolf grabs Crumba in
some form of a full nelson, kind of like a
but instead of locking his fingers behind Crumba's neck, he
like puts his claws on Crumbus's face, So I think
it should be called the full moon nelson instead, like
a were wolf variant of a hold. I like it,

(01:22:44):
but this is a pretty good fight. They're throwing furniture around,
it does not end well for Crumba. Oh and I
should And also it doesn't end well for the professor.
This were wolf also brutally murders Professor Fernandez as well.
So the body count is really beginning to stack up here,
and characters are dying in graphic detail, the black and

(01:23:05):
white blood everywhere.

Speaker 3 (01:23:07):
Alicia escapes the scene out out of the house and
is pursued. She does get her Oh she's she gets
caught in the werewolf hunter's bear trap.

Speaker 2 (01:23:16):
Oh does Oh god, I was not expecting that. I
should have expected it. They set the trap, you know,
it's it's been established. But then when she stepped in
it and that thing clamped on her foot, I was like,
oh god, you know that caught me off guard. Very
well done.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
So several more of our good characters are attacked or
threatened by the two by the two werewolves. Ultimately, though,
the werewolves are defeated in one case by being mauled
by the leekr dog the werewolf killing dog, and then
the other case being stabbed I think by the police
inspector with the ivory knife that was dropped by the
werewolf Hunter is unfortunately killed in action. But then the

(01:23:56):
police inspector comes along and picks up the ivory knife
and is able to fit one of the two were wolves.

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
Yes, I believe our she wolf is killed by the knife.
Our male wolf is killed by the bite. And then
we get that sad scene with Jack the dog laying
there by the side of his now deceased master.

Speaker 3 (01:24:15):
And it's kind of interesting because we get multiple like
it's juxtaposed with the kind of lovers isn't the right
word for the guy and his dog, but kind of
the companions united in the end because the dog lays
down next to the were wolf hunter. They're kind of
there together, and though the dog is still alive. But
then the two were wolves lay down next to each

(01:24:36):
other as they die, and then they both transform back
into their human forms.

Speaker 2 (01:24:40):
Yeah, and she's naked and he's I think wearing like
torn pants in this. But it's really nicely framed, the
bodies of our cursed lovers finally coming together, entangled in
the moonlight as our survivors look on, and we get
a repetition of that freedom and death monologue from earlier,

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

Speaker 3 (01:25:07):
Well, yeah, that does raise the question. So Bernstein thought
that they would achieve some kind of like ascension after death,
like that would be an empowering thing where they could
have eternity. Do they get that we never see the
other side of death. Are they living on somehow? What's happening?
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):
One can imagine a cut of this picture in which
we go right from this scene to a heavenly wear
wolf wedding. They're both in full like hybrid werewolf form though,
you know, with bow ties and veil and all, and
they are wetted and they become husband and wife.

Speaker 3 (01:25:44):
But that's not what we get here, Bernstein and Clarissa are.
They're like met by Dante the sphere of Venus in
the Paradiso.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
Yes, and the family members in attendance, they're all like
bleeding from open wounds like American werewolf in London style.
But I don't I don't mean to make light of
the endit here, because I think the ending here is
really strong and definitely fulfills on like the vision they
seem to have for the picture. It's again, it's it's grim,
it's it's not pulling any punches, but we do have

(01:26:15):
our three survivors, I guess four survivors, but three main
survivors that we have like real attachment to.

Speaker 3 (01:26:22):
Yeah, Alicia, Gonzalez and Adalita are all okay, and then
the cop survives to Yeah, and I guess that's the
end of La Loba.

Speaker 2 (01:26:29):
Yeah. And I have to say this one is really strong.
A big fan of La Looba. Again, I may have
to try and find whatever kind of whatever kind of
DVD is actually out there, and I'm hoping that somebody
puts out a better physical release of this in the future,
because I think this is a film that deserves it. Again,
it has its own cult status. Looking around, I did
notice there are multiple instances in which a video game

(01:26:54):
or a piece of work of written fiction has a
female werewolf in it, and they name the where wolf
character of Kitty, which is I think a clear reference
to this picture. And it also works on another level
because like Kitty Cat wear a wolf dog. It's also
a little bit funny but also a nice deep cut
into Mexican horror cinema. All Right, We're gonna go ahead

(01:27:16):
and close this episode up, but we'd love to hear
from everyone out there. If you have thoughts on where
wolf movies in general, write in, We'd love to hear
from you. Specifically, if you have some other great examples
of female were wolf pictures or fiction in general, or
folk tales and so forth, write in on that as well.
I do want to note there are some examples I
did not bring up, because sometimes in were Wolf who Done,

(01:27:39):
it's the female were wolf is the twist, because again,
you get so used to your wolf man that if
it's if it is a female character that's secretly the
were wolf, well sometimes that's the big twist. So I
didn't reference any of those by name, but maybe we
could get into that in Listener Male with you know
some spoiler warnings.

Speaker 3 (01:27:58):
Yeah, playing your your gender assumptions against you in misdirection, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28:02):
That's one way to get your heart ripped out in
the woods folks. All right, just a reminder that Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episodes
on Wednesdays, which coincidentally are currently dealing with werewolves, and
then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about weird films on Weird House Cinema. If

(01:28:24):
you want to follow Weird House Cinema on social, go
to letterbox dot com. Our username is weird house and
we have a wonderful list of all the films we've
we've considered thus far. I believe we're on one ninety eight.
We're about to do one ninety nine, and then we'll
do the two hundredth episode or the two hundredth movie
selection for Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:28:44):
Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:29:05):
Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.