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Cry of the Werewolf (1944)

"If you could speak, Marie La Tour, you could tell me what I want to know. What is this evil power? Where does it come from? I know that it exists and that it's here, in this house."

#cry of the werewolf #wolfmania #1944 #horror film #american cinema #henry levin #griffin jay #charles o'neal #nina foch #stephen crane #osa massen #blanche yurka #barton maclane #john abbott #george eldredge #fred graff #fritz leiber #milton parsons #ivan triesault #robert b. williams #minor Columbia horror which is a cute enough little flick but makes some odd anti intuitive choices #for example: the werewolf is heavily sidelined in the first half to make room for some forensic investigating‚ which IS mildly interesting #but presumably not what the werewolfheads of the 40s had come looking for. also underused in the first half is the wonderful #nina foch BUT she does get to simmer and be provocative in the last reel so that kind of makes up for it. Osa Massen‚ the other female lead‚#also does some great work here and the two of them capably carry a really quite slight little film. alas‚ sandwiched between them is #Stephen Crane‚ who would shortly abandon acting to become a well known restauranteur. i try not to bag on people's acting abilities bc it #feels mean but let's just say that the catering world's gain was also Hollywood's gain.#on a happier note‚ the perennially superb john abbott is also here in a small role and livens up his few scenes considerably #not a complete dud or anything‚ but very much a second rate kind of horror flick for this era and without much staying power #i watched this a couple of months before i actually got around to writing this tags and i remember very very little of this tbh

Cry of the Werewolf

A few minutes into Henry Levin’s debut feature, CRY OF THE WEREWOLF (1944, Tubi, YouTube), John Abbott, the tour guide at the Marie La Tour Museum of the Supernatural, intones in his mellifluous voice, “We will now proceed to the voodoo room,” and I almost fell out of my chair laughing. Maybe it was lack of sleep or a hitherto undiscovered side effect of Ozempic. But then, most of the film seemed utterly ludicrous to me. Columbia Pictures’ attempt to cash in on Universal’s classic horror cycle is a rather limp noodle, proving that when they’re not directed by Joseph Lewis or William Castle, the studio’s B output isn’t anything to cheer about.

Dr. Morris (Fritz Leiber), head of the museum, has discovered the resting place of New Orleans werewolf Marie La Tour. This does not please her daughter (Nina Foch), a Romany princess who’s inherited her mother’s habit of turning into a wolf to dispatch her enemies. She takes out the old man, and then has to deal with his son (Stephen Crane) and the police, headed by Barton MacLane. The script never really clarifies why she would kill someone to keep the grave a secret beyond a vague desire for privacy. There’s a telling line at an inquest when Crane refers to her tribe’s superstitions, and she says, “What you call superstition we call religion,” but this was not the era to examine that idea as a reflection of Western colonialism. Instead, we get a lot of skulking around in the dark, a few shots of a wolf’s shadow and feet and a sequence lifted from CAT PEOPLE (1942) by people who didn’t understand how it worked.

There are a few decent camera angles, and at least it all moves fast. MacLane does a good job, and you get nice character turns by Blanche Yurka and Ivan Triesault. Foch tries hard and gets off some good line readings, but she can’t exude menace the way a Gale Sondergaard could. Of course, it doesn’t help that her character is all over the place. At one point she’s coldly threatening a fellow Romany who’s made himself a suspect. At another she’s crying because she had to kill him. Leading lady Osa Massen works well as the museum’s receptionist and Crane’s love interest. When Foch puts her in a trance, it’s different from her non-trance behavior. A lot of horror film actresses have problems with that sort of thing. As for Crane, or Mr. Lana Turner as he was known then, he’s rather lumpen. But then, he wouldn’t inflict his acting on an unsuspecting public for long before he gave it up to become a successful and influential restauranteur.