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When watching the She – Wolf of London, don't expect to see a female version of the Wolf Man, This should not be classed with the Wolf Man, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy or any of their offshoots. It's an enjoyable movie but it should be considered not so much a horror movie but more of a mystery. If you are looking for a good horror movie, this isn't it. The acting is good, sets are good, plot a bit weak. It's a good chance to see June Lockhart playing a major role early in her career. I found that the movie did keep my interest but the horror factor never really came into play. Although it wasn't what I expected, I still enjoyed it. It certainly isn't a must see movie, but it isn't a waste of your time either.

"She-Wolf of London" is an okay film for what it is. I imagine that horror fans were disappointed, asking "Where's the Werewolf?" (Why Jack Pierce is credited as the makeup man in the opening credits I don't know, since I can't see any place in the film where his special makeup talents were employed.) The story: In Victorian London, a series of murders takes place in a public park, where the survivors report being attacked by a female werewolf. A young woman, Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart), suspects that she might be a werewolf in question. Supposedly, it is a family curse, "the curse of the Allenbys." Phyllis wakes up in the morning to find blood on her clothes and dirt tracks on the floor of her bedroom.

More, I won't say, since it will spoil the mystery for those who haven't seen the movie.

"She-Wolf" is more of a Gothic thriller than a monster movie. It has elements of George Cukor's "Gaslight," and Hitchcock's "Rebecca" and "Suspicion." If they had spent a bit more exposition time on the plot, it might have been a classic thriller. Nevertheless, it still does okay as a nice, eerie, foggy-gaslit melodrama.

As it is always marketed as a horror film, and part of the Universal Classic Horror Films, the disappointment it causes in horror fans is very understandable. "She-Wolf of London" is not, despite its name, a horror movie in the classic sense of the word, it is more a typical "whodunit" mystery and an ancestor to the psychological thrillers of today.

In London, a mysterious series of murders is creating fear in the population and confusion in the police department as people speak of a killer werewolf. The news create shock in young Phyllis Allenby (a beautiful young June Lockhart), who beliefs she is the responsible as an ancient family legend states that the Allenby clan is cursed with Lycanthropy, the werewolf's curse. She isolates herself and denies watching everyone, even breaking her relationship with her boyfriend Barry Lanfield (Don Porter). Her aunt Marta Withrop (Sara Haden) takes advantage of this and tries to force her daughter Carol (Jan Wiley) to marry the wealthy Barry.

All this interesting plot gives room to a lot of development, sadly, the movie doesn't move too far away from the established formula and therefore we don't have a lot of chance to get empathy for the characters. This is its main problem, since what we have are two-dimensional characters and a lot of potential wasted.

The sets are outstanding and the movie is brilliantly photographed, the trademark of the Universal Studios at that time without a doubt; nevertheless, this technical features does not help to improve a movie that feels incomplete or undeveloped. The pacing is slow and the very few things happen making the experience boring and tiresome at times.

The acting is above average, but with so few development there are not many things to do with that material. June Lockhart looks amazing and beautiful, but her character is not fully explored in the script and she has no real chances of showing her talents. A real shame, since she as the main character should be the focal point of the movie.

Don Porter is unconvincing as the hero and his performance feels a bit wooden. Same thing with Jan Wiley. Nevertheless, Sara Haden does an outstanding job and truly gives a lesson of acting in her performance. Along the technical aspects, her acting is probably what makes the movie worthy.

Overall an average movie that also suffers from bad marketing, since it is really not a horror movie, but a classic "whudunit" mystery that while entertaining, it is really nothing impressive. 5/10. Quite average time killer.

Apart from excellent settings and costumes, not to mention the always reliable pulchritude and charm of June Lockhart, this Val Lewton wannabe is mainly a misfire.

More's the pity too, since it abounds in shadowy night scenes, fog, and much cloak and daggery, including a final act complete with tilted camera angles, and poisoned milk, (a la Hichcock's "Suspicion").

But there is no real grue and no real tension, and what we are left with is a lame, (though slickly produced) thriller whose main interest accrues from its interesting cast and glossy staging.

Still, given the paucity of Victorian melodramas at your local cineplex--you could do much worse.

There's not a whole lot to recommend about this film. It is a Universal Horror...though at the end of all the major horror series at the studio. It does have June Lockhart in an early role...along with Martin Kosleck in a ambivalent rather than evil role, and Dennis Hoey playing a surprisingly adept Scotland Yard inspector (he must have finally won a bet with a studio executive and got away from the bumbling Lestrade of the Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holme's movies). The movie has great sets, though I assume they are redressed from some other Universal horror film...they do look somewhat familiar.

On the other hand, this movie is dull...and the plot is easy to figure out after about fifteen minutes. If you've seen Curse of the Cat People, you've got a start on the plot of this movie.

... that was released at the tail end of the Universal horror film cycle, from director Jean Yarbrough.

Wealthy heiress Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart) thinks she might be a werewolf when people start getting murdered at night in the park across from her home. She believes this because of the legendary "Allenby Curse" that says the Allenbys are cursed to walk the earth as werewolves. What survivors there are talk of a woman in the form of a wolf who attacked them. Phyllis takes to her bed, refusing to see her fiance, wealthy attorney Barry Lanfield (Don Porter). Phyllis tries all sorts of things to keep awake all night so that she can't "fall into a trance" and attack people, but she always does fall asleep and awakens the next morning with muddy slippers and even blood on her hands at times, with stories in the newspapers of yet another attack in the park. Her fiance gets tired of being kept away from her and decides to watch Phyllis' house to see what is happening. He sees a a woman come out the front door, walk to the park, and shortly thereafter a man is attacked, but the woman gets away. It might not be Phyllis - three other women live in that house besides her. So what goes on here? Watch and find out.

There are all kinds of "tells" in this one that makes the course of the film not much of a surprise, and June Lockhart plays this much too passive to be an effective possible killer. Also, I will tell you that you never actually see this creature on the loose. Don't expect Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man.

What this film does well is make good use of Sara Haden. She spent years on contract at MGM playing the spinster aunt in the Andy Hardy series and other similar roles. This movie gives her a chance to break out of that.

The other good thing this film does is explore the concept of regret, in middle age, of not marrying for practical reasons in one's youth versus going for the guy who gives you a hormonal rush and is perhaps penniless. The thing is, if you went for the sturdy practical guy you did not love, you'd wind up calling the mailman by his first name and you'd still have a tragedy on your hands.

I'd mildly recommend this one. There are worse ways to spend your time.

This is certainly not a great movie but is not bad for the Universal movies back in the 1940s. June Lockhart plays a young heiress who believes a series of murders in London is her fault, seems there is a family history of family members turning into werewolves. There is lots of atmosphere and the black and white photography sets the mood for this movie. Not the best I have ever seen, but certainly far from the worst. The ending came as somewhat of a surprise and the characters drew me in. I would recommend anyone who is a fan of the old Universal horror films to see this. June Lockhart is lovely as the young heroine. She went on to play the mom on the Lassie series and also the mom on Lost in Space.

London at the turn of the century---The legend of the Allenby Curse was almost forgotten until------

She-Wolf of London is produced by that bastion of classic horror, Universal Pictures. Directed by Jean Yarbrough and starring June Lockhart and Don Porter, the title clearly evokes the earlier Werewolf of London (1935) and conjures up images of either a girlfriend of Larry Talbot or Wilfred Glendon running amok. As history now tells us, She-Wolf of London is more concerned with mystery and suspense than the supernatural themes that ran thru other Universal wolf based movies.

Running at a brisk 61 minutes, She-Wolf feels more like a Sherlock Holmes picture minus that particularly intrepid sleuth actually being in it. Grizzly murders are being committed and it's all pointing to poor Phyllis Allenby, who herself is convinced that she is turning lycanthropic at nights due to the family curse. But is it her? If not her then who? These are the key issues asked as the film evolves amid swirling fog and lamp lighted parks and streets. The production is very good, the set designs adds to the atmosphere and the cast by and large are safe as houses. The ending also has a nice little trick up its sleeve.

It's not a bad picture at all, and being armed with the prior knowledge of its mystery over horror heart will aid any new prospective viewers. Best to view it as a standalone Universal picture rather than a classic horror entry. On reflection if it had been called The Allenby Curse or some other such name then that surely would have helped. But one gets the feeling that someone at Universal sniffed an opportunity to get people into the cinema on the back of its already garnered Wolfie reputation. 6/10

A young woman comes to believe she is responsible for a series of gruesome murders due to a family curse. Disappointing mystery film from Universal falsely advertised as a horror movie. It's even included on their Wolf Man Legacy DVD set. The movie is not a horror film and features no werewolves or other supernatural occurrences. I can excuse the disappointment over the misleading title and judge the movie on its own merits. What I can't excuse is that, as a mystery, it's decidedly predictable and unexciting. There's no suspense and if you can't predict who the killer is, congratulations on seeing your first movie ever.

June Lockhart, years from being immortalized as one of the great TV moms, plays the lead character as doe-eyed and dull-witted. Her childish belief that she is a serial killer is backed up by no reason. So the audience neither feels tension that she might be the killer (we know she's not) nor sympathy for her since she's so dense. The supporting cast is nice, as it almost always was with Universal in the '40s. Don Porter, Dennis Hoey, Sara Haden, Lloyd Corrigan, Jan Wiley are all fine. The Universal "look," as well as a nice supporting cast, make it watchable for fans. But I doubt casual viewers will find much of interest here.

In the turn of the century in London, the aristocratic lawyer Barry Lanfield (Don Porter) proposes to marry the heiress Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart) and she accepts. Phyllis lives in the family manor with her "aunt" Martha Winthrop (Sara Haden), her pseudo-niece Carol Winthrop (Jan Wiley) and the housemaid Hannah (Eily Malyon).

Out of the blue, dreadful murders happen in a nearby park and Detective Latham (Eily Malyon) believes that they are victims of a werewolf or a she-wolf, but his superior Inspector Pierce (Dennis Hoey) says that they are victims of an animal. Meanwhile, Phyllis finds blood on her hands, and her shoes and clothing dirty and she believes that she may be killing people under the influence of a family curse. Who might be the serial-killer?

"She-Wolf of London" is an entertaining mystery movie but with neither horror nor she-wolf as the title suggests. The dramatic story is not bad but frustrates fans of horror movies. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Mulher-Lobo de Londres" ("The She-Wolf of London")

What a swizz! Not only does this film clearly not take place in London, but there isn't a she-wolf to be seen. Instead, this creaky potboiler utilises a plot that must have seemed trite even way back in 1946: a pretty young heiress, Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart), believes that she has fallen victim to the lycanthropic Allenby curse unaware that her 'aunt' Martha (Sara Haden) is actually trying to drive her insane so that she can a) lay claim to the family fortune, and b) set up her own daughter Carol (Jan Wiley) with Phyllis's fiancé Barry (Don Porter).

If you can't guess what is happening after Martha has given Phyllis her umpteenth warm drink to help her sleep, then you really should consider giving up watching films and take up something less taxing on the brain, like basket weaving perhaps. As mysteries go, this one is pretty easy to solve, and offers little in the way of genuine excitement or tension. Thankfully, the lovely June Lockhart (who would go onto play Maureen Robinson on the classic sci-fi series Lost in Space) is easy on the eye and helps the time pass a lot less painfully than it might otherwise have.

Since this movie turned up on the Universal Monster Legacy Boxes, a movie that probably would have been forgotten forever suddenly turns up, It has a Wolf in the title and there is an old curse. Offcourse it's always fun to see a movie That I've never seen before (at least I think so), and after all it's just around an hour so, so it's not that bad.

I have a feeling that if this story was made in the 50's it would be on one of those early TV Theatric shows, that was popular in the 50s, it could even have worked in a 30 minutes Alfred Hitchcock serial,, or why not go a few steps longer and say it would have been an acceptable episode in Angela Lansbury's Murder She Wrote episodes.

Anyway She-Wolf is according to the old edition of The Universal Story "A Thriller that wanted to be a Chiller that turned out to be a Filler".

The movie is OK as a Filler! but offcouse has no place in a Monster Legacy Collection.

A few funny Notes: - Sara Haden who at the time was popular in the Andy Hardy serials at MGM,plays a very different persona.

• Joan Caulfield, still around apparing as late in 2006 in "Gray's Anatomy " - If the London fog was ever this thick and a madman was on the loose, the uniformed guys have to go 2 by 2, or in pairs, yet the highest police officer can say a line like "I stroll around the park too for awhile!" so Uniformed policemen has to go around in pairs, but a civilied clothed superior can walk around alone "just to take a stroll". HELLO HELLO! a mad person who even kills children, will only be antagonizing policemen if they walk in pairs, and never superior officers who walks alone, in the foggiest London parks???.

If you take a movie like this, not expecting much, and 60minutes flows buy fast.

This film is not a horror story but a good old fashioned thriller. I found it to be a fun film to watch on a dark foggy night. It's worth it just to see a young June Lockhart give a great performance as a young heiress who is convinced she is a Werewolf.

Much has been said elsewhere in these comments about the silliness of this film, the campy dialogue and the distinct lack of werewolves. And for that matter of plot. All this is true - She-Wolf of London is so ridiculous it's quite entertaining, the cast and atmosphere are very good, but there isn't much else to recommend it.

The one aspect that hasn't been commented on yet is the movie's utter lack of authenticity. Presumably this just wasn't a priority for the filmmakers (or maybe for the audiences) of the time, but boy, does it look outrageous today! It's very clear, for a start, that nobody involved in this film had ever been near London. The sets and locations, while reasonably impressive, look patently American and not at all like a British city. It's about as convincing as filming in Jamaica and calling it New York. Then the dialogue contains words that just don't exist in British English, and phrases that no English person would ever have used at that time. Virtually none of the dialogue sounds even close to convincing. With the exception of Hoey's, all the accents are Dick Van Dyke awful, in those few places they are even attempted. The props and sets are clearly made of 1940s materials rather than 19th-century ones - things like teapots and door knockers are very obviously the wrong weight, being made of cheap mazak or whatever. And best of all there are bizarre anachronisms - the police routinely travelling in what seems to be a very wealthy person's carriage, the heroine constantly leaving her window wide open despite the foggy, cold night (hello? ever been to the UK? Er, it's cold here, folks!), the police constantly wearing soaking wet raincoats although everyone else is wearing a perfectly dry lounge suit with no coat... I could go on and on. Suffice to say the movie never runs for more than 20 seconds at a time without letting out some clattering great inauthenticity that makes it impossible to take seriously. Whether that makes it fun or terrible, I'll leave for you to decide.

"London at the turn of the century---The legend of the Allenby Curse was almost forgotten until---"

This is more of a psychological thriller on the line of "The Curse of the Cat People", where everyone waits for fuzzy creatures so bad that they miss the whole movie.

Don Porter is not bad himself as Barry Lanfield, the suitor of the maybe fuzzy Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart.)

Phillis refuses to marry Barry (Don Porter) because she has the curse. Not that curse, the Allenby Curse. And for proof several people are dispatched.

Will it turn out to be true?

After we find out it is time to see June Lockhart in a more natural setting. Out There (1995).

The final entry in the Universal studios school of horror movies is more of a mystery story like a early instalment from the Hammer house of horror TV series, was sent out by Universal as "The Curse Of The Allenby's" after filming as "The She Wolf Of London" . Discovered by me from the Wolfman legacy DVD set proves to be a polished piece of Hollywood film factory expertise from the year American movie going peaked and directly before the rise of television. Set in turn of the century London or at least the Hollywood vision of it, is again set among the wealthy elite, none the less the story is developed thoughtfully with top notch performances from the roaster of contract players. With a terrific black and white transfer the films picture quality looks amazing for it's age with equally good sound.

The Curse of the Allenbys(aka. She-Wolf of London) is not a terrible film but it's not particularly great either and one of Universal's weakest overall.

It's the production values that makes The Curse of the Allenbys watchable, the sets are truly beautiful and rich in Gothic atmosphere, especially the fog-shrouded park, and the photography is equally handsome. William Lava's music score is appropriately haunting, the style of it fits well within the film and doesn't intrude with the atmosphere at all, this viewer associates Lava with his scores for some of the Looney Tunes cartoons but his music here is different and is effective. Some scenes do have a spooky atmosphere that does evoke some tension, but not really in a nail-biting way. A couple of performances are also decent, Sara Haden being excellent even while Dennis Hoey is in the Inspector role again but with a different and more subtle and intelligent approach to his Lestrade in the Sherlock Holmes Universal series.

June Lockhart was a highly dependable actress but while she is entrancing in the looks department this is really not one of her best roles, it's a blandly written character to begin with but Lockhart acts with too much doe-eyed passivity. Don Porter also is rather wooden. The dialogue is clunky and sometimes talky froth and the direction is technically accomplished but too staid, but it's the story that brings the film down the most. It's not helped by the misleading advertising and title, giving the sense that it was going to be a horror film with a she-wolf. As a horror film though The Curse of the Allenbys fails, if anything the film's more a mystery thriller-like one and even in that respect it doesn't rise above average. It's not scary or even remotely creepy, and the lack of suspense, draggy pacing, that not an awful lot happens and that it's rather predictable(the perpetrator and ending to me weren't that hard to figure out) are the reasons for that.

Overall, disappointing and not Universal at their best. A failure as a horror and blandly average as a mystery. 5/10 Bethany Cox

1946's "She-Wolf of London," bringing up the rear of Universal's lucrative wartime horror boom (1939-1946), offers only a few foggy sets to indicate its intention as a mystery (it was included in the SHOCK! package of classic Universals issued to television in 1957). As such, its villain is so painfully obvious that audiences weren't fooled by all its talk of werewolves, as obvious a cheat as 1956's "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon." The attacks feature a killer wearing a veil, faithfully followed by the vicious dogs that dislike our simpering heroine, a clear indication that she's not the guilty party (this odd detail about the dogs goes nowhere). Even the climax is botched, as the two principals merely talk quietly about who's going to die, as unexciting as everything that's come before; and while the killer confesses to the two on screen murders, just who was responsible for the previous deaths that Scotland Yard was so concerned about during the opening scene, and why do the papers insist it's a werewolf? (heavy sigh). Neither related to "Werewolf of London" (an actual monster or two) nor even "Cat People" (psychosexual frustrations), just an old fashioned plot of greed and false suspicions, which saw a great deal of repetition over the following years - "Devil Bat's Daughter," "Son of Dr. Jekyll," even Edgar G. Ulmer's "Daughter of Dr. Jekyll." As our heroine, the young and attractive June Lockhart fails to overcome her simpering character's deficiencies, while top billed Don Porter can do little but look concerned as her fiancée (actress Jan Wiley made only two more films before calling it quits, three more for Eily Malyon). The actual werewolf curse is never adequately explained, just a hoary plot device to justify the ripoff title. Worst of all is the wasted casting of screen villain Martin Kosleck, enjoying a bit of real stardom at Universal, thrown away on the innocuous role of impoverished artist Dwight Severn, only a couple minutes screen time (sadly, this was his final film for the studio). Lloyd Corrigan's fate at least is unexpected, while Dennis Hoey once again echoes Inspector Lestrade, as he previously did in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" (other constables are played by David Thursby, Olaf Hytten, Frederic Worlock, and James Finlayson, perennial Laurel and Hardy sidekick). This May 17 1946 double bill with "The Cat Creeps" marked the last gasp for Universal's reign as top horror studio, an undistinguished ending for such a prolific era. Curiously, while "WereWolf of London" aired eight times on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater, "She-Wolf of London" was only a step behind with seven.