Face of the Screaming Werewolf

If you read Rudolph Grey's excellent "nightmare in ecstasy", you will find a passage that refers to Edward D. Wood Jnr. directing Lon Chaney Jr. as a wolfman climbing up the outside of a building for promotional reasons. Is this a previously uncredited entry in the Wood CV?

This movie presents about eight minutes of scenes with Lon Chaney Jr. and the rest its a long mexican movie pasted with another werewolf movie... and, what about the logic, and the continuity? The best scene of this stuff its at the beginning, the scientist and the mesmerized woman. But, I strongly recommend this movie to all Chaney Jr. fans!

Seriously, I know the B-movie world is a strange place ... but have you honestly ever heard anything quite so preposterous and pointless? Here, filmmaker Jerry Warren (who later made Frankenstein Island) threw together two Mexican horror movies, "La Casa Del Terror" and "La Momia Azteca". No, really. He took two movies, and edited them together into one. He recorded his own scenes in order to combine them in some plot about a woman leading a team of archaeologists to find two ancient and evil mummies, one of whom is a mummified werewolf ... and it all makes absolutely no sense.

A bunch of scientists using mental regression hypnotise a woman and she describes a pyramid. When they take her to visit the pyramid, she has a flashback to a song-and-dance tribal ritual. And the ritual scene goes on. And it goes on. And it goes on. Just when you're beginning to wonder if Warren can't get more than THIS out of two whole movies, they finally venture inside the pyramid. And they venture. And they venture. Oh sweet Jesus, when is this movie going to start? Then they're attacked by stock footage of a mummy. Eek! And from here on, it only becomes even more of a big, stinking mess.

What is there to say about this movie? The script is unbearable. The acting is amateur (don't be surprised if you see them glancing right at the camera). The soundtrack is ludicrous and intrusive. While the production values of the original Mexican movies hold up, Warren's sets are far from convincing. The way the various scenes are edited together is often hilariously bad. There is no narrative flow whatsoever. Scenes drag on and on, while the viewer has no idea what's supposed to be happening. They say if something's worth doing it's worth doing well, but this movie was never worth doing. It's a bad idea, badly executed, and I feel sorry for the innocent cinema-goers back in 1964 who must have wondered what the hell they were being subjected to.

"Face of the Screaming Werewolf" stands among the worst movies ever made. If you want to see Lon Chaney's final big-screen performance as a werewolf, try and find the original "La Casa del Terror". And if you're looking for anything resembling quality, ignore this piece of trash. If you like bad movies, however, by all means check it out ... but keep your finger on the 'fast forward' button.

This is not a Mexican movie. It contains footage from two films made in México, but the concept, butchering of the original material and lousy additional scenes are the work of L. A. film peddler Jerry Warren. It is better to find good copies of the first entry of the Aztec Mummy trilogy directed by Manuel Portillo and the comedy "La casa del terror" starring Tin Tan and Lon Chaney under the direction of Martínez Solares. Both movies were very popular in their time, and with a bit of creative marketing they could have made a little more money for Warren than whatever he got from this horrid junk.

Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1964)

** (out of 4)

Scientist make a major discovery when they uncover a mummy (Lon Chaney) but their joy soon turns to frustration when a gang of thieves steal it and turn it over to a mad scientist. The scientist then does some experiments on it, which soon has the mummy returning to life and turning into a werewolf!

This Jerry Warren mash-up takes footage from the 1957 film LA MOMIA AZTECA and the 1960 film LA CASA DEL TERROR and blends them together for one cheap and quick sixty-minutes. Obviously adding subtitles to a horror film wasn't the popular thing to do back in the day so producers like Warren would buy foreign movies and then dub them or add narration.

I've seen both of the original movies that this was taken from and they're both decent for what they are. You really can't give Warren any credit for what's in this film because he was more or less just an editor trying to mix up some footage and release it as something new. For the most part the film will remain interesting to monster fans as it gives you a chance to see Chaney play a mummy and werewolf for one last time.

For the most part it's easy to rip this film because it is another hack job from Warren but I thought it was one of his better pieces of "work," If you're a fan of Chaney then this will be a must see since it allows you to see him in action one last time. Another problem is that LA CASA DEL TERROR is still unavailable in an English subtitled print so this is one of the few ways to understand the film (unless you know Spanish of course). FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF, at the very least, is a quick and fun monster romp that shouldn't be taken too serious.