La lupa mannara

Now here Rino De Silvestro also talks a stroll down copious nudity avenue, but this seemingly has some sort of point to make about childhood trauma, the cycle of sexual violence and perhaps the menstrual cycle. Either that or those are all an excuse for copious nudity. Let's find out!

Daniela (played by Annik Borel) has a dream where she turns into a werewolf and gets chased by some villagers, resulting in one particular village getting his face split open in a rather nasty manner. But, a dream is a dream, and although Daniela's is having a spot of the old brain trouble following a rape when she was younger, her father would rather just get on with life. After all, they stay in relative isolation in a villa in Italy, and Daniela seems happy enough, although the prospect of her sister visiting with her husband doesn't please her that well. Oh, and she's also become obsessed with a picture of a distant relative and a curse that her family always end up turning into werewolves.

Her sister is played by Dagmar Lassander, and it seems that Dagmar is a lot fonder of her sister than the other way round. Also, Daniela spends most of the conversation just staring out at the moon, but later gets it together to go spy on Dagmar and her husband getting some (and strangely, Dagmar isn't a real redhead, I now know...). After spoiling it for them, Daniela is followed outside by Dagmar's husband, whom she comes onto and of course bites the throat out of. Sisters, eh? It's all written off as a dog attack but just to make sure Daniela is sent to a loony bin anyway. I forgot to mention that Dagmar's husband looked like that guy from Daniela's dream and her relative from the picture came to visit her in a vision, but attention to detail is not my strong point. Neither is being coherent.

Daniela ends up getting strapped to a bed for her own good but as this is an Italian film that just gives someone else the opportunity to feel her up, but luckily Daniela is tooled up with a scalpel and the next thing you know someone's dead, Daniela's escaped, and as an added bonus she seriously assaults a doctor. Time to start a new life, Daniela! Well, after you kill that guy that tries to rape you.

This is where Howard Ross comes in and he's a good guy AND a stunt man! This leads to a bizarre romance/stunt montage while Daniela realises that not all men are jerks, just 99% of them as she finds out when a bunch of guys turn up and rape her and kill Howard Ross. Is there any plot left that I haven't described in detail? A little bit I guess.

I've never been a big fan of rape in films, and the last three films I've watched from Italy in 1976 have all featured it, so that's no good. On the other hand, I think the director here is trying to say something or other about female power as Daniela just straight up murders every man who does her a wrong, usually powered by the moon. Or periods? I don't know. There is an absolute blizzard of nakedness in this film but none of it erotic. It seems to be there to add to the animalistic tendencies of Daniela. I had no idea what to expect from this film and despite the dodgy subject matter stands out as quite an original film. Not a very comfortable one, however.

I saw this on terrestrial television here recently and found it one of the most hilariously bad films I've seen in a long while.

It's starts out with a make-up job that has to be seen to be believed (get a load of the stuck-on fur and black nipples on the were-woman) and get's progressively worse.

It's your standard Italian 70's exploitation fare with the usual contents of rape, gore and standard soft-core lesbian scenes and editing that's been done with a meat-cleaver. If MST3K ever do adult versions of their show, I'd recommend this one.

First off - don't go into WEREWOLF WOMAN thinking that you'll see much actual werewolf action - you won't. The best part of this film is how goofy and inept it actually is. Bad acting, horrible (but hilarious) dubbing, some OK gore (for a 70's Italian joint) and a good bit of nudity make this one worth a look, if you dig this sort of stuff...

The "werewolf woman" in question, was apparently some chick that was raped who think she is a werewolf based on the fact that one of her previous ancestor was. Her rape experience makes her prey on men as a way of dealing with her experiences. The rest is a bunch of Italian sexploit nonsense that takes itself awfully seriously for such a cheezy-ass film...

Don't expect a masterpiece with this one. It pretty much looks visually like every other Italian sexploit film out there, and the "werewolf" angle is highly over-rated, as there is no real werewolf action to be had in this one other than the first five minutes or so. If you are new to Italian sexploit films, or have exhausted your choices and are a genre-lover, then check this one out...otherwise - it ain't bringin' nothing' new to the table...6/10

This is NOT a good movie. Nor is it really even "so-bad-its-good", but it is kind of interesting in a twisted, car wreck sort of way. The movie is about a young woman who due to an ancient family curse and implied childhood sexual abuse is suffering from a kind of "hysterical lycanthropy". She believes herself to be a werewolf, so she starts killing (and eventually eating) her male lovers. Her actual lycanthropic status is left kind of ambiguous throughout the movie, making this more interesting than most. It kind of aspired to be what "Ginger Snaps" was years later. But unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) it was directed by Rino DiSilvestri, a notorious Italian exploitation hack who had absolutely no sense of his own limitations. Still I vastly prefer a movie like this that tries to be serious and stumbles into camp, to one that intentionally aims at camp (like so many alleged "cult" movies do today) and fails just as miserably.

Of course, DiSivestri WAS pretty good at sexploitation, and he always had a very decent female cast. In his earlier movies he worked with a whole bevy of Euro-beauties (Anita Strindberg, Jenny Tamburi, Paola Senatore, Krista Nell, Magda Konopfka, Orchidea DiSantis, ad infinitum). Here he's reduced to the lovely Dagmar Lassander, who has probably the longest and most gratuitous sex scene of her career, and the lead, the much more obscure Anik Borel, who was cast because DiSivestri, according to his DVD commentary, thought "she looked like a wolf". She is kind of weird looking I guess, but her body is pretty impressive and you get to see a whole lot of it here. (Interestingly, her only other notable screen credit is in "Weekend with the Babysitter" a very 70's and very American sexploitation film directed by Tom "Billy Jack" McLoughlin). This movie is certainly not for everybody, but it works for me

I started watching this movie expecting some barely tolerable Hammer horror film wannabe... and I wasn't far off. There's a fair amount of glimpsed gore, and they threw in lots of nudity, but the latter half of the movie presents a few ironic twists. Holy cow, they actually put a little thought into the story, and didn't completely fall into the predictable stuff one expected at the outset. And dare I say it, some of the "gratuitous" nudity wasn't so gratuitous after all, because it fit in with the story and setting.

Don't get me wrong, it's still overall a bad movie, but as bad movies go, it's a shade more intelligent than the REALLY horrible tripe like Mesa of Lost Women and Robot Monster.