Il mostro della California

An old monster gets a new touch in this movie from the late 1950's.

Back when it was popular to blame radiation for everything this movie offers a pair of dedicated but very misguided scientists who want to show the world what hideous mutations atomic radiation can create. They could just have gone to the movies any Saturday and seen all manner of mutants but no, these guys take a car crash victim Duncan Marsh (Steven Ritch, taking a break from the westerns he usually appeared in) and inject him with a serum derived from the blood of a radioactive wolf. (If that sounds familiar it's because the same plot, minus the radiation angle, was used in PRC's 1942 thriller THE MAD MONSTER.) The crash has given Duncan traumatic amnesia and thanks to the serum when he gets angry or frightened he turns into a . . .well you saw the title.

Stopping at a small mountain town, Duncan is tracked there by the scientists who suddenly aren't too anxious to have the world see what they have done (now if they had thought about that 3 reels earlier we wouldn't have had a movie!). The sheriff of the town is Don Megowan who played the Creature from the Black Lagoon in THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US. The town doctor wants to save Duncan but the sheriff knows the beast has to be stopped one way or the other before the body count gets any higher.

Okay so the end of the movie is pretty much inevitable but director Fred F. Sears, who also gave the world THE GIANT CLAW and EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, gives us a very atypical scene where Duncan is allowed to see his wife and child before he . . . well you'll see what I mean.

I love this movie for many reasons, one of which is that I also had a Super8mm 11 minute digest of it when I was a kid. Now I have the whole thing on video.

This is quite a good low budget film with a new twist to the werewolf story. There is nothing supernatural here. Forget the wolfbane and the silver bullets. Steven Ritch has the lead role and does a splendid job, making the monster even more sympathetic than the long suffering Larry Talbot of the Universal Wolfman flicks. His character, Duncan Marsh, appears in a mountain town having no memory of who he is or how he got there. Leaving a tavern, he is followed by a man who intends to rob him. The man pulls him into an alley and the werewolf claims his first victim. The story plays well the rest of the way. We find out that Duncan Marsh's condition is brought on by two doctors who use him as a test subject while treating him for injuries sustained in a car accident. A supporting cast of unknowns do a decent job of being believable. Elenore Tanin is especially effective as Duncan Marsh's wife. The Big Bear Lake locations give the film a lot of help.

In Mountaincrest, a stranger without memory arrives in a bar to have a drink. When he leaves the bar, a local tries to robber him but he turns into an animal and kills the attacker. Deputy Ben Clovey (Harry Lauter) hunts down the animal but is wounded by it. Sheriff Jack Haines (Don Megowan) organizes a party to find the beast. Meanwhile the nurse Amy Standish (Joyce Holden) and her father, the local doctor, receive a man called Duncan Marsh (Steven Ritch) that recalls that he had a car accident and two doctors have treated him. But he flees and Haines wants to hunt him down but Amy and her father wants to convince him to capture Duncan to see how they could treat him. When is wife Mrs. Helen Marsh (Eleanore Tanin) and her son Chris arrive in Mountaincrest, Sheriff Haines is convinced that shall capture the werewolf alive. But the doctors that conducted the experiment arrive in the town expecting to kill him.

"The Werewolf (1956)" is a film with the genre more drama than horror. The sad saga of the family man Duncan Marsh is heart breaking. The plot is interesting and the transformation is excellent for a 1956 movie. The performance of Steven Ritch is also great. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Lobisomem" ("The Werewolf")

Lensed by the same director of the bigger budgeted Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers and meant to be a companion for the lower half of the bill The Werewolf surprised everybody by being a taut face value chiller with more character emphasis than usual for this type of subject.

As other reviewers have stated the performances,locale,direction and lighting are much better should be for a story about kooky scientists turning a luckless schmoe into a hirsute mutant but it also has a film noir element that mixes in quite nicely amidst the western pines of Big Bear lake.

Unlike some other viewers I didn't have a problem with the make up. It was meant to scare kids and it did. A year later you can see similarities in the design for Michael Landon's beastly side in I Was A Teenage Werewolf.

After the late sixties this exhausted it's run on local Chiller theaters and became very hard to find until now.

For a reasonable price you can get a gorgeous widescreen DVD transfer of The Werewolf along with other B movie faves The Giant Claw,Zombies Of Mora Tau and Creature With The Atom Brain.

The name of the set is Icons Of Horror Sam Katzman. It comes with some great extras but one of them produced by the same Three Stooges dept. at Columbia has enough vile Asian stereotypes to make A Fu-Man-Chu movie look P.C.

Take a trip back to matinée-ville with this and enjoy.

This film scared the pants off me as a kid (which I loved!) and when I finally found it again and watched it as an adult I was pleasantly surprised to find that I still enjoy it. And parts of it, namely the cave sequence and the fight in the dark alley, still give me the creeps. I found this werewolf much scarier than Chaney Jr.'s version. Steven Ritch's portrayal has a wildness and rawness to it that gives his lycanthrope that extra edge. Watch how he drools as he sinks his fangs into that hunk of bait in the woods, for instance. Oh, there are a few flaws... and I find the scene at the doctors' lab very long, talky and dull... but all in all I'd recommend this to any classic horror film buff. Well done. Hard to believe something of actual quality was produced by the same man responsible for "The Giant Claw"!