Le Loup-garou

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.

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.

The Basic Plot: The unraveling of the mystery of two scientists,a werewolf, and a missing man.

The Praise: Tense, quiet, and spare, it is frightening in an amount of moments with the werewolf. The western locations are great, and the werewolf is sympathetic,plus good acting by a cast of nobodies. Not a major production, it is probably low-budget because of the no-frills look of the film and the lack of any stars. Odd because in parts it looks, feels, and acts like a western. If you detached some scenes without the Werewolf it could pass as a western. The Flaws: Ridiculous makeup. P.S : Extremely rare, it has never been released on VHS, DVD, Laserdisc etc.. Only way to see it is through TV, and I taped it off the AMC Halloween festival, and the tape has become part of my library of rare horror films.

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"!

Never seen this film before and was pleasantly surprised to see this film had some Sci-Fi effects and it involved itself with two doctors who find a man Duncan Marsh, (Steven Ritch) who was in a car accident who has no memory and they inject him with a serum which has some strange effects on his body. Duncan Marsh is a married man and has a son and he escapes from these doctors and runs into a bar and has a few drinks and tries to seek help but as he leaves the bar he is approached by a man who wants to take his money and something happens to this man. Soon after this incident, the town believes there is a wild animal on the loose because they find a man killed by a sort of wolf or wild animal. This is a rather low budget film, but it has real live background on a California park and has a great deal of realism and horror. Enjoy.