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Weirdhouse Cinema: La Loba (1965)

2025/3/28

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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. And this is Joe McCormick. This week, we are returning to the wild world of Mexican cinema. Six episodes ago, we watched a non-Lucha vampire film in the form of 1962's The Brainiac.

And so it feels fitting that today's episode is a werewolf movie and not just any werewolf movie. It's widely considered the first Mexican werewolf film, 1965's La Loba or The She-Wolf.

Really? The first one in 1965, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So to give that a little context in comparison just to the wider cinematic tradition, 1913's The Werewolf, which is now presumed to be lost, you know, in one of the studio fires. The Werewolf from 1913 is considered to be the very first werewolf film, period. And interestingly enough, it too centers around a female werewolf. Hmm.

So I've been wanting to cover some sort of female werewolf movie for a while here. Most of your werewolf films, they tend to employ some sort of a male hyper masculine werewolf. We'll get into some of this in a bit.

And looking around, it's like some of the possibilities for like a female-centered werewolf film. I mean, there are some standouts. Ginger Snaps is often held up as a kind of classic of its own sort. There's 1976's Werewolf Woman starring Anique Borrell, which is pretty great if you're looking for grindhouse ridiculousness. And then, of course, female werewolves also play into a number of really good-liking films. Joe Dante's The Howling, for one.

2007's Trick or Treat has some really cool female werewolves in one of its sequences, if I remember correctly. For my money, however, none of these films are as great as La Loba. La Loba, I think, does a great job of telling its own little mad science-infused gothic horror tale with lots of werewolf intrigue and just some terrifying sequences in general.

I have some real questions about the backstory in this movie. Like, um, there are hints as to where the werewolves came from, or I'd say more than hints. It is strongly suggested where the werewolves came from, but we're not exactly told. And there are, uh, elements that don't really fit with other elements of the story. Like,

It is suggested that Dr. Bernstein's research is what created the two main werewolves in this movie. But also, there's a character who seems to have pursued a werewolf around the world searching for revenge. And that doesn't fit with the Bernstein thing. So I don't know what's going on. But I kind of like the ambiguity, as I often do. And maybe I'm on record saying this about enough films at this point that it's just...

part of what my taste is, but I kind of like it when it's not exactly clear what the backstory is. Yeah, this film does have its ambiguity about it. And I want to drive home that the tone is pretty serious and ultimately quite grisly and grim, especially for the time period. This is not, again, not a luchador or luchadora movie. Nobody in a shining mask is going to show up and save the day.

No, though more loosely defined, there is a good bit of wrestling in it. It doesn't have like all the definable moves that you see in a Lucha film, even the Lucha genre crossovers. But it does have a lot of like grappling and rolling around. Yeah, yeah, there is a brawl towards the end of the picture that I look forward to talking about. And while it is not...

strongly uh lucha in its vibe uh there's a little lucha sprinkled in there i mean it was unavoidable uh so yeah we'll come back to that in a bit coming back to the female werewolf aspect of the movie uh we've had plenty of tales of female werewolves you know dating back hundreds of years and so forth um but again male lycanthropes often receive more attention

I'm currently reading a book titled She-Wolf, A Cultural History of Female Werewolves, edited by Hannah Priest. And one thing it points out is that we can often, so there's sort of like two ways. There's one primary way you tend to see werewolf tales in general handled, and that is to trace it back to humanity's prehistoric history, the domestication of wild wolves, our relationship with wild wolves, looking at wild wolves and so forth.

But one thing that the authors in this book point out is that you can also perhaps even more accurately look at werewolf tales as something that really emerged specifically during an agricultural era. So narratives in which a male landowner is threatened in the case of a male werewolf by a dangerous outsider and in the case of female werewolves by a threat within his own house or community.

And as we'll discuss, it's notable, you know, perhaps by accident that today's film, La Loba, manages to reflect both of these models. The werewolf as a threatening outsider and the werewolf as some sort of interior threat within the family or social unit. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Another thing I want to say, and we'll come back to this as well as we get into the specifics from the film, but cinematic werewolf visions are always, I think, a careful balancing act.

How are you going to stylishly deliver on a concept that is in many ways like deeply rooted in the human psyche, but do it in a believable way. Make us buy into it with our heart, but also with our

skepticism, you know? And so werewolf effects can absolutely connect with us on a primal level in a picture, but they can also flounder and fail. And we see that occur at pretty much every budget and artistry level. You know, you can throw millions and millions of dollars at your werewolf effects, and it doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to buy it. It's a fine line.

Well, yeah, and that's true on multiple levels. I mean, in one sense, that's true of basically any monster design. Like we've talked on the show before, I think this came up in our episode on The Thing from Another World, where the presence of the monster is way more than just the monster makeup or the monster suit. It's very much in how it is framed, how it is lit, how much of it you get to see and in what context, the kind of management of music and tension and all these things

in the lead up to our glimpse of it on the screen. So in the context of a movie, in a story, a monster is a lot more than just, you know, its costume design. So yeah, you can have cheaper costumes or cheaper makeup effects that can be used quite well and vice versa.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's made me think about one of the reasons that I find myself preferring an actor-in-suit effect as opposed to CGI, stop-motion, animatronics. And to be clear, there are plenty of examples of CGI, stop-motion, and animatronic werewolves that I very much enjoy. But I think maybe...

You know, like I've been reading about the various traditions that entail the use of a specific animal's pelt in a werewolf transformation or the taking on of an animal's skin or human bodies that are revealed when the skin of the wolf falls away or is peeled away from the defeated monster. And of course, this goes beyond just werewolf myths, but also like various transformation into animals and transformation of animals into humans that you find in various traditions.

So I wonder if it is important on some level, maybe even a crucial level, to understand that we're looking at a person in a werewolf costume, at a human dressed in a skin, you know, tying into ritualistic embodiment and shamanistic transformation underlying like the power of cinema in these instances. I'm not saying that it's key to all cinema, but maybe for just werewolf pictures. It's like a shamanistic act where we're viewing.

there is a sacredness to watching someone like Lon Chaney Jr. or Paul Nashie perform their art. Yes, I can see what you're saying. So like the versions of werewolf design that look more clearly like a person in a furry suit are

uh have a more religious feeling a kind of ancient mythical feeling than the ones where somebody is just fully transformed into a convincing canine morph like where it's just a human covered in fur that feels more like a priest donning an animal skin to do some kind of ritual yeah or when the person just turns into a full-blown german shepherd right there on the screen which we've seen before

I might come back to more about how this movie's form of werewolf fits more into movie history, but maybe later in the plot section. All right. Moving on to elevator pitch. Mine is simply House of Usher, but make it werewolves. Yeah. Yep.

There's some weird family energy here, like arriving at a cursed mansion and somebody's, you know, a suitor is there to marry various family members. There are actually multiple versions. I was thinking of it as if this were a click hole article, it would be quiz. Which of my garbage wolf daughters are you? That's good, too.

Alright, so as far as I know, there's not a trailer for this picture, so maybe we'll just get a little taste of some of the Spanish dialogue. I must confess that I study something similar, also breaking all scientific belief. Lycanthropy? Yes, the transformation of a man into a wolf. Or a woman into a wolf. Science rejects the existence of lycanthropy. The concept as something of a legend. Do you agree with that? No, because I have powerful reasons to believe it.

All right. If you would like to see 1965's La Loba, first of all, just make sure you're, if you're looking for La Loba or She-Wolf, make sure you throw in that 1965 because these titles have been used a lot. There are some DVDs floating around, but I can't speak to their quality. I think if I had to do it over again, I would have gone out of my way to try and get my hands on one of these DVDs on just the chance that the quality could be a little better because we had to depend on like,

archive.org and some other streaming options. There's not a high-quality physical release out there as far as I can tell, and I would love to see such a release occur in the future for this movie. Oh, yeah. A crisp Blu-ray of this would be really nice. I would love to see what treasures there are in all the corners of the frame. Even the version we were watching, I think, which seems like the best streaming option out there, it's kind of cropped, like you can't see the full frame, and

It's certainly a little bit fuzzy around the edges everywhere. So, yeah, if you're out there and you can get the rights to this thing, please release in the highest quality possible. Yeah, because I mean, this film does have its following. It's considered a cult classic in many regards. It just needs a better release is all.

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All right, let's get into the people behind this picture. Starting at the top with the director, it's Rafael Baladón, who lived 1919 through 1994. Mexican Golden Age actor, director, screenwriter, and producer, whose 1957 film, The Savages, was nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

This is just one of several horror movies that he directed, including 1957's Swamp of the Lost Monster, which has a little creature from the Black Lagoon action going on there. 1959's The Man and the Monster. 1963's The Curse of the Crying Woman. Both of these two, Man and Monster and Crying Woman, those had Abel Salazar in them, who was in The Brainiac. He also did 1964's Museum of Horror and 1969's Perverse Doll.

Oh, I just realized we've talked about Swamp of the Lost Monster before. I think it was in chat one time because it's one of the great examples of like mismatch between what the monster looks like on the poster versus in the movie. On the poster, well,

Well, you're getting the classic, the Tor Johnson framing where the monster is carrying an unconscious woman and the monster looks like a cross between the brain mutant from This Island Earth and Kif from Futurama. But in fact, in the movie, it is like, it looks like a

Killer clown fish I guess it looks like a weird little fish with teeth going nothing like it and also there's another poster for this movie that is boring is all get out doesn't have the monster on it instead it's just like a cowboy on horseback why would you make that your your monster movie poster.

I don't know, maybe in some markets you were going more for the cowboy film crowd as opposed to the monster movie film crowd. I don't know. Well, having seen La Loba now, I'm impressed enough that I do want to seek out these other movies.

All right, moving on to the story and screenplay credit, we have Romano Bon, who lived 1916 through 1965, Costa Rican-born writer whose credits include a number of lucha, horror, western, and action films, including Swamp of the Lost Monster.

1958's The Vampire's Coffin with Abel Salazar. 1959's The Black Pit of Dr. M. Perverse Doll. 1976's Santo vs. the She-Wolves. Oh! We have some lady werewolves in that as well. 77's The Black Widow. And he also directed 1965's A Hundred Cries of Terror.

Just a hundred? Just a hundred. I mean, you know, you have to fit it all within a certain runtime. But yeah, he's the story and screenplay credit here. And I have to say, I think it's a nice amalgam of gothic horror and mad science with a kind of like provincial Mexican feel to it as well. Like almost a folk horror vibe. When does this movie take place?

That is a great question. Definitely riding around in carts. Yeah, like horse-drawn buggies. I don't think we ever see a motor car in the film. And yet there are industrial freezers. There's like a walk-in freezer and microscopes. The most advanced microscope we were looking at. It just looks like a standard microscope, but we're told it's very good.

All right. Well, let's move on to the cast. And this film concerns the Fernandez family. So let's meet the Fernandez's here.

First of all, we have the patriarch of the Fernandez family, a brilliant scientist working in the field of metaplasia. This is Professor Fernandez, played by José Elias Moreno. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Mexico's Santa Claus himself. This is the guy who played Santa Claus in Santa Claus, which we previously talked about on Weird House Cinema. That film was just six years earlier. I thought he seemed familiar. Now...

Wouldn't it have been horrible if the Santa Claus movie ended with him getting mauled by a werewolf like in this one? Yeah, that would have been tough for the kids, for sure. Yeah, he does not have a beard in this film. I don't think he had a beard in real life. He does have a mustache, as does, I think, every male actor in the picture. So you can't really tell anybody apart purely based on their facial hair. Oops, all mustaches. Yeah.

So Moreno was an Ariel award-winning character actor, largely known outside of the Santa Claus role for playing heavies and sometimes villains. His other credits include 1952's The Magnificent Beast. This is the one he was awarded an Ariel award for. 1969's Night of the Bloody Apes. And he also played an ogre in Rene Cardona's 1958 movie Pobrecito. That

I think it's great for me to finally see him in something other than Santa Claus, which I've seen so many times, because I think he's really good here. It's a very expressive performance. He's he's not he's not a villain, but he's, I guess, kind of a morally complicated character at the center of things here. Well, he's a he's a cursed, troubled man who has.

maybe turned his daughter into a werewolf or just happens to be working on werewolf related research. Meanwhile, one of his colleagues fell in love with his daughter and turned her into a werewolf. Which one is it? We don't know, but he seems to hold a great deal of guilt, guilt in this. Is it because he created the, the, uh, the lycanthropy that is in his daughter or daughters? We don't know early on in the picture. Um, or is it because he's aware of it and, and like out of,

perhaps a bit out of like professional pride and also out of love for his daughters thinks that he can cure it even if deep down he knows that he cannot and should have put a different stop to things earlier. Yeah, it's all left rather ambiguous. Mm-hmm.

Now, a note on the Ariel Awards, by the way. I've mentioned them in passing on the show before, and I'm going to mention them several times here. But I'm not sure we've ever stopped to define this for those not familiar. These are in some ways the Oscars of Mexican cinema, and they've been going on since 1946.

All right, so sticking with the Fernandez family here, we're going to move on to Marcela de Fernandez. This is Professor Fernandez's wife and mother to his two daughters, played by Columba Dominguez.

She lived 1929 through 2014. Mexican actress, best known for the 1949 film Maclovia, for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Ariel Award. Frequently worked with Roberto Canedo and once co-starred with Japanese acting legend Toshiro Mifune in 1961's The Important Man, which was nominated for an Oscar.

Now, I will say it was rather confusing at times because mom in this picture does not look any older than her daughters. In fact, the actress here playing the mom is only six years older than one of the actresses playing one of the daughters.

I also found that confusing. I, I, the first time I watched it, I was mighty confused by the family relationships, especially because there is, I believe, intentional misdirection at first on which one of the daughters is the werewolf.

Right. Yeah, this film, we've kind of already spoiled it to a certain extent. This film is sort of a werewolf whodunit, but I have to say doesn't lean heavily enough on that gimmick to where it's absolutely necessary. It's only a werewolf whodunit for like 20 or 30 minutes at most. I mean, you get to the who way before the end. Yes.

All right, now getting to the daughters, the Fernandez daughters, we're going to start with Clarissa Fernandez, played by Kitty De Hoyos, who lived 1941 through 1999.

This is the professor's favorite daughter, or it must be so because she's played by our top bill performer, a golden age, starlet Kitty, uh, deal is, uh, an actress of stage and screen and an enormously famous sex symbol of the day in Mexican cinema. She sometimes called the Marilyn Monroe of Mexico. Hmm. Okay. So,

So she was the daughter of an opera singer, and she took to acting early, and her film credits go back to the mid-1950s. Apparently, the 1956 film...

As Posas Infilis really skyrocketed her career, this is like a drama about infidelity. And she only has a bit part in it, but it features artistic nudity, or at least, you know, topless nudity, which got a lot of people talking and ultimately Mexican censors talking. But it very much put her on the map.

Afterwards, she often played femme fatale type characters, though appeared in both serious films and comedies. Her best known films include 1960s To Each His Own, 1965's Adventures at the Center of the Earth. If you look around online, you can find some screenshots and promotional images from that in which she's being carried around by some sort of a bat creature.

And also another couple of films from 1966, The Witch Riders and The Crows Are in Mourning. The latter being, I think, another gothic horror picture. Now, maybe we should have said this earlier for listeners who are new, but as usual, we're going to be talking about various twists and turns in the plot and reveals. So if you want to go into the movie unspoiled, you should probably pause and go do that now. But okay, so now on the other side of that,

Kitty Doyos' character is, of course, the daughter who is the werewolf. And one thing that I did find kind of strange was that

I couldn't tell exactly what they were going for in a couple of the transformation scenes. I was like, is this supposed to be scary or is this supposed to be sexy? And I think maybe it's, it's both understanding her as like a known star in Mexican cinema as kind of the, the Marilyn Monroe of Mexican cinema makes more sense of like the, the nude transformation scenes where no significant nudity is revealed, but

I think clearly these scenes are supposed to be somewhat exciting to the viewer. Yes. Yeah, I think so. And I have to say, as a performer, perfectly fine when she's a human, but I feel like she really shines when she's the werewolf.

And, you know, I feel like it's a really great physical performance. Oh, I actually quite like her in some of the human drama scenes because she brings a danger to the character even when she's not in wolf mode. There is a...

I don't know, a kind of harshness in her eyes where there are things that are never said out loud in the film, but you sense that maybe she is accepting of the idea that, yeah, she will transform and go out and kill in exchange for having some kind of other power, some kind of experience beyond life and death.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that is a great point. I mean, she does have a terrific monologue about all of this later on in the picture. And, oh, and then that great piano playing sequence, which we'll get to as well. The piano scene, which it's almost like the piano playing scene in Reefer Madness, but less funny and more serious where she's...

it's like right when we're coming up to the climax of the film, she is furiously, uh, madly playing the piano in the lead up to when the, the full moon is going to be revealed. And she, I think it's implied that she knows she is going to change and that she is going to kill, that she's going to kill innocence. Yeah. Meanwhile, her sister, uh, Alicia Fernandez is complaining like you shouldn't be playing the piano. You're supposed to be mourning. Um,

And yeah, Alicia is played by Adriana Roel. She lived 1934 through 2022. She was an Ariel Award winning actress herself for 1979's Ana Cruza and 2014's She Doesn't Want to Sleep Alone. She also has a supporting part in Juan Lopez Montezuma's 1977 horror film Alucardia.

Spell that backwards, folks. Yeah. And it's a Dracula. A Dracula means non Dracula. Yeah.

I need to watch that one for myself, but I've seen at least one film by Juan Lopez Montezuma, and I was very impressed by it. So at some point, I'd like to watch one of his films for Weird House, but I'm not sure just yet which one it's going to be. But wait, okay, so that's the Fernandez family, but both of the adult daughters in the Fernandez family, I was going to have to mention this at some point because it's a weird plot decision, but...

both of the adult daughters are dating co-workers of the father. Well, this is what happens when you lock your suspected werewolf daughters up all the time. You don't let them go out into the world and meet people. They're just going to end up falling in love with your various co-authors and fellow scientists. Yeah, so the two other doctors who come to do werewolf research at the mansion...

It just happens to be like, wow, I've never seen another man before. I guess we're going to get married. Yeah, yeah. So Clarissa has a suitor in the form of Dr. Alejandro Bernstein, played by Joaquin Cordero, who lived 1923 through 2013. Mexican actor of stage screen and TV, active from the mid-40s through 20s.

2011. His career particularly picked up in the 1950s when he won a 1951 Ariel Award for The Two Little Orphans. His credits include 1954's The River and Death, 1966's Dr. Satan, in which he plays the title character, Dr. Satan, who I'm to understand is kind of like a super criminal character and a bit of a hypnotist with maybe some occult flavoring. Hmm, okay.

He returns to play Dr. Satan once more in 1968's Dr. Satan vs. Black Magic. Then there's 1969's The Book of Stone and certainly a few Lucha movies in there, including a couple of Santo films and 1969's Wrestling Women vs. the Killer Robot. I liked this guy as well. So he is, again, he's Kitty DeOyos' character's suitor, and they play well together in their scenes. One of their scenes is sort of the central moment

motivation scene in the movie where he sort of explains what he wants. I'll talk about the monologue later on, which is echoed by Clarissa in a voiceover later in the film. But he gives this monologue about how he wants some kind of

secret, some kind of pleasure or possibility that exists only beyond life. So he's got a kind of death drive embodied in a way. He wants something that cannot be achieved as a mortal. It can only be achieved beyond death. And we really don't get a lot of explanation of what that is, except it is somehow related to lycanthropy.

And in the way he announces his desire for this thing beyond death, he has a quality that reminds me of some other cool characters in movies we've watched. Kind of like the antagonist Biederbeck in the Dr. Fibes sequel. You know, this character who is...

strong, driven, focused, and kind of beyond good and evil. Not quite a villain, but not necessarily good either. Just like on a kind of amoral quest that has no precedent. Yeah, I think that's a good way of framing it.

So that's Claress' suitor. But then we have another suitor in the mix, and that is Dr. Gonzalez, played by Roberto Canedo, who lived 1918 through 1998. This is an actor we've talked about on the show before because he played the Doctor of Doom in 1963's Doctor of Doom, the luchadora picture.

he's the mad scientist in that one, which is a bit of a spoiler, but a really fun role for him because he got to play like the meek, friendly scientist, but also like his secret true identity, that of a raving madman who wants to do all sorts of unspeakable experiments and transplant, I can't remember if it's

I think it's gorilla brains into or some sort of beast brains into the bodies of luchadores. Yeah, transplanting gorilla brains into women, I think, or vice versa, maybe both. But this is a great role. It's a great double role in that it's not that he's playing Clark Kent in Superman. He's playing Clark Kent in Doctor Doom. Yeah. Right.

So that's a fun one. Go back and watch that one slash listen to our episode on it if you haven't already. But Canedo was a talented Mexican performer during the golden age of Mexican cinema. He acted in over 300 pictures, which included a lot of B films, but also some serious dramas.

On the B-cinema end of things, he pops up in several Santo pictures, 1968's The Batwoman, which is pretty great, as well as a 1986 slasher film called Bestia Nocturna and the 1989 Mexican slasher film Grave Robbers.

Two of his most well-received films include Poverina from 1949 and an adaptation of Crime and Punishment from 1951. So I may have misspoke earlier when I framed both of the medical colleagues of Dr. Fernandez as like werewolf researchers, but

Rob, correct me if you disagree, but I think Gonzalez is not a werewolf researcher. I think he's just a general medical colleague. And it's only Bernstein who is working on the werewolf frequency with Fernandez. Is that how you took it? Yes. Yeah. This guy is not in on any of like the more scandalous research operations that are going on. He's just a doctor. He's doing doctoring.

type business in the area and beyond, including advising the local law enforcement officers about mutilated corpses that suddenly pop up. Yeah, he's like, here is the attacker's blood. I can tell you what kind of creature it came from, that sort of thing. Actually, though, in keeping with his role in Doctor of Doom, where I said he was Clark Kent slash Doctor Doom, in this movie, he really has an impressive range, which is he goes from

I would say the most, uh, kind of like handsome and capable, uh, Indiana Jones looking character in the film to making the goofiest reaction face I've ever seen in a movie. He does it. It happens pretty early on. Um, he pulls this wonderful face when he uncovers a mutilated corpse and it's, uh, it's amazing. Uh, it's like, uh, you know, the toilet has overflown reaction face here. Um,

You know what it is? It's that face they put on YouTube thumbnails to make people click on them. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or Netflix thumbs for films like if La Loba was a modern film and was featured on Netflix, it would be this face or some other ridiculous face that somebody's pulling.

All right. We have two more characters, two more actors really to highlight here. We have a character by the name of Crumba. He's a stoic man, kind of dressed, we were talking about this off mic, kind of dressed like a barbarian who aids Professor Fernandez and owes him some sort of mysterious life debt.

Krumba is cool. Every time he's on screen, I was like, okay, we're in good hands. Yeah. He mostly just stands around, smokes a pipe, occasionally mans the secret passage cranks. But he has a very chill, intimidating vibe.

So, Carumba is played by Crocs Alvarado, who lived 1910 through 1984. Costa Rican luchador, referee, and cartoonist turned actor. Best known, actually, for various heartthrob roles during the golden age of Mexican cinema. If you look up pictures of him, you'll see a lot of, like, very, like, sometimes he's shirtless and doing, like, you know, muscle poses. Other times, you know, looks very dapper with a little pencil-thin mustache and all.

He's perhaps best known for playing the professor in 1957's The Aztec Mummy and its 58 sequel, The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy. He's also in 1968's The Batwoman.

Man, I would not have guessed he played romantic leads. I'm not saying he's ugly or something, but just the way he's done up in this movie, they've got him in this leather tunic that, again, it looks like a D&D barbarian outfit. And his hair is interesting. It's just like straight up on top and nothing on the sides. Actually, it's kind of like a...

Some of those trendy haircuts with the kids in, I don't know if it's still today, but in recent years. And the pipe and everything. It's just like, it's not a heartthrob look. Yeah, kind of like a bohemian barbarian thing he's got going on here.

Later on in the picture, we also meet a character by the name of Cazador de Lobos, played by Noe Murayama, who lived 1930 through 1997. We will find out that this is, in fact, a wandering foreign werewolf hunter with his own special werewolf hunting dog named Jack.

Murayama was a Mexican actor of Japanese and Mexican descent who often played villains. He won acclaim for his performance in 1962's Tleocan and later for 1983's La Pachanga. That was the one he was nominated for an Ariel Award for. He also starred in some grimy 1988 exploitation films that have their own following. You can look them up. I'm not going to mention the title here.

He is a cool character. I like it when he shows up. He brings a very different layer to the film, a kind of a folklore layer that's otherwise not there in what is otherwise, I guess,

a science fiction werewolf movie uh once again brings up questions about like is this sci-fi or is this fantasy horror because like the the implements that he has that can affect a werewolf uh feel very magical in nature not very science fiction yeah he's he is dressed kind of like a wizard also he looks very much like he could be a part of some sort of like i'm guessing like 1970s um

heavy metal band kind of a thing, you know, kind of like a, some sort of, um, um, um, like a Japanese Mexican black Sabbath or something, you know, uh, he's got all sorts of like cool occult, uh, imagery going on and yeah, he very much brings the folk, uh, horror, the supernatural interpretation of the werewolf to the table and arguably has the better case, uh, compared to the scientist.

Also weird that we never learn his name. We learn his dog's name, but not his. Yeah, I think the name that I cited is just from the credits. I don't remember them actually referring to him by name. They're just kind of like, hey, stranger. Well, the name you cited, Cazador de Lobos, is just a wolf hunter, hunter of wolves. There you go.

All right. And then finally, the music is the work of Raul Loa Vista. He lived 1913 through 1980. Ariel award winning composer whose credits include 1950s El Hombre Sin Rostro, 1962s The Exterminating Angel and 1975s Darker Than Night. I have to say, effective score.

Yeah, I think so. In fact, we can talk about it here in the opening if you want. Are you ready for the plot? Yeah, let's dive right in. So we get some great hand-lettered credits playing over a misty landscape. I think at the beginning we're looking at a hill covered in vegetation. Honestly, it's kind of hard to tell. But yeah, that music is playing. It's a bunch of ominous drums. It's got skittering spider violins and horns blasting in a minor key.

So the action opens in a cemetery on a hillside surrounded by forest with rude grave markers leaning this way and that you've got banks of fog blowing swiftly over the earth. And we cut away to the sky and see what I take is a full moon, but it looks almost as bright as the sun. And that makes sense because this was obviously shot in the daytime, like noonday daytime. Yeah.

yeah yeah um i after i watched the film the next day i i showed just the opening part to my wife and um and when i pointed out like the the brightness of the quote-unquote moon and uh the day for night shooting here she she said oh no that's not day for night that's just day and and indeed yeah we have far less of the sort of telltale dimming of the overall opacity that you sometimes see with day for night shots

Um, I've grown kind of, I've grown to kind of love old, old fashioned day for night shoots and these various pictures. Um, and this one I also dug, but it is just so bright. It's so bright that I think the way I ended up processing it was like, this is just how bright the full moon is. If you were a werewolf, you know, it's just like inescapable. It illuminates everything and it's just blinding in its intensity. Oh, that's a, that's a good, uh, reading on it. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, sometimes you said there's no indication that it's nighttime, that there's visually no indication, but they do put some cricket sound effects in. Yes, they do. Yeah. I mean, I ended up buying it as nighttime. I knew what they were going for. And like I was able to to fully suspend disbelief. So in the graveyard, we zoom in on a crusty topside stone vault, like a coffin vault. And suddenly the lid starts to creak open. Yeah.

And then out through the crack in the lid emerged two furry knob-knuckled hands with huge bugle claws on each fingertip. And I thought this was a funny inversion because the coffin lid creaking open and a sinister hand coming out is a trope from vampire movies, not werewolf movies. Yeah, yeah. I can't think of another film where we see a werewolf crawl out of a coffin, but I like it here. We're talking about it. It's turning heads.

Another thing that really sets this wolf movie apart is that it does not begin with our protagonist wandering toward an encounter with a werewolf. Like, you know, them starting unchanged, them meeting a werewolf, getting bitten or something, and then being changed. Instead, we begin with a werewolf walking.

already in wolf mode launching into an attack on the world from below just like coming out like a like a missile out of a hidden silo

Oh, yeah. And boy, does she ever this. I think one of the things that I love the most about this film is just the the way that our she wolf is realized on the screen, the speed with which she travels, like with this. We'll talk about it as we proceed here, but just bounding and pouncing across the landscape with just lethal ferocity.

I'm not used to seeing werewolves move this swiftly in just films in general. I can't think of another one where we had this sense of just like a werewolf can just shoot across the forest and just get to you like a missile. I think a missile leaving the silo is a great analogy here.

The opening rampage here is like a runaway train. She just gets right to business. So the order of events is she comes out of the coffin, runs up the hill, and then she like pushes through some brush into the campsite of a guy with a tent and a campfire. He's like cooking food on there and she just jumps on him. Like he, this guy's got a wide brim fedora again to invoke Indiana Jones. He's got kind of an Indiana Jones hat, uh,

Um, and she looks so confident too. He's like, Oh, time to start the day or the night or whatever. But he, you know, he's like, Oh, I've got a lot of work to do. Uh, nothing's going to stop old handsome me. But then here comes a werewolf flying across the woods. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Pouncing from like,

I don't know, like what, 100 yards? No, it's impressive. We see her leap onto the sky from like a forested overhang with arms outstretched. So she's doing like a trapeze artist dive or like an Olympic diver or something. Yeah.

It's amazing. I would say if you're on the fence about watching this film in its entirety, at least watch the first 15 minutes. It will amaze you. Yeah. So she tackles that guy, commences clawing his face and chewing out his throat. Later, we're going to learn that she rips out his heart, but we don't see that here.

And then we just move right on to the next victim. So there are a couple of peasants laboring in the woods. A man is chopping firewood with an ax. There's a woman gathering fallen sticks. And ooh, there's this good creepy shot where the wolf woman climbs up on the root ball of a giant fallen tree to spy on the woman from behind. I've got a screenshot for you here, Rob.

I really like the way this is framed. But once again, a flying leap from above. We just see her like like like launched across the frame as like out of a bow or something. Yeah, it is. It is amazing and terrifying. And yeah, and I love these sequences in between with her crawling around in these broken fallen trees and all. Yeah, it's great. So.

So the werewolf malls the woman and then she lies screaming on the ground with streams of blood running across her face. The man chopping wood hears this woman crying out and then comes to help. For some reason, I didn't quite understand why this happened, but he like throws his axe into a nearby tree and then the wolf turns and begins to maul the man. But suddenly the wolf is interrupted because the full moon passes behind a cloud and

And it's like that does something. It like maybe drains the wolf of motivation or power. And the werewolf suddenly runs away into the dark wood. Now, on the way back to her hiding place, she crosses paths with a man driving a carriage along the forest path. And I think this is Dr. Bernstein in the carriage, isn't it? I believe so. Yeah.

So he watches the wolf woman run by with a kind of knowing and apprehensive look and then just moves on toward his destination. And.

And as the Wolf Woman is fleeing, we also see a well-equipped man in the woods, a guy with a rifle and a hat, surveying the devastation at the campsite with the tent. He comes upon the first victim, and this is Dr. Gonzales, played by Roberto Canedo. And this is the scene where he pulls back the tent flap and sees the dead man and is just like, oh! Yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah, so we're off to a great start here. And I want to drive home the she-wolf costume here, worn by Kitty, though probably not in the shots where she's flying like a human cannonball across the wilderness. I'm assuming that was a stunt person or a luchador or a trapeze artist or some sort of professional stunt person. But the costume, I thought, was really effective. It seems to depend on a skin-type bodysuit with added hair and tail, right?

And combined with the actress's slender form and like the ferocity of her physical performance is a real savagery to the scenes where the she-wolf is mauling her prey. There's a there's also a carnality to the act as well, which kind of reminds me of our recent Nosferatu adaptation, you know, both.

feature a kind of like uh you know slender um being that is feasting but in a way that also feels kind of like erotically charged

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Here I want to do a sidebar because I wonder if you have insights on this from this book you've been reading about the history of female werewolves. So we've talked before on the show about the different common werewolf types in movies. So one type would be the quadrupedal wolf form. This is...

Yeah.

Yeah, like a lot of times it's like, oh, there was this deadly wolf. It was killing people and or killing livestock. We managed to kill it, and lo and behold, it turned into an old woman, or it turned into this mysterious man that we've never seen before, that sort of thing. Or the skin came off and there was a person underneath. Right. So you get versions of the quadrupedal wolf form in some werewolf movies as well. Often it's a kind of B

beefed up version of the quadrupedal wolf. So like in American Werewolf in London or in the Twilight series. In these movies, the werewolf is essentially canine in shape. It runs on all fours. It's got the long snout. But it is larger than any real wolf and often with the monstrosity elements beefed up. I would say the Gamork from Neverending Story is also a good example of this. Yeah.

And I think all of these examples also point to the other reality here. This is a very hard one to pull off on screen because it's not a wolf. It's not a humanoid. It's somewhere in between. You're going to have to depend on some rather elaborate special effects. And is it going to be enough to fully convince me?

Exactly. So that's your one type, the four feet on the ground quadrupedal werewolf. Then you've got your bipedal variants. You've got the wolf man is what I'll call him, which is bipedal, short snout, human shaped head, but covered with fur and having fangs in the mouth. This is your Lon Chaney Jr., your Paul Nashy type, universal werewolf.

Can't go wrong with it. Love to see more of it. Werewolf by Night is one of these as well in the recent Disney TV special, which I highly recommend. Then after that, you've got what I might call the man wolf, which is bipedal also, but long snout, wolf shaped head as seen in movies like The Howling or Dog Soldiers.

And I like this one, too. I like all of them. But this one is in a zone that I feel like is achievable by competent special effects artists.

Oh, yeah, totally. But anyway, here's where I wanted to come back to the interplay between cinematic werewolves and gender. So I think one thing that's kind of interesting is that usually in the movies, both of the bipedal forms of the werewolf are shaped in a way that is very stereotypically masculine.

And Rob, I've got images for you to look at here from like the howling and from dog soldiers and the wolf man. Just a few things to survey. I was really trying to think of counterexamples and they're not really coming to mind. I'm not saying it's never happened, but...

Most of the bipedal movie werewolves I can think of are shaped like the typical form of male bodybuilders. You have like massive shoulders, chest and upper body tapering down to narrow hips and waist, kind of a V shape. They're structured like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 70s. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's a quite interesting variation in this film to get a bipedal humanoid werewolf where the body is shaped in a more stereotypically feminine form, even with long hair, actually. And also something about like the fur pelt worn by the Clarissa werewolf in this movie almost looks in some shots like she is wearing a short dress but made of fur.

Yeah, yeah. It's interesting the way the mind reads the femininity of the monster here. And...

So this movie is mentioned, at least in passing, in the book I referenced earlier in the chapter by Peter Hutchings titled The She-Wolves of Horror Cinema. And one of the things that he's talking about here is that we often see if we have a female character that's turning into a werewolf, oftentimes that werewolf is just going to be a straight up wolf. And the gender of that wolf may be ambiguous sometimes.

because it's a wolf. And on the other hand, sometimes they'll transform into some sort of a hybrid creature that is overtly masculine.

And in this case, the way they read La Loba is that we have a feminine character turning into a more masculine form, but one that is still distinguishable as feminine. Oh, that's interesting. So I didn't think about her transforming into a more masculine form, but I guess you could maybe read it that way. Yeah, I don't know. I 100% agree with it myself, but that's their take on it.

But either way, I thought it was interesting that this is a bipedal humanoid werewolf form that looks more stereotypically feminine than basically any other examples I can think of in horror movies. And it kind of makes you wonder, like, why are all the other werewolf examples I can think of coded as masculine morphs? Like, is there a particular reason for this? I guess...

beyond the just kind of unquestioned sexism of a lot of culture where that takes sort of like the male as default. Is there something about the wolf form or the werewolf form in particular that causes people to think of human masculinity? Because I know that the same assumption does not go with vampires because we get plagiarized

get plenty of typically stereotypically feminine vampires though of course that's kind of different because vampires are basically human in form anyway and

So I don't know. One thing I was wondering about is if there is a general trend in the imagination, in our tendency to imagine monsters that thinks of them as when you have a creature that's becoming less human in appearance, whatever humanoid elements remain will.

are more likely on average to be imagined as masculine by default or maybe more more likely to be imagined as masculine by default by men yeah that's a great point um i guess another i mean there's so many different ways to tease this apart when you get into like um

The way gender is treated in culture and in storytelling. One point they bring up in the book is that body hair is one way of potentially looking at it. Like there may be a resistance to want to put a bunch of hair on your female character, even as they turn into the wolf.

And at the very least, like maybe they have to get a little more specific with how you're going to do it. Like, for instance, we don't see like a completely fur-covered face of our she-wolf here, though there is fur on her face. Likewise, there's fur on her body, but not the sense that the whole body is covered in thick fur.

So there's probably a lot of just like cultural ideas of body hair and hair and gender that get thrown into the mix when conceptualizing these things.

I think that's right. That is interesting to point that. Yeah, when we see, because we get a male werewolf and a female werewolf in this movie, and the lady wolf, she has a smoother face than the dude does. Yeah. So I get the impression they put a lot of thought into this. How are we going to turn Kitty into a werewolf in a way that

that makes her frightening, but also still alluring to the vast majority of the audience? That's still retaining her Marilyn Monroe image. How are we going to keep all of that in the mix while also transforming her into a wolf person? Yeah, that is interesting.

Also, my first question was like, why that trend? I think we got some good ideas there. But the second thing I was wondering is how does a more

typically feminine humanoid werewolf work differently on film than the more kind of like beef bodybuilder guy werewolf does. I think in our opening here, you may get one kind of answer about the tendencies filmmakers will have when dealing with these different types of werewolves.

In this movie, the werewolf is depicted less as one that overwhelms you with physical size and brawn, and instead as a kind of murder acrobat, like flying through the air out of hiding to claw and slash. Yeah, and they make a convincing argument for it. I mean, it's so well executed on the screen.

I think some other female werewolf shows are definitely lean into the idea of seduction as being part of their character as well. I can believe that's an aspect in the trick-or-treat example where the lady werewolves are also a little seductive, at least at first before they transform, you know, kind of tying into various like, you know, sort of succubus ideas of some sort of seductive creature that's actually a monster.

Um, but, uh, yeah, I do like this idea of the, of the she wolf is like a swift stealth oriented killer. Anyway, to come back to the plot, uh, at the end of this rampage, the wolf woman retreats to the coffin she climbed out of in the beginning. But here's where the twist comes in because you might think, uh,

It's like the vampire. The vampire just lays in the coffin until at a certain point they open the lid and get out and do their business. This coffin is not merely a coffin. The wolf is not going in there to lie down. It is, in fact, a secret passageway.

Ah, yeah. And this is going to tie into some dialogue, that monologue we referenced earlier, you know, the idea of death as a door. I don't know if they're really deliberately trying to connect these two things, but I couldn't help but notice. I didn't make that connection. That's a good one.

So from here, the camera retreats to a nearby mansion surrounded by a high wall that is sort of nestled at the edge of the woods. And here in the upper floors of this house, we meet Krumba. He is not formally introduced yet. We'll get more of his backstory later. But he appears as this muscle man dressed, again, as the party's barbarian. He's wearing a leather tunic. And he shows a look of concern and then appears sad.

Uh, like he goes into a woman's bedroom and starts, well, actually, no, I think I was going to say he goes into the bedroom and starts cranking the chain, but I think the giant pull chain is in a different room. He like locks the door to a woman's bedroom and then goes to a room nearby and starts cranking this giant chain. Yeah.

And as he does this, we cut over to the hearth at the one end of the bedroom and see a panel on the back of the fireplace lift away. It's a secret door. And who should crawl out of it but our wolf woman. Here she comes. Oh, man, this is great. And I love that. I mean, we did those whole episodes on we did a series of episodes and stuff to pull your mind about the hearth as a gateway. Yeah.

for supernatural threats. And here we have a hearth that's an actual literal gateway for a monstrous humanoid. Yeah, and this seems very creepy. The wolf woman crawls in on all fours, slowly creeping as if maybe wounded or drained of energy. She comes into the room, collapses on the floor, unconscious.

And here the camera stays on her as we get a slow dissolve transformation sequence. Gradually the claws dissolve into human fingers and the suit of fur fades away and leaves behind only smooth human skin. And we see that it is a young woman lying nude on the floor. So what? It's like, uh,

If you don't know anything at this point, you're like, this family has a chain and muscle man operated doggy door for its werewolf woman inhabitant.

Yeah, clearly this family has some issues. We've got that already. Meanwhile, a guest arrives at the manor. It is the guy we saw on the road, Dr. Bernstein. He's met by one of the servants, and then he's brought inside and greeted by the patriarch of the house, Dr. Fernandez. Again, Dr. Fernandez, that's Santa Claus from Santa Claus. Yes.

Fernandez is an older man in a white lab coat. Dr. Bernstein is a young man. Both have mustaches. They all have mustaches.

And we learn that they are colleagues, both involved in cutting-edge medical research. Fernandez is curious if Bernstein has come to deliver professional news from a recent conference he attended. But no, the main purpose of his visit is personal. Dr. Bernstein has come to ask to marry Clarissa, one of Dr. Fernandez's two daughters.

Now, to clarify, once again, we mentioned this during the cast list, but the two daughters are Clarissa, who is in love with Dr. Bernstein, and then Alicia. Alicia is the other daughter. Both of the daughters are adults, but their rooms are full of creepy toys that would belong to a sickly aristocratic Victorian child. You know, they've got all these porcelain dolls and music boxes that play creepy tunes and bird cages and that sort of thing. Mm-hmm.

little wind-up toys that do all sorts of little tricks. So Bernstein and Clarissa, we find out, have secretly been in love for some time. But now, now he's here to ask for her hand in marriage. And he wants the blessing of her father. And the father seems torn. He likes Dr. Bernstein, but he fears that if they marry, some terrible consequence will unfold. And he suggests that Bernstein stay at the house while he makes up his mind. And he

And he says, you know, you could continue your research here anyway. I've got all of the best equipment facilities in the world. I think he says, like, I have the best microscope on the planet. Yeah, and there it is. It's right there on the table. Yeah. Now, I mentioned this earlier, but one kind of interesting thing is it's not immediately clear which daughter is the werewolf because...

I think they try to fake you out here by like the first daughter you see after the werewolf transformation scene is Alicia, the other daughter. And we also have a scene where Alicia goes to her mother and like confesses having this terrible dream about like running through the woods at night and having blood on her hands. Yeah, yeah. So we're supposed to be unsure which of the two daughters is the werewolf. But we know it's one of them. Though, as I also said earlier, of the two, Cleopatra,

Clarissa definitely feels the most dangerous in her personality and her presence. So there's something a bit more unhinged and threatening about the way she just looks at people and talks. Yeah.

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Meanwhile, we got a little side plot going on at the local police station. We meet some more characters, the police inspector and his deputy, and we meet Dr. Gonzalez played by Roberto Canedo. Actually, we met him earlier because he was at the campsite, but they are examining the dead bodies from the werewolf rampage. The say previous night or the same night. Not sure when this is all one big night. It's exactly one big night.

And they notice the victims in this case were not only killed, the attacker opened up the chest and tore out the heart. And the inspector says, it's disgusting. It is. We get a nice close-up of the wound. And, you know, it's all black and white, but it's gooey. It's juicy. In this one still, I got the wound looks like lips. Yeah, yeah, kind of does. Yeah. Like a lip made out of ribs. Yeah.

But the doctor says, we've got a clue. The attacker's blood is left on the victim. And he says, I can collect the attack. I don't know how he tells the difference, but he says, I can collect this blood and analyze it and determine what kind of creature it came from. So we can know if it was a, you know, wolf or a bear or whatever that attacks them or maybe a human. Yeah. Forensic subplot up and running. Right. So back at the house, Dr. Fernandez is showing off his lab to Bernstein and

and he explains his research into metaplasia changing one form of life into another

And this research involves a giant walk-in freezer, which he shows that he's used to flash freeze plants and even some, some animals to essentially put them into hibernation or arrest their development in a particular state. I think he says like something was dying and he, he could freeze it until it could heal without the damage progressing anymore. Yeah.

So he has a cryo chamber, essentially. Yes. And he explains what his research is really getting at. He says, "...mutations of nature, the metamorphosis of cells, they're all equal and all succeed themselves." And he notes that through his techniques, one could learn to transform the cells from one creature into that of another, even Unlobo.

And then I also want to flag here, Chekhov's really hard to open freezer door. Yeah. I don't know why you'd make it that way, but they show multiple times characters struggling intensely to open the freezer from the inside. It's hard to get this door open. Yeah, yeah. Even Krumba has a hard time with this one we see in a subsequent scene.

Oh, I like how in the lab here, Fernandez also explains that the moon is crucial to his experiments because of the power it exerts over the function of cells. Okay. Mm-hmm.

Uh, but we, this is also where we learn a bit of the backstory of Crumba. We learned that Fernandez once saved Crumba's life and now Crumba has this unrepayable debt to him. And so he works for Fernandez like a watchdog. He's very, very loyal, very dependable. And, uh, you know, he will never give up on, on Fernandez to repay his life debt. Yeah. When, uh, when the, the bell rings in the night and someone has to go answer the front door, uh, it's Crumba that does it.

Now, here we come to this scene where Alicia explains her recurring nightmare to her mother. She says, you know, she dreams that she is awake in the night and she's running through the woods and she hears someone coming and then hides herself. And then she's overcome with rage and confusion. She doesn't understand what she's doing until she realizes that her hands are covered in blood. And so, again, at this point, we don't know which daughter is the werewolf we're being led to think it might be Alicia. Yeah.

But Alicia wants to know why she and her sister are always kept locked in their rooms on the full moon. Isn't that weird, Mom? Yeah.

Mom's like, well, it's your father's orders. We have to do what he says. And Alicia literally says the line from stepbrothers. This house is a prison. Meanwhile, and I thought this was funny. So like while they're having this argument, we cut away to Clarissa in the other room and she's just like playing with cursed music boxes and grinning like a clown. There's not a lot to do here if you're not actively engaged in mad science research. Yeah.

Oh, and also we later see Alicia, we get like some humanizing stuff where Alicia goes to the quarters of some of the servants at the house and the servant woman's daughter is there. The daughter is named Atalita and she is deaf and mute.

And so Alicia seems to be teaching Adelita to read and trying to give her some kind of speech therapy. She's like putting her fingers around her throat while she's trying to enunciate words. So it's not all just frivolous playing around with toys and dresses and so forth. She's also doing some good in the world.

But back in the lab, the plot thickens. So Bernstein and Fernandez are still there. And Bernstein is saying, you know what? I confess. You've told me you're working on metaplasia. I am also working on something rather like metaplasia. And then Fernandez just guesses. First guess, he says, lycanthropy? Bernstein says, yes.

So like, where did everybody get the metaplasia research bug? Why are they all working on werewolf science? It's implied that this is not, that they didn't coordinate on this. It's like a coincidence that they're just both working on lycanthropy, but they're colleagues. Yeah. I mean, they both certainly have their reasons as we'll learn, but, um, but yeah, this, this kind of just kind of, this kind of comes up in the conversation where it's like,

Like, so you're working on werewolves. Like, yep, yep. Well, that's that's secretly what I'm working on, too. We're in the same business. Bernstein says science denies the existence of lycanthropy, conceptualizes it as something unreal. Do you have the same opinion? And Fernandez says no, because I have powerful reasons to believe in it.

So they're on the same page here. But then the question comes up, is lycanthropy a disease? And Bernstein says, no, it is not a disease. It is something much more. Science could not understand these secrets. Only I can decipher them. But suddenly here they're interrupted because Clarissa runs in. So the lovers are reunited and then they go off to speak privately.

And once they're alone, they have an interesting conversation. Bernstein says, nothing is impossible. See, I am here with you. And Clarissa says, I am afraid, afraid to awaken her. Who is her? Afraid to awaken her. Bernstein says, it's not an illusion, Clarissa. It's reality.

And then Clarissa confesses to Alejandro here that she is also having horrible dreams. She dreams that she's kissing him, but then some confusion falls over her and she can't find him, doesn't know where he is or what's happening.

And then we get this wonderful monologue. Bernstein says,

It's there where our love will last forever. Life will soon pass. And oh my God, like I was not prepared for this at this point in the movie. He's got some kind of necro erotic thing going on. Like he yearns for death because that's the only place where eternity is possible, where their love can be forever. He thinks he has some kind of key to the gateway to something, some kind of expanded existence beyond death.

Yeah, this is one of the many ways this film is so deeply weird. You know, you kind of expect of your older black and white monster pictures to have some very cut and dry morality involved in how your human characters are relating or your presumably human characters are relating to threats. But everyone in this picture has a little bit of the madness in them. And I really like that.

i mean except for gonzalez gonzalez is a this rock he's pretty straight straight down the middle i'd say alicia is kind of a straight shooter too i guess yeah yeah anyway so they get interrupted by the return of dr gonzalez he's here to speak with fernandez about the heart ripping in the woods apparently one of the victims was his best friend and he stops to speak with alicia who is troubled by her dreams and by worries about what's happening and

And this is where we learn that Gonzalez is a colleague of Dr. Fernandez and that he is the beloved of Alicia. So this is where I first realized, what? This is weird that both of this guy's daughters are engaged to his coworkers. Yeah. Again, they don't get to leave the compound much. These are the only men outside of their family that they get to meet.

that's a rough dating scene yeah um so dr gonzalez is here to use fernandez's microscope because he's got to figure out what kind of blood the killer had remember that yeah and i think ultimately this plot goes nowhere right it's inconclusive yeah they're just like it's not not a beast not a man there there's no possible space between those two categories um so we're not sure

Oh, here we also get the scene where the girl, the child, Adelita, sneaks out at night.

So in the anatomy of a sneak out here, because we've got a couple of scenes like this, she goes out of the window and climbs fences and goes to the woods to play with the tin soldier that bangs on a drum. It's like a little wind-up toy. And the place she goes out to play in the woods at night is at this, like, the ruins of an old house with exposed rafters.

Yeah, she's completely fearless. Going out into the night, into this wilderness where multiple murders have just occurred and goes to like the spookiest location you could possibly seek out because she left a toy there or something. Meanwhile, Dr. Bernstein is having an argument with Fernandez about marrying Clarissa. The long and short is, you know, Fernandez is like, I don't know about this. I don't think it's a good idea. And Bernstein is like, well, we're going to do it anyway. You know, you can't stop us.

Um, but then as soon as Bernstein is left alone, uh, oh, it's a full moon and he gets a crazy look in his eye and the full moon, just like it, it bugs out of the sky. And then, whoa, he is a werewolf too. We got a second werewolf in the movie. Yep. Yep. He starts twitching. He starts itching. Uh, you know, it's going to happen. So, uh, I guess we should describe the setup to this attack on Adelita. Fortunately, the child is not harmed, uh, for the, uh,

For the Gene Siskels in the audience who can't stand the movie scenes where a child is threatened. Adelita is going to be okay. But it's looking perilous for her because she's just sitting there playing with this toy. And the Bernstein werewolf is creeping up on her in the woods again at the like ruins of a building here.

Now, a new thing we get in this scene is the presence of a character who I don't think we've seen before. The werewolf hunter and his dog, the lecar. Yes. Jack. Jack is the dog's name. How,

How would you describe the werewolf hunter when he first appears? Again, he has kind of an outsider bohemian vibe, similar to Krumba's, but different. He looks a little metal, a little occult, but also clearly has some sort of an international vibe to him. And indeed, we will learn in subsequent scenes that he is from across the ocean. So he is of some sort of Asiatic origin.

He's a wanderer, though. Yeah. He's been everywhere. And his business is we will learn hunting werewolves. And he's in the right place because we've got more than one of them running around now.

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So the Bernstein werewolf is creeping up on little Adelita, but before he gets there and does anything, the werewolf is attacked by a dog, by the werewolf hunter's dog. And they tussle around, they roll around, the dog is sort of mauling the werewolf, and then the werewolf is severely wounded and runs away. And then Adelita leaves, I think never realizing anything, that anything almost happened. Yeah, completely oblivious, like so many children.

So as the injured werewolf staggers back to the mansion, he transforms back into Dr. Bernstein, shirtless now. He collapses into Krumba's arms and we see Fernandez and his colleagues, uh,

sort of come in to intervene. Actually, the first thing we see of them is that we just cut to them in scrubs and they're like doing surgery. They're operating on Bernstein here. And Fernandez says he is moments from death. The only way to save him is to freeze him in the giant freezer with the conspicuously difficult to open door. That's right. Yeah, it's like our... The man that we don't know is a werewolf is about to die from a

like a bite to the heart from a dog. The only thing we can do is put him on ice and hopefully he'll be able to heal or we can figure out how to heal him later. Yeah. They're also like, we cannot tell the daughters. Yes. So next there's a scene at the police station with the werewolf hunter. And, you know, the deputy says to the chief, I think they're like, we've captured the killers. Here he is. You know, it's the guy, it's this guy and his dog. They're obviously the murderers.

And the werewolf hunter says that his dog did not harm anyone. His dog likes humans. He would never hurt him, never hurt them. And he says dogs are not hypocrites like men. Instead, he gives some of his some of his backstory. He says he's from very distant lands across the sea from a small village. It's not even on the map. He says he has had this dog, Jack, since he was a boy.

He says, is it a crime for a man to take his dog for a ride? And then they ask, what's the deal with that medallion around your dog's neck? And the werewolf hunter explains, this means the dog is a lecar, a dog trained to fight against a lycanthrope. The cops are, of course, incredulous. They're like, what's a lycanthrope? And one of them says to the other one, it's a werewolf, an old superstition of theirs. And I was thinking, what? Of whose? Yeah.

i don't know the i don't know the people the non-police i guess yeah okay uh but they also find out this guy is in possession of a special dagger which is engraved in latin says use it only at the time of revenge so i really love how they're laying out this um basically the model for how you kill werewolves in this film um

Bullets, as we'll learn, are useless. Human weapons, useless. The things that work are an ivory dagger or the bite of a highly trained domesticated dog. And the dog itself is an interesting choice because you're talking essentially about a tamed wolf, an instrument to use against the werewolf, which is kind of like rewilded human. I like the synergy of that. And I like the idea that in both cases,

Like you need a weapon of the tooth or the tusk to use against the werewolf. Like you need a like a biological weapon. You need a weapon of nature, a weapon of predatory aggression. Only these weapons will actually hurt the beast. Yeah, I like that as well. And it's it's more magical than the sci fi premise. It's kind of mixing all the different shades together. Yeah.

Um, now there's another line he says here that I think is interesting when he says many people traveled the world in hunt of the wolf, the wolf that killed the one they love and pairing that with the line on the dagger about revenge, uh,

It's really confusing, actually. Well, I don't mean this against the movie because I liked it this way, but like, wait a minute. So are the werewolves here like a project of Dr. Bernstein's that is quite recent in origin? Because, you know, Clarissa and Bernstein are not that old. Yeah.

Uh, how would they have killed the person that this man loved? I don't know. Like, and he chased them around the world. That just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but who knows? I guess we do learn that Bernstein has traveled a lot. So maybe, maybe Bernstein did kill the one he loved somewhere else. Yeah. Or maybe it's just a general, um, you know, vow taken against all werewolves. Um, yeah.

based on like a specific loss to a different werewolf like once a werewolf killed a member of my family and so now i must always hunt werewolves oh that can make sense also you got that highly trained dog i mean you're kind of married to the profession at that point you're locked in yeah yeah i mean the dog's got to work it's a working dog sunk costs yeah oh also at some point the cops set him free because another murder takes place while he's in custody yeah

Ooh, and there's a whoopsie at night. So the girl's mother in the mansion comes wandering down into the lab one night. Maybe this is just all one night. Who knows? This is Fernandez's wife. Yes. This is the matriarch. Marcella? Yeah, yeah.

She sees Bernstein frozen in the freezer through the window. She like looks in the people, you know, through the little window. It's like, oh no, he's frozen in there. And she goes in to investigate, I guess because they didn't tell her. Yeah, they didn't tell anybody else in the household what was going on. You can peek through the window and see if a body had

there. I think this is Fernandez's fault. You could argue that this could have been prevented if he just told his wife and daughters what was happening. Or put a sticky note up, you know? Just so like, hey, do not open. This body's supposed to be in there. Might be werewolf. Do not thaw.

But she goes in to investigate, and then she becomes trapped. She's trying to open the door again to get out, but she can't get it open because it's difficult. And then I guess she's freezing in the freezer, so she turns off all the levers on the freezer, I think, to prevent herself from freezing to death. But then Bernstein starts to thaw, and we see ice crystals on his face melting. Oh, no. The werewolf awakens. That's right.

So later we come back to the house and Alicia finds her mother dead on the living room floor with her heart torn out. That's no good. And Clarissa is horrified, of course, and runs to her room, though I guess it's kind of implied it was Bernstein that we never see it. Right. So we don't know which werewolf it was for sure.

Yeah, yeah. I think we know, ultimately we know. We know it was Bernstein, but in general, it's left a little vague. So here I guess we're setting up for the final showdown. We have the mother's funeral, which is at the cemetery on the hillside where we started the movie. I was thinking it would be really funny if the plot, like the spot they went to bury her in, was the place where they start digging and it's just, there's a secret passageway there going to the...

going to the fireplace. But after the mother's funeral, the werewolf hunter sets out a bear trap in the cemetery to catch the creatures. And we see lots of characters. We kind of get the, what do you call that montage where you see everybody looking kind of stern, frightened, or determined right before we're leading up to the climax? Yeah, yeah. Everybody's kind of getting in the zone.

One way or another, even if they don't know exactly what's coming. We're getting all the pieces positioned on the board. Basically, we learned that everybody is going to be in and around the mansion tonight, almost as if they suspect the climax of the film is coming. Like the police inspector decides he's got to stay with the Fernandez family for their protection tonight. Yeah.

Oh, in the lead up to the climax here, we get another child in peril scene because Adelita goes into Clarissa's room. She sneaks out of her quarters, goes into Clarissa's room secretly because she wants to play with the creepy dolls. Yeah.

That's right. So she's in there playing and looking at dolls and all. Meanwhile, this is when we have Clarissa playing the piano downstairs. She's feeling a number of emotions about the death of her mother and is going to take it out on the piano.

And boy, does she ever. She's playing this furious piano number there. It's pissing off her sister. It's apparently not a morning vibe that's being created here. And even Krumba is clearly concerned about what's happening here.

Yeah, he's watching her play the piano and just looking like, oh boy, here we go. And then I think that he senses the full moon is coming out. So just before the change takes hold, Krumba grabs Clarissa and carries her up to her room and locks her inside.

unfortunately not realizing that Adelita is in there. So Adelita hides under the bed and Clarissa begins to change in the light of the full moon in a scene that is pretty scary. Uh, but, uh, so she, she like goes through this dissolved transformation, kind of like we've seen earlier, but in the opposite direction. And just as she's leaving out the secret passageway in the fireplace, uh,

She hears a toy that Adelita had been playing with is like a wind-up toy that gets dropped and she's drawn back into the room by it. Adelita escapes by climbing down out of a window, but the she-wolf chases and this chase leads out to the ruined house with exposed rafters where Adelita was playing earlier. And this leads to a showdown between the Clarissa Wolf and the werewolf hunter.

So here's the first of our big fights and the werewolf hunter, he's got his ivory dagger there and he's trying to fend her off. But she's slashing and clawing and mauling at him and they're rolling around on the ground. So here's the first wrestling match.

That's right. Meanwhile, back in the house, what's happening with the male werewolf? Well, he's back in action, and Crumba is there to fight him. And this is where we get a big slobber knocker of a battle between these two, with a little bit of Lucha Libre-esque action kind of sprinkled in, nothing too overt.

But at one point, I do love that the werewolf grabs Crumba in some form of a full Nelson, kind of like a, but instead of locking his fingers behind Crumba's neck, he like puts his claws on Crumba's face. So I think it should be called the full moon Nelson instead. Yeah.

like a werewolf variant of a hold. I like it. But this is a pretty good fight. They're throwing furniture around. It does not end well for Crumba. Oh, and I should, and also it doesn't end well for the professor. This werewolf also brutally murders Professor Fernandez as well. So the body count is really beginning to stack up here and characters are dying in graphic detail, black and white blood everywhere.

But Alicia escapes the scene out of the house and is pursued. She does get her. Oh, she gets caught in the werewolf hunter's bear trap. Oh, God. I was not expecting that. I should have expected it. They set the trap. You know, it's been established. But then when she stepped in it and that thing clamped on her foot, I was like, oh, God, you know, that caught me off guard. Very well done.

So several more of our good characters are attacked or threatened by the two werewolves. Ultimately, though, the werewolves are defeated in one case by being mauled by the Lhikar dog, the werewolf-killing dog, and in the other case being stabbed, I think, by the police inspector with the ivory knife that was dropped by the werewolf hunter is unfortunately killed in action. Yes.

But then the police inspector comes along and picks up the ivory knife and is able to finish off one of the two werewolves. Yes, I believe our she-wolf is killed by the knife. Our male wolf is killed by the bite. Oh, and then we get that sad scene with Jack the dog laying there by the side of his now deceased master.

And it's kind of interesting because we get multiple, like it's juxtaposed with the, the, the kind of lovers isn't the right word for the guy and his dog, but kind of the companions united in the end because the dog lays down next to the werewolf hunter. They're kind of there together. And, uh, though the dog is still alive, but then the two werewolves lay down next to each other as they die. And then they both transform back into their human forms. Yeah. Uh, and he, he,

she's naked and he's, um, I think wearing like torn pants, uh, in this, but it's, it's really nicely framed. The bodies of our cursed lovers finally coming together, uh, entangled in the moonlight as our survivors look on. Uh, and we get a repetition of that freedom and death monologue from earlier and it, Ooh, it hits pretty hard. Like the ending for the, of this film takes no prisoners. It's pretty brutal. Well, yeah, that does raise the question. So, uh,

Bernstein thought that they would achieve some kind of ascension after death. That would be an empowering thing where they could have eternity. Do they get that? We never see the other side of death. Are they living on somehow? What's happening? You know, one can imagine a cut of this picture in which we go right from this scene to a heavenly werewolf wedding.

They're both in full hybrid werewolf form, though with bow ties and veil and all. And they are wedded and they become husband and wife. But that's not what we get here. Bernstein and Clarissa, they're met by Dante at the Sphere of Venus in the Paradiso. Yes.

And the family members in attendance, they're all like bleeding from open wounds like American Werewolf in London style. But I don't mean to make light of the ending here because I think the ending here is really strong and definitely fulfills on like the vision they seem to have for the picture. It's again, it's grim. It's not pulling any punches, but we do have

our three survivors. I guess four survivors, but three main survivors that we have real attachment to. Yeah, Alicia, Gonzales, and Adelita are all okay, and the cop survives too. Yeah. And I guess that's the end of La Loba. Yeah, and I have to say, this one was really strong. Big fan of La Loba. Again, I may have to...

try and find whatever kind of DVD is actually out there. And I'm hoping that somebody puts out a better physical release of this in the future because I think this is a film that deserves it.

Again, it has its own cult status. Looking around, I did notice there are multiple instances in which a video game or a piece of written fiction has a female werewolf in it, and they named the werewolf character Kitty, which is, I think, a clear reference to this picture. And it also works on another level because Kitty, Cat, Werewolf Dog, it's also a little bit funny, but also a nice deep cut into Mexican horror cinema.

All right, we're going to go ahead and close this episode up, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you have thoughts on werewolf movies in general, write in. We'd love to hear from you. Specifically, if you have some other great examples of female werewolf pictures or fiction in general or folktales and so forth, write in on that as well. I do want to note there are some examples I did not bring up because sometimes in werewolf whodunits,

The female werewolf is the twist because, again, you get so used to your wolf man that if it is a female character that's secretly the werewolf, well, sometimes that's the big twist. So I didn't reference any of those by name, but maybe we could get into that in listener mail with some spoiler warnings. Oh, yeah, playing your gender assumptions against you and misdirection. Yeah, that's one way to get your heart ripped out in the woods, folks.

All right. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short-form episodes on Wednesdays, which...

coincidentally are currently dealing with werewolves and then on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about weird films on Weird House Cinema if you want to follow Weird House Cinema on social go to letterbox.com our username is weird house and we have a wonderful list of all the films we've considered thus far I believe we're on 198 we're about to do 199 and then we'll do the 200th episode or the 200th movie selection for Weird House Cinema

Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Weirdhouse Cinema: La Loba (1965)

Stuff To Blow Your Mind

Shownotes Transcript

Weirdhouse Cinema: La Loba (1965) 01:29:16 Share

Stuff To Blow Your Mind

Shownotes Transcript

Weirdhouse Cinema: La Loba (1965)