In ‘Werewolf Woman’, the True Horror Is Psychological

Werewolf Woman opens with a sequence calculated to have exploitation fans lining up at the box office, as they apparently did in Italy at least. A couple of centuries ago, a furry woman with huge black nipples rolls around growling. She stalks a handsome torch-wielding villager before she’s finally burned at the stake. But wait — it’s all a dream! Our confused heroine Daniela (Annick Borel) wonders if she’s the reincarnation of this spitting-image ancestor, or rather drooling image, and we seem to be in well-trodden horror territory of the kind explored in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, especially when Daniela recognizes her hunky sideburned brother-in-law as another reincarnation from her dream.

Not so fast. The rest of the movie isn’t supernatural but psychological, for lycanthropy is explained as an emotional condition created by Daniela’s traumatic rape experience. There’s lots of medico-expository mumbo-jumbo (shot in creative ways) to pound all this into us, as various men in authority probe and prod Daniela physically and psychologically. In a whirlwind plot of violence, rape, and nudity, we come to see Daniela as a victim of predatory patriarchal society, even though she commits most of the violence and murder we see in the picture.

The lovely yet slightly off-kilter Borel embodies all this with plenty of game, especially when staring vacantly or sizing folks up without saying a word. By the way, the audience has soundtrack options of the English dub (which matches Borel’s lip movements) or the original Italian dub with English subtitles, which is the best choice. Also in the picture are exploitation goddess Dagmar Lassander as Daniela’s sister, established Italian actor Tino Carraro as their concerned papa, Howard Ross (aka Renato Rossini) as the stuntman who provides love and protection for Daniela (because his violence isn’t real?), and Frederick Stafford (of Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz ) as a homicide detective.

Through its in-your-face exploitation credentials, which are guaranteed to turn off respectable mainstream critics, this hybrid of werewolfery, psycho picture, rape/revenge scenario, a dash of Exorcist rip-offery, and surprisingly serious character study offers glimpses of provocative substance in a gloomy vision of women’s lot. The director explored this theme in many ways (including a Nazi prostitute movie), as he explains in an emphatic interview. By no surprise, Quentin Tarantino has championed this movie, and it can be seen as a curious influence on Death Proof.

There’s an audience that will never get this movie, and another that might like it for the wrong reasons. Then there are those who will appreciate this dark little picture’s ability to disturb without offering a final catharsis — In which camp are you?