company: Clover Productions
and Columbia Pictures
year: 1956
runtime: 79′
director: Fred F. Sears
cast: Steven Ritch, Don Megowan,
Joyce Holden, Eleanore Tanin,
Kim Chamey, Harry Lauter,
Larry J. Blake, Ken Christy
writer: Robert E. Kent
(also as James B. Gordon)
photography: Eddie Linden
producer: Sam Katzman
Order this film from Amazon.com
The Werewolf was released to DVD as part of the two-disc four-film Icons of Horror Collection: Sam Katzman in October of 2007, along with The Giant Claw, Creature With the Atom Brain and Zombies of Mora Tau. The collection is readily available (and at considerable discount) from Amazon.com
There’s a long history of directors who, though relegated to the gutter of B-cinema production, were able to transcend the often egregious financial and material limitations that came with that territory to create unique and impactful films all their own. Exemplary of such directors was Fred F. Sears, a former bit actor whose prominent position in the brutal and breakneck Katzman movie machine would literally prove the death of him. Sears would direct over fifty films for Katzman and distributor Columbia Pictures in just 8 years (from 1949 until his death in November of 1957, with eight of the films released posthumously), an impressive slate of successful genre programmers now long-since forgotten aside, perhaps, from his few diversions into science fiction and horror.
As Sears’ films go The Werewolf is one of the better known, having been a staple of television syndication through the ‘90s, when it was frequently scheduled for TNT’s MonsterVision horror marathons. It is also one of the better of the films that emerged from producer Katzman’s brief excursion into Cold War-era horror, and a shining example of Sears’ oft ignored directorial talent.
Written by Robert E. Kent (here credited as both as himself and under the pseudonym James B. Gordon), The Werewolf wraps a traditional post-Frankenstein monster-on-the-loose scenario with a cynical The Wolf Man-inspired doomed-man narrative. The town of Mountaincrest finds itself with a strange homicide problem, with victims found brutally murdered as though by an animal but with a man always seen fleeing the scene of the crime. It is soon concluded that a man-beast is on the loose, with the Sheriff’s office focusing its investigation on a stranger to the town, a wandering amnesiac with no past and, under the circumstances, just as little future.
But mere amnesia does not a murderer, and especially not a werewolf, make, and the Sheriff quickly comes to suspect that there is more to the spate of homicides than meets the eye. Meanwhile in a nearby town a pair of scientists receive the news of the Mountaincrest murders with a dread fascination. It just so happens that the amnesiac suspect was a patient of theirs, upon whom they performed devious and doubtless illegal medical experiments. Concerned that the man will regain his memory and rightfully blame them for his new-found lycanthrope, the duo descend upon Mountaincrest, intent on killing their experiment before the truth is let known.
While more than competently constructed, the writing by Kent (whose varied career had him working on everything from Where the Sidewalk Ends to Zombies on Broadway) is rather unremarkable in and of itself. The most interesting aspect of his story concerns the origins of the eponymous monster, the result of radition experiments performed by the doctors in preparation for what they were sure was an inevitable nuclear doomsday. It’s a subplot that reminds of the later and deservedly more acclaimed These Are the Damned, in which a mad subsect of the English government’s work to ensure mankind’s survival of a nuclear war results in the creation of monsters, though here the topic goes largely unexplored.
Likewise unremarkable are the characters Kent creates, none of which are granted much in the way of depth. A welcome exception is the eponymous monster, played by Steven Ritch (City of Fear), who compares favorably with the fated Larry Talbot of the earlier Universal series. Ritch, in spite of a marked tendency towards over-acting, has real pathos as a man for whom a minor car accident proves anything but. Kent keeps audience sympathies well on his side even during scenes of violence, with Ritch’s animal outburts consistently attributable to brutish actions of his fellow man. Kent also eschews any mythological origins for Ritch’s condition, and presents instead a pre-Hulk science-made man-to-monster scenario. There are no full moons or pentacles or silver bullets here, just a scared man hounded by those around him for a condition beyond his control.
What really separates The Werewolf from others of its type is the the work of Sears’, an all-purpose director with a knack for art direction and composition. Clearly influenced by the film noir aesthetic and with a visual style reminiscent of that of his contemporary John Frankenheimer, Sears builds Kent’s above average but generally banal source material into a dark and striking account of injustice and personal horror. Interiors and exteriors alike are carefully composed and alive with shadow, enhanced by the director’s trademark layered blocking. Much of the violence is left either just off-screen or stylishly masked in shadow, with Sears crafting a couple of sequences that should be near-classic in the genre – notably the opening death of a would-be mugger, of whom we see only the kicking feet, and a later confrontation in a stylized jail cell.
Working in opposition to the low budget ethic of using as few setups as possible, Sears barreled through shot after shot, angle after angle, proving time and again just what could be accomplished on a six-day shooting schedule and why he was one of the most popular of the directors in Katzman’s stable. Filmed mostly on location around Big Bear Lake, California with fluid photography by veteran Eddie Linden, there’s little in the visuals that gives away The Werewolf’s status as a lowly B-budget programmer – Katzman must have been thrilled to see the dailies rolling in.
The Werewolf is one of the few of Sears’ directorial efforts to have been granted DVD release as yet, and is available in an exceptional 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer from Sony as part of the Icons of Horror Collection: Sam Katzman two-disc set. While the The Wolf Man-inspired make up of Clay Campbell (The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T) hasn’t aged particularly well the film still plays just fine, evoking the proper emotions at the proper times with only a few lines of hammy dialogue being chuckle worthy, and Sears’ talents complement the genre nicely. Recommended!
