When Daniella Neseri (Annik Borel) was thirteen she was raped. Her father, Count Neseri (Tino Carraro) decides that she needs a different environment. The family owns an estate in the country. He has the house redone and he and his daughters move in. In the attic Daniella finds the account of a family legend and a small portrait of a woman. The legend says that a family ancestor was burned at the stake for being a werewolf. The miniature portrait of the woman is the spitting image of Daniella. Daniella becomes obsessed with the legend and begins to believe that she is the reincarnation of her ancestor.
Daniella’s newlywed sister Elena (Dagmar Lassander) and her husband Fabien (Osvaldo Ruggieri) come home for a visit. Daniella secretly watches them have sex. She then lures Fabien out into the woods and seduces him. She then rips his throat out with her teeth and rolls him off a cliff. The authorities believe he was attacked by angry dogs and accidentally fell off the cliff. Believing that she discovered the body, Daniella is found in shock and sent to an asylum for observation by a psychiatrist (Elio Zamuto).
While in the asylum she is sexually assaulted by a female patient. She stabs the woman with a pair of scissors and escapes the asylum by hiding in the back seat of a doctor’s car. She then kills the doctor. Later she kills a woman she saw having sex in the woods by biting her throat. Then she is picked up by a man who tries to rape her. She again goes wild and bites him, ripping out his throat.
Eventually she is picked up by a stunt man named Luca Mondini (Howard Ross). Luca turns out to be a decent guy. Eventually Daniella falls in love with Luca and begins to mentally heal, until one night Daniella is gang raped by three men and Luca is stabbed to death. Daniella doesn’t take it well.
“Werewolf Woman” AKA “La Lupa Mannara” AKA “She-Wolf” AKA “Terror of the She Wolf” AKA “Naked Werewolf” AKA “The Legend of the Wolf Woman” was released in 1976 and was directed by Rino Di Silvestro. It is an Italian eurotrash horror movie. The film is highly exploitative, contains quite a bit of nudity, and boasts at least two rapists in the main credits. It is also on the Video Nasties list as “Not Banned but open to seizure”. Quentin Tarantino likes it.
I have a hard time calling this a werewolf movie. I look at it as more of a soft-core porn, psychological drama. The woman is obviously disturbed but other than in a dream sequence, she never sprouts body hair or fangs. Besides lycanthropy, Silvestro also hints at ESP, reincarnation and sexual phobia. The last scene, before the ending credits roll, also makes the weak claim that it was based on a true story.
I was ultimately disappointed in the film. I was expecting a werewolf movie and ended up with a rather uninspiring exploitation film.