“You know that you can trust me.”
Professor Julian Olcott (Carl Schell) is the new teacher at school. And he has a past. But so do others. There are also wolves in the area. More than one kind. Mary Smith (Mary McNeeran), one of the girls at the school goes out at night to meet someone. She is having an affair and she is not above blackmail. She never makes it back. The next day she is found dead. There are scratches on her neck and a terrified look on her face. The police assume it was a wolf. There are many in the area.
Pricilla (Barbara Lass) wants to know what happened to her friend. There is no shortage of suspects. Julian Olcott, the new teacher, Director Swift (Curt Lowens) the head of the school, Sir Alfred Whiteman (Maurice Marsac) the man Mary was having the affair with, Walter (Luciano Pigozzi) the creepy caretaker, Tommy (Joseph Mercier) the equally creepy porter. Pricilla begins an investigation on her own.
Mrs. Sheena Whiteman (Annie Steinert)has a problem. Her husband is a dog. He was having an affair with Mary. Now that Mary is dead she wants to make sure that no one takes her place. The next day Mrs. Whiteman is found dead. They say it’s her heart.
One by one the suspects start to drop.
“Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory” AKA “Lycanthropus” was made in 1961. It is an Italian film directed by Paolo Heusch. The title may sound campy but the movie is played straight. Don’t expect a sex romp or a campy cheeze fest. This is a monster movie and the monster is a werewolf.
There is eeriness to the movie. Everybody is a suspect. And people seem to wander about late at night. You know there is a werewolf killing people. Your just not sure who it is. There are plot twists and red herrings everywhere. There are six people who die in the movie; however, only one of the deaths is actually done by the werewolf.
The make-up for the werewolf, (and there is a werewolf), is quite good. The werewolf transformations are shot in reverse starting with full make-up. Then each shot is done with more and more make-up removed. The process is reported to have taken 3 hours.
The movie is a decent “B” horror movie.
Carl Schell was the younger brother of Maximilian Schell and Maria Schell. Barbara Lass was the first wife of Roman Polanski.