"Scientists Turn Men Into Beasts! "

THE WEREWOLF (1956)
Directed by Fred F. Sears
Starring:
Steven Ritch – Duncan Marsh
Don Megowan – Sheriff Jack Haines
Joyce Holden – Amy Standish
Eleanore Tanin – Mrs. Helen Marsh
Ken Christy – Dr. Jonas Gilchrist
S. John Launer - Dr. Emery Forrest
George Lynn - Dr. Morgan Chambers

The Werewolf has always been overlooked by atomic age sci-fi fans, who expect their monsters to be either alien invaders or irradiated mutants. This is unfortunate because the centerpiece monster of this Sam Katzman produced gem is a pure creation of atomic age science; a creature made by scientists driven mad with visions of a post-apocalyptic world of radiation and fallout. It is a horror picture, yes, but at the core beats a heart of pure atomic age paranoia.

Our story begins with a desperate man (Steven Ritch), clutching his thin suit coat together, wondering the night streets of Mountain Crest, a small, rustic town in the mountains (the picture was shot on location in and around the mountains of Big Bear Lake, California). As a timpani beats a lone, bass beat, we hear a narrator give a brief history of Lycanthropy, how men through the ages, form all corners of the globe, have told tales of wolf men.

The man appears frightened or disoriented, and his clothes don’t match either the weather or the setting. Narration and timpani beat fades to the sound of a jukebox drifting out of a small bar, Chad’s Place. The man peers inside through the glass panels of the heavy door, looking small in the ghostly light. He steps inside as the interior music washes over him, and the opening titles roll: THE WEREWOLF (and the type font used is pure 1950s drive in horror! A thing of beauty in and of itself to the true devotee.)

After titles, we find the man sitting at the bar, staring down until the bartender returns with a drink. The man drinks his shot carefully, like a man administering himself medicine. The joint has a fireplace (the décor demands hunting boots and flannel). Our small, thin protagonist seems drawn to it for something more than simple warmth. He stands before the burning logs, his anguished face lit with the flickering light, and he reaches toward the flames in an odd gesture; as if wishing to grasp the fire itself and bring it close for safety.

As he takes his leave, the bartender reminds him about his change. The bartender (George Cisor) watches the man slowly gather his coins. Sensing something is seriously amiss, he asks the bedraggled figure if he is new in town.

The man looks up at the bartender with sad, hopeful eyes. “You don’t know me?” he asks, sounding like a child.

The bartender laughs and tells him that he has never seen him before in his life.

The man is clearly dejected by the answer. He lowers his head, saying, “I guess I’m just passing through.”

“You guess?” asks the bartender, but the man is already walking toward the door and doesn’t answer.

He is followed outside by one of the local barflies, who confronts him and suggests rather bluntly that he return to the bar and buy him a drink. The man looks confused and asks “Can you tell me, do I live in this town?” whereupon the barfly, who is easily 60 pounds heavier than the stranger, drags him into an alley and proceeds to beat him, now simply demanding all his cash.

The camera shifts to the ally entrance, and we watch an older woman approaching, wearing a scarf over her hair. The struggle, which we hear off camera, has turned viscous. We can hear a strange, guttural sound off camera, not human, like a dog gathering itself. We are given a view of the combatants’ legs, which extent into the street from the alley, as the men struggle on the ground. But it no longer sounds or looks like a “fight.” It is now simply an attack, with the neat pants and dress shoes of the stranger clearly on top. The sounds intensify to a bestial release of triumph, and the legs of the local go slack.

The older woman is close now, and she sees the man step out of the alley. We see the back of his head, and her pale luminous expression as her face crumbles into panicked, hysterical screaming. The man runs off, leaving the woman standing on the sidewalk near the alley, screaming and screaming. Locals, including Ben Clovey, the town’s deputy, (Harry Lauter) come running out of the bar.

“Ma Everson,” asks the bartender as everyone clusters around, “why are you yelling like that?”

She tries to explain but is not terribly coherent. She saw two men go into the alley, and they had some kind of fight, but then it came out. Only that thing came out! Well, decides Deputy Clovey, this calls for an investigation. “Let’s take a look,” he says, looking toward the dark alley. Our stalwart group of citizens stands staring at the deputy, and our barkeep puts it succinctly: “You’re the Deputy Sherriff. You go first.”

With his Adam’s apple bobbing a bit, Deputy Clovey leads the way. The men follow him into the alley and huddle around the body. “God,” says Clovey, as all the men recoil and Hoxie, the bartender, unconsciously covers this neck. “His throat!” he says, his voice thin with panic. Our deputy struggles for his voice as well: “Only . . . only an animal could have done that.” He instructs one of the other men to fetch the local doctor. The men move back out into the street, and now the deputy begins to think clearly. He sends the ladies to go tell the sheriff what has happened, and he instructs Hoxie the bartender to go home and bring back every goddamned deer rifle he owns. Half-man/half beast season has officially been declared open, no tag needed and no limits will apply!

The remainder of the picture will be devoted to capturing or killing this stranger, Duncan Marsh, who we will eventually learn has been transformed into a werewolf as the result of an experiment performed by a two rural doctors who have strayed a good piece from sanity country. It is the story and motivations of these two doctors, Drs. Morgan Chambers (George Lynn) and Emery Forrest (S. John Launer), that rocket this nifty, gothic thriller into the realm of radiated sci-fi.

Like all the tremendous Clover Productions from ubber-producer, Sam Katzman, the core of the film has one whopper of a concept. See, our two doctors, operating from a cabin from somewhere in California, have developed a animal/wolf serum. Why, you ask? Well, prepare yourself. Dr. Chambers - played with harsh, sharp lunacy and a razor mustache by George Lynn, has developed a theory in which he is convinced that an apocalypse is coming via the hydrogen bomb. In a post, apocalypse landscape of darkness and doom, all mankind will be mutated by fallout and radiation into viscous, killing animals. Every single survivor of hydrogen bomb will be turned into a “crawling, inhuman thing through fallout radiation,” unable to think, only able to hate and kill. But Dr. Chambers (his partner, Dr. Forrest, is a weak-willed accomplice, there only to supply plot exposition and the barest hint of a scientific conscience) has developed a serum, extracted from the blood of a mutated wolf, killed by radiation poisoning, which will allow a small select group to escape this fate. Thus inoculated against the coming animalism by the irradiated wolf blood, the doctors will be able to think clearly and set the blood-soaked remains of the human race back on a course of rational civilization. (yes, you have understood correctly: doctors injected with the blood of mutated, dead wolves will save the human race). "Doctors should be able to cure more than broken bones and runny noses," raves Dr. Chambers. "I want to cure a world!"

One day in the recent past, the authorities brought the unconscious victim of a car crash, Duncan Marsh, to their offices; and Dr. Chambers decided the time was right to try the serum on a human subject. Marsh, given a “full inoculation”, not only becomes a werewolf, changing into a slobbering beast whenever angry, but also suffers complete memory loss. When the two doctors read in the papers of the recent events in the small town of Mountain Crest, they agree to travel there and kill Marsh before his memory returns and he squeals on them.

“You’re not going to kill him?” says Dr. Forrest, as if he didn’t know.

“Do you think he still wants to live after what he’s become?” snaps Dr. Marsh, somehow actually scrambling for the high ground in the argument. “Why, it would be an act of charity.” Hmmm. Well, okay then, responds Dr. (jellyfish) Forrest.


Back in Mountain Crest, Deputy Clovey has gotten himself badly mauled by Marsh, in full werewolf mode, who was scared off just short of killing him by rifle shots. Sherriff Jack Haines (Don Megowan) brings his lacerated deputy into the local doc’s office (character actor Ken Christy plays Dr. Jonas Gilchrist, decked out in flannel and suspenders to ensure a “kindly” status) where he is treated by Doc Jonas and his niece assistant/nurse, Amy Standish (Joyce Holden). As the doctor treats Clovey, Sherriff Haines and he exchange theories about what actually killed the dead man, who is still laying in another room of the doc’s house. It becomes evident quickly why the residents of Mountain Crest have elected Haines to office: he is easily twice the size of any of the citizenry, has hands big enough to palm a human head, and his chiseled slope of a brow will never allow rainwater to drip into his nearly black eyes. Combine these absolutely essential qualities for good law enforcement with the fact that the Sheriff has absolutely no sense of humor at all (and I mean none) and you have the perfect defender of the public safety (actor Don Megowan is able to bring a certain brooding gentleness to the role, which makes the sheriff’s engagement to the clearly smarter and classier Amy believable).

The doctor insists that the lacerations on the dead man’s throat, as well as Deputy Clovey’s arm, were caused by an animal’s teeth. Both Sherriff and Deputy hint that well, all witnesses saw something, that, well, walked on two legs, like a man. Poppycock! Says the doctor. Amy, finishing up the bandaging of Clovey’s arm, says to the sheriff gently, “There is a word for what your saying, Jack.”

The Sherriff’s mood darkens just a touch. “Yeah, I went to school, too, Amy.” Oops; this is clearly not the first time the two sweethearts have broached the “intelligence gap” issue.

“Werewolf?” asks the doctor, not believing his ears. “If you think I’m going to put that in my medical report . . .”

“A murder has been committed,” says Haines, getting back to his bottom line. “Fill out your report any way you like, but it was murder. And it wasn’t a man accidently killed by an animal.”

After a bit more bickering, Haines and his wounded deputy leave. Despite his somewhat blunt and artless approach, the Sherriff has managed to scare the holy bejesus out of the doctor and his niece, and the two stay up all night reading old books on mythology and lycanthropy.

The town soon becomes the scene of a media event, as one of the locals (all of whom seem to spend a good deal of time at Chad’s Place getting shitfaced) has blabbed to the press, bringing a gaggle of reporters into town with their wise-ass ways and smart comments. In town also are Drs. Chambers and Forrest, ostensibly to help with the search but really intent on killing Marsh before he can reveal them as raving madmen. Finally, rounding out the cast, are Marsh’s wife, Helen (Eleanore Tanin) searching for her missing husband with their young son, Chris (Kim Charney).

Throughout the film, Sherriff Haines and his fiancée, Amy, argue a great deal on how to handle Marsh. Joyce, who has been terribly moved by Marsh’s plight (Marsh has visited her uncle’s office and revealed himself to be the killer, pleading with tears streaming down his face for their help: “Please, doctor; I want you to tell me who I am. I want you to tell me what I am!”). The Sherriff at first agrees that Marsh is perhaps ill, not a murderer, but when local farmers report missing sheep, he formulates a plain to capture the beast before his dietary habits change by setting a series of bear traps loaded with large hunks of dripping meat.

“It’s vicious and cruel,” says elegant Amy. “How can you do that to another human being?”

“Amy, the lives of everyone in this town are depending on the police right now,” says Jack rationally, “Why don’t you try and see it my way?”

Eventually, the werewolf is injured severely in one of the bear traps as he makes a slobbering grab at a hunk of meat. Because of his shattered ankle, and because of the megaphoned pleadings of his wife to surrender, he gives himself up to authorities with the promise that they will find him the best help available (in most cases in 1950’s sci-fi, this means a doctor with a goatee and Viennese accent). While things can’t be said to be hopeful, at least Marsh is alive and in a cell. Drs. Chambers and Forrest, though, turn Marsh’s bad luck to complete shit when they decide to kill him in his cell. They knock Deputy Clovey out with some chloroform and proceed into Marsh’s cell on cat feet with a syringe full of poison (boy, when these two stray from the Hippocratic oath, they really stray!).

We cheer deliriously as the doctors awake Marsh and, as he turns over to face them, find him slobbering and staring at them, transformed one last time into the werewolf (this last transformation is final, his ability to change back to human form, while alive, is finished). In a quick, punchy scene (a little too quick for my tastes) the werewolf kills them both amid the cell’s noir shadows and tears their throats out.

Ironically, the scene we have been waiting for the entire film, in which the loathsome doctors get theirs, is the very action that dooms Duncan Marsh. The Sherriff will entertain absolutely no PETA arguments this time and tells his girlfriend flatly “We won’t take him alive this time, Amy,” as he organizes an old-school gothic search party, complete with angry townsfolk marching with torches (this is also the only time Sherriff Haines demands that his fiancée stay behind. He knows he has some shameful work ahead of him).

The creature cannot run because of his shattered ankle, and the men of the town simply walk him down, running him over a bridge and eventually trapping him as he stumbles along the remnants of a dam, long out of service. The men, led by Sherriff Haines, seem somewhat sickened by the spectacle, as the creature is completely helpless as he slowly limps across the spine of the dam, looking like a broken prop in a shooting gallery. “All right,” says the sheriff finally, “get him.”

Methodically, the men lever their rifles, thumb back the hammers on their revolvers, and just tear loose, eventually killing – executing – Marsh with a gut shot. He writhes a moment on the rocks, breathing hard, then transforms one last time into human form before dying. “Now he can go home,” says Haines, and his voice no longer holds any pity. The End.

Several things make this picture special; first and foremost is the wonderfully emotional performance from Steven Ritch as Duncan Marsh. From the first time we see Ritch, walking along a deserted, night street of a forlorn strip of town, clutching his inadequate suit coat tight at the collarbone, the actor makes Duncan Marsh’s torment and inner anguish tangibly real. Ritch plays it gothic, nearly kneeling in prayer in the initial bar scene, holding his hands together to his forehead as the warmth and light from the fireplace bath him. After his first transformation, we find him in the snow, high in the mountains, sitting in a tight fetal position, clutching his bare, freezing feet. His eyes are completely lost, and Ritch makes us feel Marsh’s pure soul isolation. Later, as Sherriff Haines and Amy Standish discuss plans for capturing Marsh, Amy finally says in frustration, “If you had only heard him plead for help the way I did . . .” And we know what she means. Ritch, throughout the film, is terribly moving. “You’re going to shoot me?” asks Duncan Marsh, his voice struggling to avoid tears, looking at Dr. Forrest who has him cornered in a cave. “Why?”

Also very good are actors Don Megowan and Joyce Holden as Sherriff Jack Haines and Amy Standish. Their relationship is completely believable, and it is easy to see why the two are attracted to one another. Their respect for each other is obvious. Haines never brushes her aside or has her busy herself with womanly things like coffee or supper. She, in fact, is right there by his side as the Sherriff searches the mountains calling for Marsh with a megaphone, hoping for a non-lethal solution. He always listens carefully to her opinion, trusting her to speak to his better nature. When he devises the bear trap solution, he clearly wants her to talk him out of it or, with her smarts, think of a better solution (she can’t, and has to leave the room in frustration). As for what she sees in him, well, not only would Sherriff Haines fight the bear at the door, more than likely the couple would be eating bear steaks later that evening. Her face literally lights up whenever she see him, her hands instinctively moving to take his. He gives her safety, she gives him soul. Good match.

This film is often thought of as the best of Director Fred F. Sears, and that’s true (although Sears was at the helm for other solid work, like Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers, Chicago Syndicate, and The Miami Story, as well as the sci-fi favorite, The Giant Claw). Sears was known as a fast, efficient professional, much beloved by producers like Sam Katzman for his rock-solid dependability and technical expertise. Throughout the film, Sears creates a feeling of classic, claustrophobic horror through the use of close-ups and dramatic, noir lighting. Sears also gives us some tremendous images in the film; my favorite being the scene in which without any explanation, we see Dr. Chambers, compete with protective goggles and gloves, standing before a glass radiation chamber. His gloved hands turn knobs, filling the chamber over and over with crackling doses of radiation. Inside the chamber is a dead or dying creature, strapped down and positioned in such a way that it may be a large dog - or something else; something about it’s posture seems wrong. The scene almost slips by us, and at first take seems simply the work of dedicated scientist. It isn’t until later we understand what the scene has shown us: Dr. Forrest is producing some of his anti-apocalypse serum by mutating a wolf through radiation poisoning, whereupon he can extract its irradiated blood once the animal is dead. The creature in the booth is perhaps not yet dead, just horribly mutated and weak to the point of death. Creepy shit, my friends, and Sears lets us come to it in our own time, nice and slow.

If you haven’t seen this film, it will be a very happy discovery. This is one of my personal favorites. Enjoy! WATCH THE TRAILER BELOW! –Radiation Cinema