La lupa mannara (1976)

User Rating:

4.7/10   

Director:

Rino Di Silvestro

Writers:

Rino Di Silvestro (writer)
Anthony La Penna (English dialogue)

Release Date:

June 1977 (USA)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

A true story so brutal and horrifying it was kept from the public for over a century!

Plot:

A woman has dreams that she is a werewolf so she goes out and finds men. She proceeds to have sex with...

Plot Keywords:

Werewolf | Revenge | Breasts | Murder | Transformation

Cast

Annik Borel	...	Daniella Neseri
Howard Ross	...	Luca Mondini
Dagmar Lassander	...	Elena Neseri
Tino Carraro	...	Count Neseri
Elio Zamuto
Osvaldo Ruggieri
Andrea Scotti	...	Arrighi
Frederick Stafford	...	Inspector Modica
Felicita Fanny	...	Doctor in car
Isabella Rosa
Giuliana Giuliani
Anna Mallarini
Maria Renata Franco		(as Renata Franco)
Salvatore Billa	...	Rapist
Pietro Torrisi	...	Rapist

Also Known As:

Daughter of a Werewolf
Naked Werewolf Woman
She-Wolf (video title)
Terror of the She Wolf
The Legend of the Wolf Woman
The Wolf Man (USA)
Werewolf Woman

Runtime:

USA:79 min | USA:98 min (DVD version)

Country:

Italy

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Italy:VM18 | UK:18 (cut) | USA:R | West Germany:16 | Australia:(Banned) | Australia:R (censored)

Company:

Dialchi Film

Trivia:

Selected by Quentin Tarantino for the First Quentin Tarantino Film Fest in Austin, Texas, 1996. Tarantino had actually never seen the picture before he screened it. He loved it so much that all subsequent Quentin Tarantino Film Fests had a surprise movie added to the end of each all-nighter known as the "Wolf Woman" selection; defined as an outrageous exploitation film sure to wake the audience up. "Wolf Women" selections over the years have included The Blood Spattered Bride and Mighty Peking Man.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Wolfman Chronicles (1991)

Pure, grade-A Euro-crap (but I liked it)

This is NOT a good movie. Nor is it really even "so-bad-its-good", but it is kind of interesting in a twisted, car wreck sort of way. The movie is about a young woman who due to an ancient family curse and implied childhood sexual abuse is suffering from a kind of "hysterical lycanthropy". She believes herself to be a werewolf, so she starts killing (and eventually eating) her male lovers. Her actual lycanthropic status is left kind of ambiguous throughout the movie, making this more interesting than most. It kind of aspired to be what "Ginger Snaps" was years later. But unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) it was directed by Rino DiSilvestri, a notorious Italian exploitation hack who had absolutely no sense of his own limitations. Still I vastly prefer a movie like this that tries to be serious and stumbles into camp, to one that intentionally aims at camp (like so many alleged "cult" movies do today) and fails just as miserably.

Of course, DiSivestri WAS pretty good at sexploitation, and he always had a very decent female cast. In his earlier movies he worked with a whole bevy of Euro-beauties (Anita Strindberg, Jenny Tamburi, Paola Senatore, Krista Nell, Magda Konopfka, Orchidea DiSantis, ad infinitum). Here he's reduced to the lovely Dagmar Lassander, who has probably the longest and most gratuitous sex scene of her career, and the lead, the much more obscure Anik Borel, who was cast because DiSivestri, according to his DVD commentary, thought "she looked like a wolf". She is kind of weird looking I guess, but her body is pretty impressive and you get to see a whole lot of it here. (Interestingly, her only other notable screen credit is in "Weekend with the Babysitter" a very 70's and very American sexploitation film directed by Tom "Billy Jack" McLoughlin). This movie is certainly not for everybody, but it works for me