Werewolf Flicks: The Werewolf (1956)

This is a film that didn't see any sort of home video release until 2007, when it was released in the Sam Katzman Icons of Horror DVD set, along with The Giant Claw, Creature with the Atom Brain, and Zombies of Mora Tau (in fact, of those four movies, only The Giant Claw had been released before on VHS and even it was hard to come by for years until that set), and yet, I not only had known about it long before then but had actually seen it once. That book I've mentioned before, Monster Madness, which I bought around the time I was eleven or twelve, has a selected filmography in the back that lists various films featuring or related to each of the monsters discussed in it and this one was mentioned in the one for the Wolf Man. But, for a while, that was all I had to go on; unlike a number of other movies I was interested in seeing, I didn't have any critical basis to go on, as any other information on the movie was very scarce and John Stanley didn't review it in the Creature Features review book that I bought when I was 13. Until I saw it on AMC one Saturday night in the early 2000's, I'd never even seen an image from it, so I had no clue that it was black-and-white before then(despite knowing it was from the 50's, I figured it might have been in color, as this wasn't too long before Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf). Regardless, I saw it on a programming block that AMC did every Saturday night called American Pop, where they would show a selection of movies every month that were tied together by some sort of theme. I can't recall what the theme was in this case but, when I looked up in the TV listings and saw that it was going to play this film, I decided to watch it out of curiosity, knowing that this was a rarity. Truth be told, the movie didn't leave much of any impression and I just barely remembered it until I saw it again as part of that box-set, which I got for Christmas one year. There's a reason why I barely remembered it as a kid: it's not much of anything. I had thought about putting this as an entry of B to Z Movies but, upon rewatching it, I found it to be too standard for that, or Movies That Suck, for that matter. Although, that said, if it weren't part of that set, I wouldn't keep it around because it's so average (it's the most average one, with The Giant Claw and Creature with the Atom Brain being cheesy fun and Zombies of Mora Tau being downright awful). It's not boring but it's not that thrilling either, and other than being interesting as an example of how, by the 50's, science fiction had become so prominent that it even took over staples of classic horror like the werewolf, there's not much to get into.

On a cold winter's night, a disheveled, confused man wanders into the tiny town of Mountain Crest, suffering from amnesia, as he asks the man who runs the local bar if he's ever seen him before. Upon leaving, he's accosted by another bar patron for his money and a fight breaks out between them in an alleyway. An elderly woman who's passing by sees the fight, when the would-be robber's body goes limp and the other man, now snarling like an animal, emerges from the alley and looks at her. Something about his face causes her to scream and he runs off into the nearby woods, while those in the bar come running upon hearing the screams. Checking the body, they find that the thug's throat has been ripped open, as though by powerful teeth, and Deputy Sheriff Ben Clovey sends for the town's local doctor. Following the killer's footprints into the woods, Clovey and the two men who accompany him are perplexed when the shoeprints in the snow suddenly shift into the pawprints of a wolf. Clovey sends the men back to town to get the sheriff, Jack Haines, while he stays at the site. Later on, those at the bar see Haines walking back into town with Clovey, whose arm has been badly maimed. He takes him to the home of Dr. Jonas Gilchrist, whose niece and nurse, Amy Standish, happens to be Haines' fiance, and as Gilchrist treats Clovey's arm, the deputy tries to describe what happened, hinting that what attacked him wasn't a man but wasn't quite an animal, either. Gilcrist is incredulous at the possibility that it may be a werewolf but, regardless, Haines intends to set up roadblocks to ensure that it doesn't escape. The next day, the man wakes up shivering in the woods and is horrified to discover pawprints leading up to where he's sitting. Unable to escape because of the roadblocks, he finds his way to Gilchrist's house and is allowed inside by Amy. Talking to them, he tells them that he can't remember who he is or why he's in Mountain Crest, saying that all he remembers is an automobile accident and seeing two doctors afterward; he also remembers killing the man who tried to rob him. He bolts out of the house when they try to sedate him and they tell Haines and Clovey about it, asking them to try to take him alive, as he's a sick man who needs help. Elsewhere, the two doctors, Morgan Chambers and Emery Forrest, learn of what's happened and Chambers decides the two of them must go there to dispose of their former patient, Duncan Marsh, before it can be discovered what they did to him. In addition, Marsh's wife, Helen, and their young son, Chris, are wondering what's happened to him and are on their way up to Mountain Crest as well.

The Werewolf is just one of many, many movies produced by Sam Katzman, who entered the film business when he was just 13 and was a producer from the early 30's all the way up to his death in 1973 at the age of 72. Besides working for studios as varied as Monogram, Columbia, and MGM, he also ran his own studios in his lifetime (Victory Pictures and Puritan Pictures) and then came up with several production company names to make his movies. Besides movies, he also produced a number of serials, like the 1948 Superman serial with Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill and the 1949 Batman serial, as well as the successful Jungle Jim movie series that starred a post-Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller. In regards to science fiction, besides the aforementioned ones in the box set, Katzman was an executive producer on It Came from Beneath the Sea and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, which featured Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation and the latter of which was directed by the man who also did this film, Fred F. Sears. Sears began as a dialogue coach and actor at Columbia, appearing in the Charles Starrett series of westerns that the studio was producing and graduated to directing them in 1949, continuing to do so until they ended in 1952. That same year, Sears first worked with Katzman on the serial, Blackhawk, and the two of them began working full time afterward, on the successful Billy Haley musicals, Rock Around the Clock and Don't Knock the Rock, and other low-budget science fiction films like The Giant Claw (he acted as narrator on both that film and The Werewolf) and The Night the World Exploded. However, in 1957, Sears was found from a heart attack at just 44; he made so many movies so quickly, though, that they were still being released nearly a year after his death.

As you'd expect from a movie of this type, the characters are about as thin as cardboard and the acting is usually passable best. That certainly goes for Don Megowan, who before this, had played the now land-dwelling Gill-Man in The Creature Walks Among Us and would go on to wear Boris Karloff's classic Frankenstein monster makeup for Tales of Frankenstein, an unsuccessful TV pilot that was a co-production between Columbia and Hammer Films in 1958. Here, as Sheriff Jack Haines, he gets to be the movie's ostensible lead without having to wear any monster makeup but he has little more to do than try to figure out what's going and scour the woods with hunting posses, searching for the werewolf. His acting is fair enough, albeit more than a little bland, and he comes across as a very decent guy, one who takes his job of keeping the people of Mountain Crest safe very seriously. It's nice that he doesn't instantly think his deputy is crazy when he suggests that what attacked him might have been a werewolf (in fact, few have trouble believing it afterward), deciding instead to simply find a way to stop the creature, whatever it is, and when Amy Standish, his fiance, and Dr. Gilcrest later implore him to try to take Duncan Marsh alive, Haines does try to do so, warning them, though, that it may come down to where he won't have a choice but to shoot him. He does start to become frustrated with how Amy feels about Marsh, as it causes strife between them, but when they do manage to find him and he's reunited with his wife and son, Haines is sympathetic to their plight (earlier, he saw to it that reporters that are in town didn't bother them and allowed them to accompany him in looking for Marsh). But when Marsh becomes the werewolf again, kills Chambers and Forrest in the jail, and escapes, Haines has no choice but to try to stop him by any means necessary. He and his posse trap the werewolf on a bridge and, in one last attempt to take him alive again, shoot in front of hims as he runs, but they ultimately have to cut him down. After he dies and changes back into Marsh permanently, Haines, knowing that it's over, as well as of the grief that his wife and son are going to feel when they find out, says, "Now, he can go home."

Amy Standish (Joyce Holden) and her uncle, Dr. Jonas Gilchrist (Ken Christy), Mountain Crest's resident physician and nurse, aren't sure what to think about the possibility of a werewolf roaming around, with Gilchrist in particular writing it off as, "Storybook stuff. The things kids get nightmares about," and becoming all the more incredulous when he sees that Jack Haines and Deputy Ben Clovey are taking it seriously. However, they begin to realize there's something to it when Duncan Marsh shows up at their small house in the woods, asking to speak to the doctor. The two of them try to help him remember who he is and how he got to Mountain Crest but, while they're unsuccessful at that, he does admit that he killed Joe Mitchell the night before when he tried to rob him of his money. Marsh runs away when they try to give him a sedative and they alert Haines and Clovie about it, with Amy pleading with her fiance to try to take Marsh alive, feeling he's an ill man, with Gilchrist believing he might have suffered brain damage from the auto accident he talked about. Later, when Haines comes up with an idea of using bear traps to catch Marsh, Amy is completely against it, while her uncle, while not liking it himself, simply tells Haines to do what he has to. The two of them take Helen and Chris Marsh in when they arrive at Mountain Crest to look for Duncan, attempting to keep the truth from Helen, although they're ultimately forced to tell her, along with Haines, that her husband killed a man. Knowing that Marsh was caught in one of the traps and will need medical attention, Amy volunteers to join the search party, seeing as how Gilchrist is physically unable to make the trek. When they do find him and bring him in, Amy gives Marsh a plasma transfer and, along with her uncle, is there when Marsh bids them a tearful goodbye at the jail cell. Gilchrist is determined to find out how Marsh became the creature he is and cure him, with he and Amy hitting upon the notion that somebody did this to him. Gilchrist wonders, "The thing is, the man who did it to Marsh, what did he have in mind?", and Amy adds, "And what kind of a future is he dreaming up for everybody else?" Nobody learns the answers to those questions, as the werewolf kills the two doctors and escapes, and Haines tells Amy and Gilchrist that they now have no choice but to hunt him down, which they do.

As the very reluctant werewolf, Duncan Marsh, Steven Ritch (who has an "introducing" credit, even though he'd been in plenty of films and TV episodes before) has the most memorable role and, while he's not Oscar-worthy, he gives what's probably the best performance. He does good job as coming across as a confused, tortured man, who wanders into the town of Mountain Crest one cold night without knowing why he's there or even who he is and, instead of answers, finds himself getting mugged for his money. Turning into a werewolf and killing the mugger, Marsh wakes up the next day in the woods, freezing from the cold and because he lost his shoes, and is absolutely horrified to see wolf pawprints in the snow stop right where he's resting. He tries to tell himself that what he did to the mugger the night before was a dream and that an animal came by while he was sleeping, leaving the tracks, but he clearly knows that's wishful thinking. Frightened and on edge, he avoids the roadblocks leading out of town and makes his way to Dr. Gilchrist's house, wanting to speak with him. He's hesitant to talk with Amy Standish in the room as well but eventually is calmed to where he does so, talking about an automobile accident and two doctors who examined him afterward, as well as admitting that he killed Joe Mitchell the night before. When they try to give him a sedative, Marsh's paranoia causes him to jump out of his chair, declaring that he's not going to let them give him anything, and that those doctors did something to him, before running out of the house and back into the woods. Later, when the two aforementioned doctors find him as he hides in a mineshaft, Marsh begs Dr. Forrest to help him but when the doctor pulls a gun on him and tells him nothing can be done, he becomes the werewolf again and almost kills Forrest before being scared off by a gunshot from Dr. Chambers. After getting caught in one of the bear traps they set for him and changing back, the injured Marsh is reunited with his wife and son when, using a megaphone, the former convinces him to give himself up. More worried about becoming the werewolf while they're around than being happy, Marsh reluctantly sends them off once they have him in the jail, promising to come home once he's been cured (suddenly, his memory is back and no reason is given as to why). But, as usual for a werewolf, Marsh's story ends in tragedy when he changes again, kills Chambers and Forrest, escapes, and is shot down by Sheriff Haines and his posse.

Marsh's wife, Helen (Eleanore Tanin), and his young son, Chris (Kim Charney), are both justifiably concerned about his disappearance, especially since he never fails to call when he's away on a trip. In her first appearance, Helen speaks to Dr. Chambers about her husband and is simply told that he left shortly after he was treat for his injuries in the car accident. While still concerned, when she's reassured that she'll probably hear from soon, she and Chris decide to go back home and wait for his call. But, when they don't get it, they find their way to Mountain Crest after they hear about his car being found near there and they're taken in by Amy Standish and her uncle. She appreciates their hospitality but, when everyone is uncomfortably vague about what happened to her husband, she initially wonders if he was the murdered man she read about in the paper and, when Amy reassures her that Marsh is alive, Helen demands to know why she's so sure. She then gets Sheriff Haines to tell her what's going on and he admits that her husband has killed a man. Initially, she's skeptical about this, insisting that Marsh would never do such a thing, but is told that there's something wrong with him. They don't come out and tell her that he's become a werewolf but she does know there's something grisly about it, given how the paper described the murdered man as looking like he'd been attacked by an animal and the way everyone dances around his "condition." When Haines organizes a search party to look for him, Helen asks that he allow her and Chris to go with them, saying that Marsh may be more willing to give himself up if they're with him. Reluctantly, he does, and this proves to be the best thing they could have done, as Helen uses the megaphone to convince Marsh to show himself and the family is temporarily reunited. But, in his jail cell later, Marsh tells Helen and Chris to go home and wait for him, not wanting them to see what he becomes out of fear that that's how they always remember him. While Chris is upset and doesn't want to leave, Helen comes to understand and tells Marsh that they'll be waiting for him, before they're led out by Amy. Haines sends someone to guide them home because of how bad the roads are at night and they leave, unaware that they'll never see Marsh again.

Between the two of them, Dr. Morgan Chambers (George Lynn) is the typical unscrupulous scientist, the one responsible for what Duncan Marsh has become, while Dr. Emery Forrest (S. John Launer) is his unwilling accomplice. Chambers is convinced that mankind will destroy itself with atomic weapons and his proof is the werewolf that Marsh has become, the result of an experiment when he inoculated him with a serum derived from a radioactive wolf mutant he was experimenting with. He intends to use the serum to immunize himself, Forrest, and a select group of people against radiation through a series of small inoculations so they can create a new world and society after the current one has destroyed itself. Forrest, on the other hand, simply wonders if their scientific curiosity has led them down a bad path and he realizes how unethical it was to give an innocent man such a hideous serum. Upon reading about the murder in Mountain Crest, Chambers' only concern is finding Marsh and killing him before he regains his memory and tells somebody of them. Forrest protests the idea of murdering him but Chambers rationalizes it by saying there's no way that Marsh would want to go on living, given what he's become. After lying to Helen Marsh about what happened to her husband, Chambers and Forrest head up to Mountain Crest, managing to get by the roadblock by telling the deputy stationed there that they have information that might help, admitting that Marsh was once a patient of theirs. Upon arriving, they head into the woods and manage to find Marsh as he hides in the mineshaft. Forrest corners him with a gun, telling him that nothing can be done for him when he asks for help, when Marsh transforms and attacks him. Chambers attempts to Marsh right then but misses and drives the werewolf away, with Sheriff Haines and his posse showing up and confronting them about it. Chambers then offers their services to the sheriff and tells him of their relationship with Marsh, but when Helen and Chris show up in town, he becomes afraid that they may try to take him alive. Forrest is desperate to stop before they get in too deep but Chambers is unfazed and makes it clear to his friend that he's going to join him in killing Marsh. He continues to order Forrest around in such a way as they stay in town, waiting for the chance to kill Marsh, eventually using a drunk trapper as a means to lure Deputy Clovey out of the jail and incapacitate him with chloroform. But, when they go into the cell to kill Marsh, they find that he transformed in his sleep and he attacks and kills them both before escaping.

There aren't many memorable characters in the supporting cast of the townspeople. The most notable one is Deputy Ben Clovey (Harry Lauter), who's the first lawman on the scene when Marsh kills Joe Mitchell in the alley and follows the werewolf's tracks into the woods. He sends the two men accompanying him to fetch Sheriff Haines while he stays at the spot, but he ends up getting mauled by the werewolf offscreen and, according to him, it's only through Haines' intervention that he managed to survive. His badly scratched arm gives him a bit of trouble afterward, although it's immediately forgotten, and for the rest of the movie, he does little more than aid Haines in trying to hunt down Marsh. He ends up on the receiving end of an ambush against when Chambers and Forrest knock him out with chloroform in order to get at Marsh, and after he comes to, he joins Haines in the hunting party that ultimately shoots the werewolf down. Among the other townspeople are Hoxie (George Cisar), the town bartender who sees Marsh when he first comes into town, is one of the first people to find Joe Mitchell's body, and briefly accompanies Clovey in following the werewolf into the woods; Min (Marjorie Stapp), a tall, good-looking blonde who often frequents the bar; Joe Mitchell (Charles Horvath), the big bully who, upon seeing how defenseless Marsh seems and the money he has, attempts to rob him, only to get his throat ripped open in the fight; Ma Everett (Jean Harvey), the old woman who stumbles across the fight and screams at the sight of the werewolf when he emerges from the alley; and Hank Durgis (Larry J. Blake), a member of the hunting posse who gets sloppy drunk in celebration of Marsh's capture, keeps bragging out loud about how they were caught him with traps, and is used as the doctors as a way to lure Clovey out of the jail so they can get at Marsh.

Movies like this are the hardest to talk about because everything about them is so generic that it's hard to come up with things to say. Not only are the characters cardboard but, being directed on a tiny budget by a man who was just a journeyman director of programmers, it has no style or feel to it that jumps out at you as being anything special. There are some notable moments in the film's opening, when you see Joe Mitchell's face up front as he sits at the bar, while Duncan Marsh walks to the fireplace in the background to warm himself, hinting at the confrontation that's about to take place between them, and the use of darkness when Mitchell drags Marsh into the alleyway to rob him, when the werewolf's appearance is kept obscured in this first scene, and the way Marsh's jail cell later is lit with lots of deep shadows on a white, plain wall, but that and the very crisp, stark nature of the black-and-white is all I can point to in terms of the movie's actual look. There's also nothing much to say about the setting. The movie was shot entirely on location in southern California (in just ten days, according to the American Film Institute), with all of the scenes in the woods being filmed in the San Bernardino National Forest, while the town of Mountain Crest was, depending on what source you look up, either Big Bear Lake or Fawnskin. The location work looks nice and authentic, with both the woods and the town coming across as charming in that rustic way, and you can tell that it was really cold when they shot it (according to the AFI, the shoot was in December), with the snow being real and actual breath coming out of the actors' mouths, but that's about all you can say about, and the same goes for the sparse interiors, which include the bar, the jailhouse, and the small house that Amy and her uncle live in, which I'm guessing were also real places and not in a studio. The laboratory that Dr. Chambers and Forrest work in is seemingly limited, being nothing more than an average-sized room that's full of animals in cages, including a very vicious German shepherd, and a glass chamber where Chambers is shown performing experiments on a wolf in his introductory scene.

Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Blob, this is another movie about a small town being invaded by something monstrous, which is a setup that I do like a lot, as I've said before, but this movie, being what it is, has no interest in exploring that in any way. You get nothing but the most basic notion of the effect the knowledge that a werewolf is prowling around in the woods outside their town does to the citizens of Mountain Crest, with Deputy Ben Clovey and the others being horrified when they find Joe Mitchell's body with his throat torn open, becoming doubly perplexed when they follow Marsh's footprints in the snow and they morph into the tracks of a wolf, and the bar patrons seeing Sheriff Haines bring Clovey back to town with his arm badly maimed. There is an interesting moment where a group of hunters are scene outside the jailhouse, complaining about how they're not allowed to hunt for the time being, and after Marsh has been captured, the posse gets drunk in celebration at the bar, not concerned with the fact that what they captured was an innocent, frightened man with a horrible affliction rather than a snarling monster, but because the story is told from the points of view of Haines, his friends, Duncan Marsh and his family, and the two doctors, you don't get much more than that. For most of the movie, Haines is trying to keep things quiet to avoid a panic and, other than Amy and Dr. Gilchrist, the only townspeople involved are members of the posse they use to hunt the werewolf, but when the werewolf kills and eats a sheep out a nearby ranch, the sheriff has everybody living on the outskirts brought in for safety and puts up sentries to stand guard in the street. I like those kind of moments, as they feel very real and there is a bit of a sense of urgency to them, but again, it's fleeting. In short, this is a movie that's concerned with anything but depth, so don't go looking for it.

The most noteworthy thing is the werewolf, though not for the monster himself but rather how unorthodox his origin and conditions for transformation are. Duncan Marsh became the beast that he is not because of an ancient curse but rather through Dr. Chambers' experimentation with a serum derived from an irradiated wolf specimen, which he inoculated Marsh with. This has to be the first instance of a werewolf created through such means in film and, as I said in the introduction, in that respect, it serves as a notable example of how science fiction had become the most prevalent genre of the fantastic by the 50's. By this point, just about all movie monsters were radioactive mutants or scientific experiments gone wrong, so it was only a matter of time before the werewolf received an atomic age makeover. And yet, the film looks back as well as ahead, as it opens with Fred F. Sears himself narrating about worldwide legends of werewolves and their validity, and after Ben Clovey is attacked, his contradictory description of what attacked him gets Sheriff Haines and the others thinking about the mythical possibilities, with Amy Standish and Dr. Gilchrist deciding to read up on the subject. In fact, when the werewolf escapes the jailhouse near the end of the movie, Haines leads a posse of men wielding torches like in the old days of The Wolf Man! Going back to the werewolf himself, his unusual origin means that the normal "rules" you get in these movies don't apply. Rather than changing because of the full moon, it happens sporadically and seems to be motivated whenever he's stressed or threatened, like when Joe Mitchell tries to rob him and when Dr. Forrest confronts him with a gun (it's a kind of a precursor to Bruce Banner's transformation into the Incredible Hulk, in that way). In addition, while he manages to maim Ben Clovey, he doesn't become a werewolf too because of it, and Marsh is ultimately gunned down by ordinary bullets at the end.

As you'd expect in a werewolf movie made during this time period, the transformation, which you only actually witness once, is done through the old-fashioned means of lap dissolves that were popularized in the classic Universal movies and the same goes for the two times we see Marsh turn back into himself (other than the brief optical effect you see when Dr. Chambers is shown performing experiments in his lab when he's first introduced, those are the only effects in the whole movie). The look of the werewolf, which was likely done by the film's makeup artist, Clay Campbell, is akin to a beastlier version of Andreas' werewolf form in The Return of the Vampire (which may not be a coincidence, as that was also produced by Columbia Pictures). It's a pretty typical werewolf design for this period, not nearly as memorable or inspired as Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man makeup, the makeup Henry Hull wore in Werewolf of London, or even what Michael Landon would wear the following year in I Was A Teenage Werewolf. Regardless, the snarls and growls he makes, particularly when he's killing Joe Mitchell, can be pretty threatening, and while he's mainly just a savage animal, he does have enough intelligence to know how to get his foot out of the bear trap he gets caught in at one point. Plus, even if you've never seen this movie, you've probably seen an image of this werewolf, as he tends to pop up often in documentaries (while the movie itself wasn't covered, a clip of it was shown in that History of Sci-Fi and Horror VHS documentary I've mentioned many times before and a still of it can be seen in the documentary on The Howling, Unleashing the Beast).

I wish I could say that the movie had more to recommend it than just an unorthodox take on a werewolf, like maybe some really good chase and attack sequences him, but not really. Most of the movie consists of Marsh sneaking around the woods, hiding from the hunting posses; prowling around and getting caught in a trap as the werewolf; or the posses and the doctors searching for him or putting up roadblocks. Most of the attacks happen offscreen, like Joe Mitchell's death, Deputy Clovey getting maimed, or the werewolf killing a sheep at a ranch, and the ones that you do see, which are the werewolf attacking Dr. Forrest outside of the mine and when he kills both of them in the jail cell, aren't much to write home about. Obviously, in a 50's movie, you're not going to see a lot of blood or violence but those scenes still could have been more exciting than they are. What's more, while Steven Ritch, as I said, does give a fairly good performance as Duncan Marsh, as do Eleanore Tanin and Kim Charney as his wife and son, I don't find myself caring all that much about the drama between them. Their reunion in the woods and when Marsh reluctantly sends them away while they're in his jail cell are done well enough but, this movie being what it is, isn't concerned enough with it to make it really impactful or sad, especially given what happens afterward. The ending also isn't much: after killing Forrest and Chambers and escaping, the werewolf is hunted through the woods by Sheriff Haines leading a torch-wielding mob and, the next day, is cornered on a bridge and attempts to escape by climbing down the side of it and making his way to the embankment across from it. They try to make him stop by shooting in front of him, and he almost falls into the water at one point as a result, but they ultimately have no choice but to gun him down and after they do so, he reverts back to Marsh for good.

Even the music score is nothing special; in fact, it's the definition of bland and forgettable. It's just typical 50's style horror and monster movie music, with no memorable themes or leitmotifs whatsoever. The music is credited solely to Russian-born composer, Mischa Bakaleinikoff, but according to IMDB's full cast and crew information, a lot of stock music is used, although I have no clue what any of it is originally from. Speaking of Bakaleinikoff, he was part of the orchestra for a number of movies that Columbia produced in the 1930's, most notably Lost Horizon, before becoming its music director in the 40's. When he worked on The Werewolf, he was no stranger to science fiction or Sam Katzman, as he was involved with the music on It Came from Beneath the Sea and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers and he went on to work on The Giant Claw, 20 Million Miles to Earth, The 27th Day, and even the Three Stooges movie, Have Rocket, Will Travel, which was one of his last jobs before he died in 1960 at the age of 69.

The Werewolf is a prime example of a movie that's simply there and, other than an interesting, atomic age-style take on a classic monster of Gothic horror, as well as maybe some nice-looking location work of San Bernardino National Forest and Big Bear Lake, there isn't much to recommend it, even for diehard fans of movies of this era. The acting is mostly just okay and the characters have virtually nothing to them, with even the werewolf himself, while sympathetic, lacking in the depth department; the design of the werewolf is generic-looking and nothing new, with the transformation being the usual lap-dissolve method; there are no sequences that are satisfactorily thrilling or emotional; and the music score is completely forgettable. While it's not out-and-out horrible, it's so "meh" that I can't give it much of a recommendation except to say that, if you absolutely have to see it, either look for it on Netflix or try to find somewhere online to watch it; don't pay money for it.