BONUS WILDCARD WEEK (September 22 – 28) Go order something from the SWV website and watch it!

Lycanthropus was directed by Paolo Heusch (The Day the Sky Exploded) and written by Ernesto Gastaldi. Heusch used the name Richard Benson, as all Italian directors of that time had to have an American names.

If the title Werewolf In a Girls’ Dormitory isn’t good enough — and it is, it’s one of the best exploitation titles ever — it was also released as I Married a Werewolf, Ghoul in a Girl’s Dormitory, Monster Among the Girls and The Ghoul In School, which is the name of the song that Marilyn Stewart and Frank Owens wrote and that was sung by Adam Keefe. In case you wonder why a voice that sounds like Peter Lorre says, “Come with me to the corridors of blood,” that’s because this movie was on a double feature with Corridors of Blood. 

Director Swift (Curt Lowens) is trying to run a reform school that’s funded by Sir Alfred Whiteman (Maurice Marsac). Swift brings on a new teacher named Julian Olcott (Carl Schell, the brother of Maximilian) even though he’s aware of the fact that when Olcott was a doctor, some patients died.

One of the girls, Mary Smith (Mary McNeeran), is sleeping with Whiteman and also blackmailing him. She’s the first to die — shocking that the bad girl of all these reform girls is the first to die and that she’s also sleeping with the rich man paying for all of the school — and the police decide that she was killed by wolves. Priscilla (Barbara Lass, Roman Polanski’s first wife) believes that someone else did it, as she finds a note that was threatening Mary. Like a giallo main character, she ends up investigating the case herself with the help of the school’s handyman Walter (Luciano Pigozzi) and Whiteman. She soon learns that his wife Sheena (Annie Steinert) knows who killed the girl ruining her marriage but she won’t reveal the truth.

As you can tell by the title, there is a werewolf. It gets there and yes, it’s amazing when it happens. This movie looks so much better than you’d expect with its title. It’s also the only werewolf movie I’ve ever seen where the girls attacked by the monster have orgasms while in the jaws of the furry creature.

Want to see what Bill Van Ryn of Drive-In Asylum thinks? Check out what he has to say here.

You can get this from Severin.