THE WEREWOLF (1956)
Article #798 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-21-2003
Posting Date: 10-18-2003
Directed by Fred F. Sears
Featuring Steven Ritch, Joyce Holden, Dan Megowan

A werewolf is loose in a small village and the local sheriff tries to capture him.

Title Check: No problem; you want a werewolf, you got a werewolf.

In some ways, this generically titled movie is similar to the also-generically-titled THE VAMPIRE from a year later; they both feature sympathetic monsters, and they both add a science fiction angle to a usually-supenatural monster. Unfortunately, this one isn’t quite as good as that one; the screenplay never gels as well as it should, and the various elements (including the werewolf’s family and the two evil scientists who create him) feel thrown in rather than organic. Steven Ritch does as good a job as he can with a character that is not developed as well as he could be. The opening scenes, in which a seemingly amnesiac man is waylaid by a robber outside of a bar are the most memorable in the movie; you suspect one of these people is the werewolf, but you’re not sure which one. Not a bad movie, but one that could have been better.