Not bad black-and-white early 60's English-dubbed Italian-Austrian made horror film. Shows its Germanic roots. The sets, actors, moody atmosphere and spooky music makes it seem like a West German Edgar Wallace mystery film. A werewolf is stalking the grounds of a girls' reformatory. It never goes near the dormitory. There is no lack of suspects among the faculty. The famed "Ghoul in School" song was never heard by myself, at least in this release. Highly recommended.

Lycanthropus is worth watching on several counts. It is first of all a relatively early example of what might be called the Italian assault on Hollywood genres, which, despite the evident elements of pastiche, but pastiche that is perfectly assumed and does not pretend to be otherwise, would end up by producing two distinctive genres that have been enormously influential in the history of cinema. The Spaghetti western is far better known and appreciated while the giallo (its "horror film" equivalent) has never attained quite the same acceptance except amongst aficionados or those critics sufficiently cinema-literate (Scorsese for example) to appreciate the importance of a tradition that includes such figures such as Mario Bava and Dario Argento.As regards the bad dubbing, this goes to some extent with the terrain. It is noticeable that people will complain of it here but find it quite acceptable in Spaghetti Westerns, where, apart from the swisher films of Leone himself, it is generally understood to be to some extent a trope associated with the genre and might even be regarded as one of its dubious charms..Now Heusch is no Bava, it is true, although the two men would work together; they effectively co-directed the 1958 science fiction film La morte viene dallo spazio although Bava was only credited as cinematographer (another assault on a Hollywood genre that did not really lead anywhere and later rather merged with the giallo). Perhaps one of the reasons for the giallo's comparative lack of penetration was that, whereas the Spaghetti Western was largely unrivalled (the old Hollywood western was dead and the later US revisionist westerns were often a homage to Spaghetti Western rather then a response), the Italian giallo had to compete with an already well-established British tongue-in-cheek horror tradition (mainly associated with Hammer Films) that had the advantage of English as their first language.British horror and Italian giallo are not however the same, the latter excelling by its cinematography (not too apparent in this early example) and by a greater whimsicality or even reflectiveness (oddly for Italian films, less "bums and tits" than their British equivalents). To call that reflectiveness intellectual would sound ridiculous but is does have something of the quality of an intellectual exercise, a quality that becomes more marked as the genre progresses (very apparent in the films of Argento) and is later quite closely related to the growth in importance of what might be called the "puzzle" film or even the "popular pretentious" film (such as, in reverse order of pretension, Greenaway - at its best - Aronofsky, Nolan, Anderson, or even - at its worst - Ang Lee).While most of this still lay in the future in 1961, there are some playing with the tropes of the horror genre that are interesting here. As several reviewers have pointed out, there is the obvious resemblance of one of the actors (Luciano Pigozzi not Carl Schell)to Peter Lorre but, as interesting is the resemblance of Schell, the German actor who plays the hero, to Karlheinz Böhm who had played the lead in Michael Powell's notorious but remarkable film Peeping Tom just the year before. This British film proved too shocking for the British public of its time and well nigh ruined Powell's career. Now very much a "cult" film, it bears little relation to the conventional British horror and is in many ways closer in style to the giallo.Also interesting is the appearance in the film of another German actor, Curt Lowens, who plays the school's director. This was the first major part Lowens had played in a film and he was principally known as a man who had spent the war in hiding, rescuing fellow-Jews deportation and death and who had emigrated to the US immediately after the war (he would subsequently have a long and undistinguished film career mainly playing caricatural Germans, often Nazis). It is interesting because of the way the film is tied in with a genre of great importance throughout the world in the post-war period - delinquency and reformation. Lowens is here playing the typically humanitarian reformer who appears in nearly all such films. The English title which renders the setting of a girl's school purely a matter of titillation (although of course it is that too) seriously misrepresents the film.This "reform school" element is allied to the central horror theme by the discussion of lycanthropy as curable illness rather than as simply some kind of crudescence of evil. This relates obviously to the equivalent debate about the treatment of criminals and delinquents, a connection which is made very clear (perhaps even too clear) in the film. This all belongs within the scope of the monster horror genre but is perhaps more associated with the European tradition (going back to Murnau's Nosferatu and, even more clearly, Lang's M. the film in which of course Peter Lorre made his name and a film which the Nazis would attack as typically Jewish and "soft on criminals". The US tradition, with its firm belief in the existence of good and bad, was more inclined to emphasise the "kill the beast" element.In this context the presence of Lowens in the film assumes a particular importance. To hear from the mouth of a celebrated Holocaust survivor the sentiment that "judgement lies with God alone" gives, to say the least, food for thought.....

If a dormitory is some kind of alternative prison and girls are adult women and in means never in,the title makes complete sense. I watched this twice and still don't know what to make of it. The girls seem really slutty at the beginning but we soon learn that they are actually much worse than that. They have no problem frequently climbing the 15 foot high spiky front gate and never even think about just jumping the 3 foot high wall two feet away. The werewolf tries to gently massage people to death and usually fails. Who's the werewolf? I have no clue.The men are that boring and similar. The best thing about this movie is that all the doctors and professors have guns.That seems to be a common thing in these movies and it never gets old. Watch at your own risk.

WEREWOLF is the kind of schlocky flick we used to see on Saturday afternoons, along with one or two other low-budget churners, a bunch of cartoons and sometimes even a stage act. Usually a pretty bad stage act, like a local magician. And all this for 15 cents! They just don't make them like this anymore, that's for sure. A flesh-eating beast is terrorizing a girls' boarding school, although the "girls" are all splendidly endowed adults, probably models. Shot in Italy and dubbed, the film is a hoot. We are kept guessing who the werewolf is through at least half the film. Not as sexy or lurid as I would have liked, considering the title, but still worth a gander. There is a wonderfully funny fight between the monster and the hero at one point that alone is worth the price of admission, as we used to say. And wait until you see the typically bizarre looking European motor vehicles in this classic 1960s horror flick!