Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory

STORY

We open on a shot of a giant castle as a man allows another man into the gated property, with girls dancing in the background. One of the girls feigns fainting to attract the attention of the new professor who has just arrived. The new teacher, Julian Olcott (Carl Schell), introduces himself to Director Swift (Curt Lowens) and begins to explain his checkered past, but Swift already knows. He announces that he will be known as Professor Olcott, not by his past life as a doctor. Swift tells him this is a school of modern punishment, and that most of the girls here would be in reformatories if not for their admission to this institute. Swift says they are trying to give girls work and an education. And here, Olcott is not a doctor but a science instructor.

That evening, all the girls snuggle into their dormitory beds, ready to settle down. They hear loud howling, and two girls rise to investigate. One girl is walking outside, unaware of the animal’s howl. The two watchful girls recognize her as Mary (Michela Roc) and assume she is sneaking out to meet a lover. Mary climbs a fence and moves further away. The institute groundskeeper, Walter Jeoffrey (Luciano Pigozzi), soon catches her, ordering her back to the school building. Instead of returning, Mary wanders further away. A single silhouetted eye stares at the girl from the shrubbery. An older man emerges to greet her, one of the professors, Sir Alfred (Maurice Marsac). He tries to hug her, but she resists. She yells at him to leave her alone, saying she wants something from him. She wants him to help her escape this institute by tomorrow night. He pleads that he’ll think of something as she storms off. As Mary returns to the school, she sees a strange figure emerge from the brush, but she advances anyway, and a figure jumps from a tree to pursue her. She breaks into a run, closely followed by the strange man. Finally, the fiend, with dark, hairy, animalistic hands, brings her down, grunting and breathing heavily. Mary moans and half-screams as the animal crawls her to death. The full moon shines! Her dead body is thrown into a body of water. The older professor returns to the school, unaware of what has happened to her.

Inside his quarters, Sir Alfred Whiteman calls out for Sheena (Anny Degli Uberti), his wife, and she enters from behind him. She calls Alfred corrupt; Alfred was formerly with a girl who blackmailed him, but that’s over. He admits he wrote her a letter but didn't sign it. Sheela calls him an imbecile.

The girls desire to see Mary’s now-recovered corpse, but they are told no. Julian Olcott examines the body and sees the wounds and her frightened expression. Another man reports that a wolf attacked her. Olcott doesn’t believe that her attacker was a wolf, but that she may have been sneaking out to meet a man. Director Swift worries the institute’s reputation may have been compromised. Sir Alfred is asked to identify the victim, and he acts as if he hardly knows her. While Alfred waits outside, smoking, to be called inside to be questioned, he flirts with another young student, Priscilla (Barbara Lass), as she passes by.

Priscilla opens a letter and reads it, then reports to Director Swift that Mary is blackmailing someone and is being threatened. Swift says they’ll have to call the inspector back, as an unknown presence is seen observing from a nearby door. Swift says the letter might have no connection with Mary’s death, but we can’t ignore it. The inspector requests to see the letter, but it has disappeared from a desk drawer. Both the inspector and Swift are very upset at Priscilla. After class in Olcott’s classroom, Priscilla asks why you could see Mary’s body but none of the girls could. Priscilla further questions the wounds on her body; could they have been made by a wolf? Olcott states nothing has been confirmed. Priscilla then asks why Olcott came here to teach, but he states the decision was made for him.

Later, Priscilla and a friend break into Mary's dresser, and Priscilla says she knows the man who killed Mary. Later, Julian Olcott walks with Director Swift, and Olcott asks why Priscilla is here. Swift says she and Mary lived together. One night, a sailor tried to assault Mary, and Priscilla, protecting her, almost killed the sailor.

At the home of Walter Jeoffrey, Priscilla knocks and comes inside. Walter asks if she is afraid of the wolves and tells her, "Come with me.” Walter leads her beyond a gate. They cross a small bridge above a running stream where Mary’s body was found. An unseen figure in a trench coat and gloves secretly observes the two. Walter leads her to an isolated cottage and says, "I've been waiting for you.” She enters the dark structure to find Sheena Whiteman waiting. Sheena throws money at Priscilla and calls her another common slut, out to see her husband. Priscilla says her husband killed Mary because she received this letter, showing her. Priscilla came only to find out who wrote the letters.

Sheena asks Priscilla to sit down and explains that her husband is a sadist who cheats on her and isn’t the respectable man everyone assumes he is. The other night, her husband had a rendezvous with Mary, and Sheena wanted to catch him and end the affair. Sheena says her husband didn’t kill Mary, nor were the wolves responsible. That night, under the full moon, a man was seen contorting his body on a bridge, and Sheena recognized him. Suddenly, Priscilla hears a noise at the window, and Sheena refuses to reveal the killer’s name to keep Priscilla safe.

After both women exit and Priscilla cautiously walks through the woods, Julian Olcott finds her. He says he is setting traps to rid the woods of wolves. They walk back to the institute together. Sheena arrives at the institute first, with her two dogs, and goes inside to her bedroom. In her closet, a gloved hand chloroforms her, rendering her unconscious, then administers a drug with a syringe. Left by Olcott at the gate to the institute, Priscilla calls out for the professor, and a grotesque eye stares at her in the darkness. An animal, half human and half wolf, darts out of the darkness, lurching toward Priscilla, growling. As Priscilla faints, a dog attacks the werewolf, forcing the beast to flee in pain.

People are solemnly filing into a rustic cemetery for a funeral. The casket is slowly lowered into the ground. Sheena Whiteman is being put to rest. Shortly, mourners exit from the graveyard.

After leaving the funeral, Walter Jeoffrey drinks a beer alone at a pub where the patrons are all talking about catching this serial killer. Sir Alfred Whiteman presses Walter to find those letters for him. They notice that Walter’s right arm is not working, and they instantly assume he is the murderer; they all surround him. Walter draws a knife in self-defense. Another patron draws a knife of his own, and the mob overpowers Walter. Director Swift enters in Walter’s defense, helping him leave.

Swift asks Walter what he was doing with Sir Alfred, and he answers nothing. Director Swift tells Alfred to return to the institute for his own safety. Meanwhile, Julian approaches the hospitalized Priscilla. The professor tries to calm the young student,

Swift declares that he’s risking everything on Sir Alfred, but what else is he to do? A student, Sandy, soon barges in and declares Julian Olcott the murdering fiend. She mentions his badly damaged arm and says Mary was killed the night of his arrival. Swift wants Olcott called in immediately. Olcott soon enters to confront Director Swift. Swift asks what exactly occurred in the woods, and Julian says the incident involved a werewolf. Swift asks him to explain further, but Olcott accuses Swift of conducting an interrogation. Swift sharply replies that it’s better to tell him everything than the police. He tells Swift about the termination of his career as a doctor due to an incident at an insane asylum. He worked with a girl there accused of homicide, but she could not remember killing anyone. Olcott says that if he is found to be the fiend, he expects to be treated as Swift would be.

In the girls’ dormitory, the women are asleep as a man sneaks in, searching their clothes and shelves. The man finds one girl and smothers her with her own pillow. Soon, all the girls awaken, screaming, and confront the mysterious man. The fleeing man is clearly Walter. He tries to escape from the top of the building but ultimately falls to his death, breaking his neck. Director Swift recovers a series of letters from Walter’s person and hides them in his pocket. Olcott leaves to call the police. Olcott runs into Priscilla and tells her about Walter's death. Priscilla assumes Walter was the killer, but Olcott says he can’t be the killer because he owned a dog and dogs can’t stand the smell of wolves.

Privately, Director Swift returns Sir Alfred's letters. Swift calls the entire affair appalling. Sir Alfred agrees, confessing he has a compulsion he cannot control. But he states that he never killed anyone. Sir Alfred wishes Sheena were alive... she followed and saw the fiend. Yet Swift is highly suspicious of any such story.

Walking in the woods together, Priscilla tells Julian she knows that he is a medical doctor. Julian then reveals that she must know he is a failure, and she asks him, is one mistake so bad? Julian confesses one cannot avoid the past when it keeps following you. Priscilla touches him affectionately. The duo soon visits Sir Alfred’s quarters to ask a delicate question. Olcott admits he knows about the letters and his relationship with Mary, but he wants to know what happened that night in the woods. Olcott asks Sir Alfred to come with him to the police. Sir Alfred is quite upset, but Olcott says he doesn’t want a scandal. Walter claims innocence and goes upstairs to fetch the letters. While upstairs, Sir Alfred shoots and kills himself.

One night with a full moon, wolves howl. A dog senses something in the woods and gets caught in a trap, confronting the fiend, whose gloved hands fix a syringe. Soon the unidentified figure operates on the dog. The person operating, wearing a lab coat, is revealed to be a woman, Leonor from the school. On one side of her makeshift operating theater, she has the werewolf chained to a wall. The beast attempts to attack her, but she escapes his clutches. She produces a tiny piece of organic material from the dog and places it in a beaker. She fills her hypo with the fluid produced and injects the werewolf. The werewolf attempts once again to tear off her neck as she falls unconscious to the ground.

As the medicine works on the werewolf, it slowly morphs into Director Swift, who immediately sees the woman, bloody and lying unconscious. She had to murder Sheena, for she observed Swift as Mary’s killer. As Leonor opens the dog’s cage, it leaps and attacks her, Swift still chained and unable to help. Leonor writhes half-conscious on the floor. She slowly rises to give Swift the key to his chains and collapses once again.

Freeing himself from his restraints, he bends down, kissing the supposedly dead Leonor, and then he confronts the dog. In a rage, he beats the dog.

The girls from the dormitory are talking about the murders as a well-dressed Swift enters. He glumly announces to the girls that Miss Leonor had to leave the school for her own reasons. He tells the girls that tomorrow they will attend Walter's funeral. While everyone is very critical of Walter, Director Swift breaks down into deep sobs as Walter’s dog, Wolf, barks viciously at Swift and runs off.

After dark, Priscilla finds Wolf on the outskirts of the woods, and the dog drags her to see something. Wolf leads her outside the institute gates and deeper into the dense woods. The dog starts digging a hole and soon uncovers a body... Walter, covered in dirt. Priscilla runs off screaming. She runs back to the institute and confronts Swift. She tells of the dog digging up Walter’s shallow grave. Swift invites her inside to give her a drink to calm her down. She asks if Walter's body is buried in the woods and who was buried in the cemetery.

Priscilla looks for the missing Director Swift and approaches from behind. Turning around, Swift is partially changed into a werewolf, terrifying Priscilla. The werewolf, now fully transformed, stalks her. The werewolf, wearing a coat and tie, catches up to Priscilla and is about to bite her. Julian Olcott enters the scene, firing a bullet at the raving beast, and charges Olcott. The fiend, having Olcott down, attempts to strangle him as Priscilla gains consciousness and diverts the werewolf’s attention. The beast confronts Priscilla, as the fallen Olcott fires several gunshots into the animal. The werewolf, mortally wounded, staggers, breathing heavily, enters the institute, and falls down. Still gasping for air, the werewolf slowly transforms into the human Swift. He tells Priscilla he doesn’t wish to live. He confesses that Leonor is the one buried in the cemetery. He calls out for God’s forgiveness and finally dies. Olcott and Priscilla walk out together as credits roll.

CRITIQUE

What a long synopsis for an exploitation drive-in feature. Starting in the late 1950s and 1960s, American distributors started buying the rights to what they considered cheap European product to fill half of double features and provide more examples of exploitative horror pictures. These films, seldom respected, were re-edited and quickly dubbed, often making them seem ridiculous and humorous to the non-discriminating buff. Euro meant exploitative, nonsensical, cheap, and inferior to even American grade Z productions. They provided a new, cheaper source of movie product to fill theaters and attract younger viewers.

But although such so-called “Euro-trash” began to replace American productions that were now trying harder to produce superior film fare, the European source material was often not originally produced to be exploitative or cheap; American distributors just made it seem that way. Werewolf in a Girl’s'Dormitory was retitled from the Italian film Lycanthropus to pair with Corridors of Blood on the drive-in circuit. The film was a rather gorgeous-looking production with a serious, complex plot (it took me four regular pages to summarize). The great Italian Ernesto Gastaldi was second unit director and wrote the screenplay. He wrote over 100 motion pictures and earned a strong reputation in genre cinema. To prove my point, he wrote screenplays for The Vampire and the Ballerina, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, Horror Castle, The Whip and the Body, Crypt of the Vampire, The Monster of the Opera, The Long Hair of Death, Torso, etc. He wrote many of his screenplays under Americanized names.

The director, Paolo Heusch, was mainly known as an assistant director, but in films like this, he had the opportunity to direct solo. His handful of directorial projects included The Day the Sky Exploded as his other well-known film.

But what is exploitative about a movie where a new professor comes to an institute for rebellious women who are dying at the claws of a werewolf who is part of the reformed school, remaining unknown? It has all the hallmarks of a good horror mystery, where the gimmick is figuring out who the werewolf is. Yes, the female victims all reside in a girls’ dormitory, but without such an exploitative title, the film might have established better credentials and be taken seriously.

The werewolf make-up is unique, emphasizing the raving wolf aspect while making the creature seem more human than wolf-like. The werewolf's acting always emphasizes its raw, animalistic tendencies. Even though the make-up emphasizes its human aspects. The generous amount of werewolf stalking is handled atmospherically, with dense shadows and overhead shots that only add to the overall dread.

The set pieces are tremendous, featuring a dense woods set with bridges, ponds, gates, and thick shrubbery. The institute building is old-world European, with distinguished features such as the dormitory, the professor’s individual quarters, multiple levels, and stone walls. The actors all seem distinguished, except the inmates, who seem eloquently sleazy. Each actor takes their character relatively seriously. And throw in even more set pieces of eerie funerals, dirt graves in the forest, and tragic death with a victim falling off the atmospheric top of the institute. The film seems anything but exploitative.

Unfortunately, the film sometimes falls victim to sequences that are too talky and to scenes of the girl inmates that aren't quite exploitative or sleazy enough. A few more werewolf sequences could not hurt either. Garnering quite a tacky title, Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory is quite an impressive, moody example of Euro-horror done right. The film might have been sold as a low-budget exploitative production, but it is anything but. It’s a much better film than the titillating one sold to us.

garysvehla509@gmail.com

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