The Legend of the Wolf Woman

My friend and I have always wanted to make b-movies that hop from one subgenre to another with little to no warning.  I'll give you an example; how about a werewolf rape/revenge flick?  How fucking sweet would that be?  We've resigned ourselves to the fact that we probably won't see such a cultivated masterstroke of perspicuity unless we write the unhallowed thing.  That was before I caught wind of 1976's The Legend of the Wolf Woman (a.k.a. Werewolf Woman).  As most of you know,  I've been out of town for a couple of weeks tending to a family emergency.  Naturally, I didn't think to bring entertainment along for the ride, so a fellow cheese gourmand let me borrow a couple of videos.

Wolf Woman happened to be the first title that hypostatized in conversation.  "Brilliant," I murmured to myself.  "This will be a wonderful way to kick off my lycanthropic clambake!"  I removed the gun from my mouth and apple-polished the nearest VCR.  Gentlemen (and ladies), what we have here is a werewolf rape/revenge flick.  I could split hairs and point out that we only get a glimpse of an honest-to-Satan werewolf in the baroque prologue, but I refuse...I refuse to play the asshole.  If you want to be a pedantic bluestocking doctrinaire, that's your business.  Stay the fuck out of my sandbox.  In any event, Daniela is a shapely blonde obsessed with a certain ancestor, a proverbial doppelganger who was burned at the stake for howling at moons and ripping out throats.  Are they kindred spirits?

I know what you're thinking.  You've heard this story before, right?  I know I figured that Wolf Woman would reveal itself to be a homogenized tale of reincarnation not unlike Black Sabbath or its countless derivatives.  Well, I figured wrong.  Daniela never transforms into a snarling beast.  She simply goes insane and models herself after snarling beasts.  It's a novel concept, and quite frankly, the foundation of the exposition is firm.  I was actually into the plot.  But don't confuse this for a lucid, spruce motion picture.  No, no, no...Wolf Woman is trash.  It's Eurotrash, to be exact.  There are copious drams of full-frontal nudity, splashes of blood (the more violent kills are implied, unfortunately) and a terse rape sequence.

Yep, rape.  Daniela settles down with a stuntman in the third act and leaves her life of...er, werewolf pantomime (?) behind.  Hold the phone!  It isn't long before her boyfriend is murdered by the same dudes who violated her personal bubble, so to speak.  Needless to say, she relapses and steals a page from Camille Keaton.  Her revenge is quite nasty, but again, the gore is kept in check.  Bummer.  I have to hand it to Annik Borel, our able-bodied leading lady.  She fucking commits herself to the role.  I was convinced that she had succumbed to raging lunacy, and was only allowed on set because of her astonishing cans.  Jeepers, she looks good naked.  Rusty English be damned, she should have been a Bond girl.

The Legend of the Wolf Woman is a fun watch.  It's nowhere near perfect, and it does need a stronger dose of graphic horror, but it made my weekend a tad easier to digest.  Hit it up!