CRY OF THE WEREWOLF (1944)

In New Orleans, the former home of gypsy princess Marie Latour is now run as a museum of the occult. Marie was supposedly a werewolf; in that form, she killed her husband, escaped through a window, and was never seen again. Dr. Morris, curator of the museum, is about to publish a book revealing many of her secrets, but Marie's granddaughter Celeste (Nina Foch). who lives in a gypsy camp outside of town, has gotten wind of this plan. When Morris' assistant Elsa (Osa Massen) runs to the airport to pick up his visiting son Bob (Stephen Crane) who will be helping Dr. Morris finalize his work, Celeste enters the museum and sneaks off to a secret passage. When the house empties out, she (a werewolf like her grandmother) kills Morris and throws his manuscript into a fireplace. At first the police suspect Elsa, but her fingerprints don't match those left in the room--not to mention that some animal fur is found near the crime scene. A museum handyman, also a possible suspect, is later found dead, torn apart by a wolf. Celeste's gypsy family falls under suspicion, but when Bob meets Celeste, she gets a bit flirty with Bob, and sends him home with a voodoo love doll, and sure enough Bob decides that the gypsies had nothing to do with his dad's death. The clear-minded Elsa, however, isn't so sure, and soon Celeste is determined, through hypnosis or spells or some other supernatural power, to turn Elsa into a "sister" werewolf.

This B-horror film was an early lead role for Nina Foch, best known as Gene Kelly's patroness in An American in Paris and the foster-mother of Moses in The Ten Commandments. She's appropriately mysterious as Celeste, and pretty much single-handedly sustains any spooky atmosphere the film manages to work up, along with John Abbott as an ill-fated tour guide at the museum. Fritz Leiber, father of the famous fantasy writer of the same name, is OK as Morris, as is Blanche Yurka as a Celeste's gypsy protector. As for the rest of the cast, bland leading man Crane only made three movies (enough said), and old pro Barton MacLane is wasted as a somewhat bumbling cop. The mostly serious tone of the movie reminded me of the 1936 Dracula's Daughter, but this lacks that movie's poetic style. The most interesting plot point involves an unusual tradition of Celeste's people: as they travel through the year, they send the bodies of the dead to a New Orleans mausoleum where they are kept until the group returns home and holds a mass burial. Unfortunately, nothing much is made of this. The film's biggest flaw, however, is the disappointing presentation of the werewolf. We never see Celeste transform, and the creature itself is just a big, almost cuddly wolf who never seems very threatening. Though no classic, this could be satisfying viewing for an October evening as long as your expectations aren't too high. Picture above is a publicity shot of Crane, Massen and Foch. [TCM]