In Mountaincrest, a stranger without memory arrives in a bar to have a drink. When he leaves the bar, a local tries to robber him but he turns into an animal and kills the attacker. Deputy Ben Clovey (Harry Lauter) hunts down the animal but is wounded by it. Sheriff Jack Haines (Don Megowan) organizes a party to find the beast. Meanwhile the nurse Amy Standish (Joyce Holden) and her father, the local doctor, receive a man called Duncan Marsh (Steven Ritch) that recalls that he had a car accident and two doctors have treated him. But he flees and Haines wants to hunt him down but Amy and her father wants to convince him to capture Duncan to see how they could treat him. When is wife Mrs. Helen Marsh (Eleanore Tanin) and her son Chris arrive in Mountaincrest, Sheriff Haines is convinced that shall capture the werewolf alive. But the doctors that conducted the experiment arrive in the town expecting to kill him.

"The Werewolf (1956)" is a film with the genre more drama than horror. The sad saga of the family man Duncan Marsh is heart breaking. The plot is interesting and the transformation is excellent for a 1956 movie. The performance of Steven Ritch is also great. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "O Lobisomem" ("The Werewolf")

Interesting horror film about a man who becomes a werewolf because of science. A man is recovered from a car crash. A scientist injects him with a serum to fight radiation poison. A side effect causes him to (occasioanlly) turn into a werewolf. No full moon or silver bullets are involved here.

This might be the first horror film to have a person becoming a werewolf through scientific means! The performances are good (especially Steven Ritch as the werewolf),the scenery is beautiful, there are some nice directorial touches and the people talk and act like real people. The makeup is awful and I wasn't really scared, but I was never bored. Sadly, this isn't available on video. Well worth catching on TV.

In the mid to late 1950s, Hollywood tried (unsuccessfully) to revive the 1930s and 40s horror film with mostly poor results. The biggest problem with most of these later movies is that they were obviously given much lower budgets and no-name actors that didn't do the material justice. Such films as I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and THE VAMPIRE were very dull and sad imitations of the earlier Universal horror films.

In light of this, I was expecting THE WEREWOLF to be yet another dull low-budget monster film. In some ways, I was right--the budget was super-low and the actors were all complete unknowns. However, despite this poor pedigree, the overall effort was far better than I ever would have expected. Not only was the acting pretty good, but the plot was excellent despite somehow combining the werewolf and atomic menace genres! It seems that two evil and annoying doctors have decided to do some less than ethical research on some poor shmoe. When a guy is brought to them after a minor traffic accident, they inject him with some radioactive serum that makes him become a werewolf-like creature. But, since he isn't really a werewolf, it's okay that the plot doesn't follow the old Lon Chaney, Jr. mold. In the process, the film is quite entertaining and did a great job of making you care about this poor unfortunate soul. Far better than you'd expect--this one is a keeper.

By the way, while I felt very positively towards this film, I must still point out that there is a PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE-like moment late in the film where it goes from pitch black outside to daytime and back again due to lousy editing. It's pretty silly and very noticeable.