LA LUPA MANNARA aka. WEREWOLF WOMAN of 1976 is a film with a highly promising title, and while pretty far away from being a must-see for my fellow Italian Horror buffs, it is a pretty entertaining silce of sleaze. You won't hear me say that Rino Di Silvestri's film is entirely bad - it has its stylish moments, and the first half is actually great fun to watch (though the fun is unintentional). The film also profits from an exceptionally exhibitionist leading actress, Annik Borel. There plot is a complete mess and the film often makes no sense at all. Starting out as a supernatural Horror film, WEREWOLF WOMAN later turns does a 180 to become a sort of weird rape-and-revenge flick.
Daniella (Annik Borel) has strange dreams about a dancing around naked in the night before turning into a Werewolf Woman. Since she was a raped as a girl, Daniella is afraid of men. Then, when her sister (cult siren Dagmar Lassander) comes to visit with her husband, Daniella suddenly feels attracted to the husband and subsequently turns into a Werewolf Woman herself... or something. The storyline really doesn't make the slightest sense, which makes the film a lot of fun to watch throughout the first half. The leading character Daniella is some schizophrenic mixture of frigid hysteric and lusty nymphomaniac, who occasionally turns into a werewolf woman. Director Di Silvestri chose to make up for the plot-holes with a lot of of female nudity, which works fine for me. There are also some pretty well-done gore moments.
While he film is never even slightly suspenseful or creepy, but it is very entertaining in the beginning. Also, there are no attempts to hide that this is a slice of sleaze, the camera often does close-ups on the Miss Borel's private parts for the simple heck of it. I'm not complaining. Then, for some reason, Di Silvestri chose to make the film longer by completely changing the direction in which it was going. While Daniella is, at first, suffering from muderous lycantrophy as well as rape trauma and cannot help but follow the urges of her curse, this suddenly changes when she meets a muscular stuntman (Italian 70s cult regular Howard Ross). Suddenly, she goes back to normal again, and the subsequent part of the film does not at all go in hand with the first half. At the end, they even want to make us believe that the absurd story (if one can call it that) is based on true events. WEREWOLF WOMAN is, i.m.o., a bit too long for its own good and if you wanna watch Italian Horror/Exploitation cinema from the 70s, there are hundreds of films that you should see before seeing this one. However, it is an entertaining slice of sleaze that European Exploitation fans should enjoy.
Daniella (Annik Borel) has strange dreams about a dancing around naked in the night before turning into a Werewolf Woman. Since she was a raped as a girl, Daniella is afraid of men. Then, when her sister (cult siren Dagmar Lassander) comes to visit with her husband, Daniella suddenly feels attracted to the husband and subsequently turns into a Werewolf Woman herself... or something. The storyline really doesn't make the slightest sense, which makes the film a lot of fun to watch throughout the first half. The leading character Daniella is some schizophrenic mixture of frigid hysteric and lusty nymphomaniac, who occasionally turns into a werewolf woman. Director Di Silvestri chose to make up for the plot-holes with a lot of of female nudity, which works fine for me. There are also some pretty well-done gore moments.
While he film is never even slightly suspenseful or creepy, but it is very entertaining in the beginning. Also, there are no attempts to hide that this is a slice of sleaze, the camera often does close-ups on the Miss Borel's private parts for the simple heck of it. I'm not complaining. Then, for some reason, Di Silvestri chose to make the film longer by completely changing the direction in which it was going. While Daniella is, at first, suffering from muderous lycantrophy as well as rape trauma and cannot help but follow the urges of her curse, this suddenly changes when she meets a muscular stuntman (Italian 70s cult regular Howard Ross). Suddenly, she goes back to normal again, and the subsequent part of the film does not at all go in hand with the first half. At the end, they even want to make us believe that the absurd story (if one can call it that) is based on true events. WEREWOLF WOMAN is, i.m.o., a bit too long for its own good and if you wanna watch Italian Horror/Exploitation cinema from the 70s, there are hundreds of films that you should see before seeing this one. However, it is an entertaining slice of sleaze that European Exploitation fans should enjoy.