A woman has dreams that she is a werewolf, so she goes out and finds men. She proceeds to have sex with them and then rip their throats out with her teeth. She eventually falls in love but then she is raped and her lover is murdered so she goes out for revenge.It should come as no surprise that Quentin Tarantino was a champion of this film, allegedly even screening it at a film festival before he had even watched it. That is pretty bizarre. But it has all the marks of the Italian exploitation film he seems to appreciate.Raro Video picked this one out and made it look pretty darn good for a movie few had probably heard of. They seem to focus more on Italian realism ("Adua and Her Friends") than Italian horror, but anyone who is willing to put out a special edition of such a strange film is cool by me.

"La Lupa Mannara" aka. "Werewolf Woman" of 1976 is a film with a highly promising title, but, sadly, the film itself is pretty far away from being a must-see for my fellow Italian Horror buffs. 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. However, the film, which has no real plot (at least no linear one) often makes no sense at all, and it drags incredibly throughout the mostly superfluous second half.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. The 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, a typical werewolf, who cannot help but follow the urges of her curse, this suddenly changes when she meets a guy (Howard Ross, who was in Fernando Di Leo's "Il Boss" of 1973). 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. It gets pretty damn boring after a while; all things considered, it probably would have been better for this 99 minute film to be only 70 minutes long. 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" has some redeeming qualities; my fellow Italo-Horror fans can give it a try. However, if you wanna watch Italian Horror/Exploitation cinema from the 70s, there are hundreds of films that you should see before seeing this one.

I have seen, and sometimes liked, a fair number of bad movies. "Blood Freak," for instance, is a bad movie and not worth seeing. I say that so the reader will know I am capable of some discernment.Having said that, this movie impressed me. The English dubbing was not nearly as bad as some Japanese movies my smart geek friends have tried to make me watch. Also, it seriously has an intriguing premise, with a feminist twist on the werewolf myth. The heroine fantasizes she is a werewolf as a coping mechanism, to compensate after having been raped. This suggests a sociological theory that any woman feels she must be a monster to protect herself from men. There is an implication that men are inherently violent, and that a safe or non-violent sex act/relationship may be possible. So, there are feminist implications even though the movie seems exploitative in many ways.The nudity is indeed profuse, and there is also a stereotyped nymphomaniac character, among other clichés. Overall, I thought everything was in the right spirit (i.e. funny/campy rather than offensive/awkward.) I was disturbed, though, at an on-screen gang rape that almost seemed intended to be erotic. Whatever the intent, it certainly was an upsetting scene, more so than the cheesy killing parts. What I like most about this movie is that the supernatural aspects of the myth are not emphasized. It's more about the psychology of a woman with issues involving her sexuality...which she needs to work out by prowling around naked and tearing peoples' throats out! Yeah! It's only too bad the werewolf woman's behavior involves so much neck-biting; this hints at vampire-confusion.I thought the action moved along OK, considering the number of developments. And there were many plot developments, however thin. The ending seemed abrupt and was certainly corny, but I wasn't watching it for the moral!Definitely recommended if camp is up your alley.

I don't know how I could explain that I like Werewolf Woman. It doesn't work logically as a movie, but does one go into a movie that's about a schizo who craves the company of men and then kills them at the instant they try and have their way with her expecting great art? It's a little like a rougher, more sexed-up cut of David Cronenberg's Rabid, only here the dead or injured don't come back to life. This time it's Annik Borel, instead of Marilyn Chambers, as the perplexed anti-heroine of the story. The catch with her is that she has werewolf ancestry in her blood, and after a cruel rape (which we may or may not see on screen, I can't remember) she goes on a killing spree. The dubbing is bad, but maybe deliberately so; Leone didn't have dialog so bad that it made the voice-over actors cringe as they said some of their lines. And sometimes the director and crew get creative with blood and various colors: there's a shot when Daniella, after attacking a nurse whom she's snuck into the car with, gets out of the now crashed vehicle, and the first shot seen looks as though there's blood everywhere, though it's mostly just the seats and a jacket. For a moment or two, Werewolf Woman carries artistry (not to mention during a particularly steamy sex scene as Daniella watches with hungry, jealous eyes of a friend getting it on with a friend).When all is said and done, Werewolf Woman does teeter between a hot and exciting half-farce half-serious/pretentious drama on a woman's descent into madness and murder, and it doesn't amount to any kind of 'statement' except that, um, crazy women with a disease passed down through the generations can't be stomped out so all men with penises have to pay. Yeah, that's it. But even with the laughs that are had- including a bit when Daniella is in the hospital bed and an over-affectionate nymph comes in trying to have her way with the taut were-woman that probably inspired the P**** Wagon scene in Kill Bill 1- it's not a badly made film at all, which adds to the appeal. It's not some stupid movie put together in very cheap soft-core ways. If there is any strength to the best sex scenes it's that they seem actually erotic and not as some tedious pornographic exercise ala Porno Holocaust. And, relative to other cheesy horror flicks of the 70s (the *Italian* horror 70s), Annik Borel isn't too shabby an actress, with a quality reminiscent of Sondra Locke from Clint Eastwood's films (only, perhaps, a better actress!) She adds just that little bit of fun and danger to a part that needs it to sustain its tone wavering between exploitation and sincere horror.So watch it under a full-moon, make sure you're tied to the bed (without any crazies around to untie the knots), and keep all sexual organs on stand-by- Werewolf Woman is a bite!