Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory (1961) Review

Tagline: “Beauties! The prey of a monster's desires!”

Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory (1961) Review

 

The title of this movie is perhaps questionable, but certainly not generic. You might expect Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory to be a schlocky, non-serious horror romp of a wolfman preying on hysterical, screaming young women, but it’s actually a surprisingly serious murder mystery, and a clear marker for the slowly evolving lycanthropy subgenre in that era. Unfortunately, the peak of its greatness begins and ends with that title.

The film began as Lycanthropus, and was produced in Italy, with other alternate titles including I Married a Werewolf, Monster Among the Girls, and The Ghoul in School. Speaking of that last title, the American version starts with an abrupt title card accompanied by a song called “The Ghoul in School” which is also included in brackets under the Dormitory title with an exclamation mark. It’s an upbeat song that doesn’t fit the tone of the film at all. A new teacher shows up to a girls’ reformatory just as mysterious murders begin to take place. Women are lured out into the woods and killed, so a more accurate title would have actually been Werewolf in the Woods Outside a Girls’ Reformatory, but I guess that just didn’t have the same ring to it. The reveal of the werewolf’s identity isn’t too shocking, but the mystery is sustained for most of the runtime. 

Apparently, there were actors and crewmembers speaking French, English, Italian, and German on set, which made the production very chaotic, but I’m actually surprised the movie didn’t turn out to be a complete mess. It’s mainly just a dull affair. The whole thing was dubbed into English, and the dubbing is horrendous. The line delivery sounds flat, and unfortunately, the majority of scenes are full of dialogue. The female cast members are attractive (they don’t exactly look like they need “reforming” though), but the characters are not noteworthy, so there’s little impact when any of them are murdered. The only kill that’s really upsetting is when the werewolf, in human form, beats a German shepherd to death off camera.

Most of the horror doesn’t extend beyond a lot of wolf howls and murky cinematography. The dramatic piano and strings on the soundtrack do a lot of the heavy lifting to make the horror scenes scarier, but it becomes a fruitless effort before long. The werewolf looks about right for the era—not the worst, but not the best, though lacks much hair and is shown very little in the first hour. I suppose he could’ve been passed off as simply a “ghoul” were it not for cutting several times to the full moon. This was still in an era when horror films were heavily censored, so we don’t see a lot of the kills, though we do see one girl early on with bloody slashes on her face and neck. It’s an interesting crossroads between gothic horror and the Italian giallo films to come, with the setting and suspicious teachers reminding me of something like Suspiria.

Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory is pretty dated and now more of a curiosity in the history of werewolf films, reserved for only the biggest lycanthrope fans to check out. Compared to the earlier 1956 film The Werewolf (which this movie outclasses solely on the grounds of its superior title), it’s even slower, and compared to Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf released only one year earlier, it feels antiquated and tame, because Hammer's film was in colour with a period setting, though neither are as mystery-driven as Dormitory in their plots. Perhaps a remaster of the uncut Italian version would warrant a second viewing, but for me, the American version is only worth putting on in the background of a Halloween party.