At a horror museum, while the tour guide (John Abbott) gives speeches on werewolves, Doctor Charles Morris (Fritz Leiber)—doctor of…history maybe, or voodoo—researches a werewolf woman. He’s murdered, seemingly by a wolf, and his scientist son (Stephen Crane) and the son’s semi-sister/girlfriend (Osa Massen) play detective to find the murderer. Police detective (Barton MacLane) also plays detective. Is the murderer human or werewolf, and is it the gypsy queen (Nina Foch), the janitor (Ivan Triesault), or the guide?
In the ‘30s and ‘40s, Universal was the king of monster movies. There was a reason for that. Studios that dabbled just couldn’t figure out what to do. They didn’t know who their audience was, so aimed at young teen boys. Their low budgets looked as cheap as they were and they often pulled in actors who had no interest in the parts, or no talent. The Cry of the Werewolf, along with The Return of the Vampire, was Colombia’s attempt to cash in on Universal’s and, to a lesser extent, RKO’s recent successes, and Colombia made all the mistakes expected. The weak world building—a gypsy tribe hangs around New Orleans like it is 17th century Romania and there is almost no lore or rules for werewolves—isn’t a big negative but simply a failure of imagination. The confused tone, on the other hand, is enough to sink the film on its own. The gypsies seem to be in a much better, and serious horror film while the main cast is in a mystery serial, and the police are in a slapstick comedy. Others have compared the police antics to the Three Stooges and it is a connection easy to make. The film thinks it is a mystery, but we know who the killer is and why from the beginning.
Nina Foch wasn’t going to win an Academy Award but she’s easily the best actor in the film. MacLane is only here for the paycheck, but that puts him above Massen, who is a master next to Crane. Too bad Crane’s the star. This was his first film and he cleverly quit the business a year later. The script gives him nothing to work with, but he had nothing to give. If everything else had been fantastic, the film would still have failed due to Crane’s high school theater gangster version of a scientist.
The werewolf genre could have used another good entry. This isn’t it.