She-Wolf of London (1946)

I have a soft spot for Universal Monster flicks, werewolf films, and gender-bending established tropes, so I was excited to see the title She-Wolf of London (1946) as I was diving deeper into lesser known films in the Universal Monster catalog. However, my expectations for an early feminist take on the werewolf were dashed by this real estate drama that somehow felt long despite its 61 minute run-time. The movie features Phyllis Allenby, who is about to be married, her guardian, Aunt Martha, who has raised Phyllis since her parents died, and Martha’s daughter Carol. They live together in Phyllis’ estate, and Aunt Martha worries about what will happen to her and Carol once Phyllis is married. Instead of asking Phyllis (why then there’d be no movie), Martha encourages Phyllis’s belief in the Allenby curse, which says there are werewolves in the family. When a series of murders happen in a nearby park, Phyllis begins to think she is responsible, especially because she has no recollection of what has happened at night and she finds her robe and shoes covered in mud. This is all part of Martha’s grand plan: If she convinces Phyllis she is crazy and gets her institutionalized, then the house would fall into Martha’s hands. 

Before Martha’s plan is revealed, the movie operates as a whodunnit, with a woman in disguise sneaking out from the Allenby estate and lurking through the bushes in the park. By the movie’s end, order is restored: Martha’s plan is revealed, she dies (landing on a knife after taking a tumble down a flight of stairs), and Phyllis is reunited with her fiance. Instead of a feminist take on the werewolf, we get a status-obsessed auntie who believes her daughter should marry for money, a weak lead character who lacks agency, and a lot of hemming and hawing about these women living together without any men there to protect them. And Phyllis is not the only person who is tricked—the viewer is too. The title promises a she-wolf but never delivers; the transformation scene never arrives despite how many scenes there are of Phyllis staring expectedly at her hands—an already well-established trope of the werewolf movie.

tl; dr: The title promised a she-wolf, but all I got was a Scooby-Doo ruse. And the villain would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for that meddling housekeeper. 2.5 out of 5 sacs of blood.

—Gina Myers