50 Movie Pack: SciFi Classics: Part 3 - Moon of the Wolf

This weekend has already been one full of science fiction classics. So when I popped this week’s selection into the xbox, I wasn’t expecting a classic werewolf movie like my favorite childhood film, Teen Wolf, but something far worse. I was surprised to find that I thoroughly enjoyed the tv movie of the week that was Moon of the Wolf from 1972.

In 1972, another film featuring a similar southern backdrop has become an American film classic. And truly, within the first few minutes of Moon of the Wolf, it seemed like it would leap off the screen like a werewolf version of Deliverance. I wasn’t necessarily excited for werewolf rape scenes, but at least I hoped that I would get a mustache-and-leather combo that could rival Burt Reynolds. The film begins as an old shotgun-wielding, rocking chair aficionado and his son discover a woman dead in the underbrush. “Once these dogs get the taste of human blood, ain’t nobody gonna be safe in their houses,” intones the old man, and instantly the film sweeps into its slow-going, and deliberate Louisiana werewolf struggle.

The sheriff is called in and a doctor, whose performance immediately reminds me of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, but with about zero humanity, demands that the body be moved to a place that isn’t a swamp for the autopsy. The men who found the body, the Gurmandy family, are on the lowest rung of this small town’s pecking order, and some quick jabs are made at their apparent lack of wealth. The doctor then prepares the body to be moved to his office.

The autopsy confirms that although it appears a feral creature killed the poor woman, it must have had the sense and strength to knock her out before mauling her. The doctor reasons that no dog could have done this, and also confirms to the sheriff that the perpetrator must have been left-handed for the strike is visible along the right side of the woman’s face. This just so happens to have been the same defense Atticus Finch used to confirm that Tom Robinson could not have raped Mayella Ewell. Will this movie finally be the werewolf retelling of To Kill A Mockingbird for which I always hoped??

The sheriff talks to Lawrence Burrifors, brother to the dead woman, Ellie. Apparently, her association with some snobby upper hills locals makes this bayou-bred man suspicious of her death. When the sheriff asks the young man to show him how he would throw a punch, he discovers that Lawrence is left-handed.
Andrew Rodanthe, a classy horse-riding gentleman from Pecan Hill, is found to be a member of the wealthiest family in town, and the sheriff asks him and an old flame, Louise – Andrew’s sister – about the body. Louise asks the sheriff to call upon her sometime, and Andrew seems nervous to let her continue taking up the sheriff’s time. Although Lawrence, the bayou bum, seems to be the sheriff’s first suspect, I am beginning to believe that Andrew Rodanthe has something to hide (other than his sister’s overt sexuality).

The sheriff meets up with the sassy black maid to Lawrence’s family, the Burrifors, and she informs him that she’s buying some materials to keep the “Lucarook” away, a creature which Hugh, the patriarch of the Burrifors family, is concerned about. I’m assuming this is some bayou word associated with werewolves or voodoo or some kind of hybrid voodoo/werewolf/witch doctor amalgam, but she seems to have doubts about the presence of this supernatural creature. She tells the sheriff that when he finds out who got Ellie pregnant, then he will be on the right track for finding her killer. I’m actually somewhat impressed with the kind of class/racial balance being played out in this small-town Louisiana story, and I’m also impressed that so far this made-for-tv movie is better than the last two entries.

It turns out the old doctor was the man who Ellie was supposed to meet the night she died. Apparently Ellie’s pregnancy was his doing - he wanted an abortion, she wanted marriage - and they were meeting to discuss the sad details of their mess, but she never showed. He left for home after waiting a short while, and never saw her again. The doctor asks him about the chemicals he saw Sara buying, and Dr. Druten told him that they were once used by his grandmother to keep wolves away. The doctor once again tells the sheriff that he didn’t kill Ellie. The sheriff knows the doctor is no southpaw, and he leaves the room. Before leaving, he also puts out the one thing nobody ever mentions in To Kill a Mockingbird. If the assailant came up from behind Ellie, then the man could have been right-handed, pretty much destroying my trust and idolization of Atticus Finch. The sheriff leaves the doctor’s office to find Louise on the town mall. They go grab a cup of coffee.

Over coffee, Louise confides in the doctor that she returned to her old hometown and ancestral manor from New York because the man she was living with walked out on her. Andrew, ever the protective brother, cut off his own sister financially and sent detectives to the city to return her to Louisiana, while telling the townsfolk that she was sick. Andrew then arrives in the bar/coffee shop and tells Louise that she should return to the manor to get some rest, and invites the sheriff to the wild dog hunt that Lawrence and his father are planning for the next day.

Sara, while waiting on Hugh Burrifors, informs Lawrence about the baby that Dr. Druten was going to have with his sister, Ellie. The men are meeting in town to prepare for their wild dog hunt when Lawrence, angered by this news, runs towards the doctor and lays him down with a sucker punch. The sheriff puts Lawrence into the county lock-up and lets him sleep it off. They say that while the cat’s away the mice will play, so it’s fitting that when the townsfolk go hunting for wild dogs, the sheriff goes to play grab-ass with Louise up at the Rodanthe mansion. There he lays down the entire trinity of suspects – Dr. Druten, who is too good of a friend to the sheriff for him to believe that he could have committed murder; Lawrence, who seems like too much of a doting brother to really murder his sister; and the Gurmandys, who the sheriff believes Ellie would spend no time with, accounting on their low social status. After the sheriff explains the entire game to Louise, night falls, and the dog hunt continues as the moon glows bright. Lawrence, alone in his cell, hears the howling of a wolf, and the screams of a deputy being mauled. A terribly close cut shot of Lawrence is the last we see of him before he falls down bloody in his cell, the third apparent victim to whatever beast is causing raucous around town.

When Andrew appears to ask the sheriff to deputize him, I’ve already marked him down as the prime candidate for werewolfery. When the sheriff takes Andrew over to the Burrifors house to check in on old Hugh, Sara invites both men inside, and just as Andrew is approaching the porch, he smells something that makes him convulse and seize on the ground. Perhaps the sulfur and other chemicals that Sara procured from the general store work on him just like wolves as Dr. Druten suggests.

When Louise goes to interpret the incoherent French ramblings of Hugh Burrifors, she discovers that the man is not saying Lucarook, but loup garou or lycanthrope – a werewolf! He tells Louise that she will be the next victim, and the next scene shows our favorite wealthy weirdo, Andrew Rodanthe, slowly transforming into the loup garou. The town goes into lockdown as the mayor calls out an all-out war on the Rodanthe werewolf. Louise tries to stop the mob, but only diverts their anger towards her, and the sheriff has to return her to her home. The sheriff and she discover a book on lycanthropy, and a possible solution to Andrew’s problem – some superstitious mumbo jumbo according to the sheriff, but according to Louise, a real and possible solution to Andrew’s disease.

The sheriff tells Louise to lock herself inside the house and she does just that, but unfortunately the werewolf returns quickly and breaks into the house. Louise escapes through a window and heads off to the stables. She had just read in her Wolf Bible before being accosted by her own brother, that the lycanthrope can only be killed by a blessed bullet, or immolation and she uses an old kerosene lamp to burn her own brother to death in the stables on the Rodanthe estate. As she cries over her brother’s photograph inside the manor, she soon hears the howling of yet another wolf, and with gun wielded, prepares for the appearance of her not-so-dead brother. After firing three bullets upon Andrew, she falls to the ground, just as the sheriff runs up to attempt a rescue. She realizes that Andrew had realized what kind of monster he was, and had the bullets in his own gun blessed in case he ever came to harm his own family.

In the end, my confidence in former hero Atticus Finch has been completely shaken; a class system in a small town in Louisiana has been destroyed by the discovery of lycanthropy in the wealthiest family in town; and not one person portrayed a more mustached or leathery appearance than Deliverance era Burt Reynolds. However, the film was pretty good, and the best one I’ve seen so far in this movie pack, but do not fret. The first five minutes of the next film were nigh unwatchable, and my anger and venom will be back in full force for She Gods of Shark Reef.

Rating: 3 Werewolf Bibles out of 5.