Werewolf in mid-transformation.
The grotty, post-dubbed, low-res seediness of WEREWOLF IN A GIRL’S DORMITORY and ATOM AGE VAMPIRE kind of wear on you. Both films started out continental (German and Italian) and with classier titles: LYCANTHROPUS and SEDDOK. I like SEDDOK enormously as a title, for the same inexplicable reason I like Michael Powell’s quota quickie RYNOX — nonsense words with a manly sound to them!
In fact, according to the IMDb, what Denis Gifford calls SEDDOK was released as SEDDOK, L’EREDE DI SATANA. It’s a knock-off of Franju’s rather more poetic EYES WITHOUT A FACE, which was revamped in Spain by Jesus Franco as THE AWFUL DR ORLOFF. In the low rent Italian version, a go-go dancer suffers facial mutilation in an unconvincing car accident and agrees to experimental treatment by a couple of obviously dodgy medicos. Soon, everyone is lap-dissolving into scabby, unkempt “vampires.”
(If Freda could make THE HORRIBLE DR HITCHCOCK and Franco coughed out THE AWFUL DR ORLOFF, what other titles remain unused? THE FRANGIBLE DR FRANKENSTEIN? THE TERRIBLE DR TERWILLIKER?)
This is a product of the post-war years when Italian horror was briefly science-fictional, following the atomic and space-age concerns of American movies. Soon, the Gothic would assert itself, a surprising development for that place and era, only to be largely superseded by the cod-psychological mayhem of the giallo.
Poor Sergio Fantoni! From Visconti’s SENSO to SEDDOK.
Both these films look like they might have modest virtues (even if LYCANTHROPUS deploys an unpromising whodunnit approach to werewolfery) — SEDDOK in particular has plenty of interesting, expressive camera angles — shots which really tell the story, and shots which are just decoratively beautiful or atmospheric. And the killer’s raincoat made me think of DON’T LOOK NOW. But the poor quality public domain copies, dubbed and probably rescored, do the films no favours. Maybe I’d revisit them if better editions appeared.
Chalk off another two titles in my quest to See Reptilicus and Die!