FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF (1964)

FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF (1964)

Tagline: It stalks. Heinous. Chills in The Lab of Death. 

(Horror, Suspense, Werewolves) [PG-13]

Note: This movie was not given an MPA rating, but likely would have gotten a PG-13 rating. On streaming services, it receives a TV-14 rating. Theatrically it was released as a double feature with CURSE OF THE STONE HAND. This film was also called 

This is a little different, he wants you to steal a mummy from the Cowan Research Foundation, and bring it on over to the lab. 

In this one, Dr. Edmund Redding is experimenting with past lives recollection. Ann Taylor keeps having dreams she is going back to ancient Aztec ruins and Dr. Edmond decides to go on an expedition there to see what’s going on. She leads Redding to a hidden chamber in one of the Pyramids in the Yucatan and they end up bringing two specimens back to America (one of which is alive). Once there another scientist hears what happened on the news and promptly decides the best thing to do is steal one of the specimens…which he believes to be a mummy. He does experiments on it only to find out it’s actually a freakin werewolf. Gosh, this dudes an idiot. The werewolf breaks free and starts doing a werewolf's favorite thing…mauling and choking people to death. Meanwhile, the other specimen is alive now as well and the two are just going to terrorize the entire city.  Will anyone survive the FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF and this Aztec mummy-looking thing?

First off, the only cut I could find of this movie was on a streaming service, and it's pretty beat. It’s not the worst copy of a film I have ever seen, but because a lot of this thing is shot in dark settings it’s hard to really pick up on everything that is going on. The Aztec mummy looks like they just got a bunch of paper Mache and threw the design together, but the werewolf makeup on Lon Chaney Jr. (THE WOLFMAN) is actually pretty decent and definitely looks like a purposeful throwback to the original werewolf designs. 

There are huge sections of this movie with no dialog and you just kind of have to try and follow what is going on. This thing is kind of meant to be a continuation of the Aztec Mummy series which included THE AZTEC MUMMY, THE CURSE OF THE AZTEC MUMMY, and THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY? I am not really sure why they decided to bring a werewolf into it this time, but the Aztec Mummy already fought a robot, so what are you going to do? We also get several scenes that are archive footage from other films. So for this review, I am not going to go into the performances unless I review those films at some point. I know I didn’t bother covering the performances in THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY because there was so little to work with. 

This thing is cut really weird where we have the werewolf pushing a guy off a skyscraper. He lands on an awning, and then suddenly we see the werewolf running down the stairs with another dude? Where did this second guy come from? We don’t know, the scene isn’t in the movie. It’s just pretty janky. Because this used so much footage from other films, the listed directors are Jerry Warren, Juan Garcia, and Rafael Portillo. Portillo’s is also a hamburger and hotdog place, so now I am hungry. 

What were we talking about again? Oh yeah, FACE OF THE SCREAMING WEREWOLF. The final sequence is decent action-wise but makes little sense. Sorry ladies and gentlemen, I can’t recommend this thing. Unfortunately, several of Lon Chaney Jr.’s latter films are so bad, that not even he could rescue them. The score is okay I guess, but the pacing is pretty band and there is really no flow to the dialog at all with zero character development. 

This one gets a 2 out of 7, just for the old-school werewolf makeup.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF JERRY WARREN PRODUCTIONS INC. AND MEDIA ARTS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.