La Loba (She-Wolf) review & tribute

La Loba (1965) Browsing on youtube yesterday I found a little gem from my childhood: the Mexican horror film 'La Loba'. This film scared the living daylights out of me when I was a little kid. Not so much the stupid looking cheap make-up, but how the film builds up to its extremely brutal bloody climax where about 80% of the characters end up being shredded to pieces and their hearts ripped out of their chests. Watching it again it is obvious that this was one of those almost zero budget horror films, but a labor of love nonetheless. Yes, it is so cheap it has many laughable scenes (all the 'night scenes' where filmed during the day and they used filters to make it look dark; it has some of the worst 'werewolf' make-up ever put on film as the monsters look closer to cavemen than lycans). However it has an original plot, it is well directed (under the circumstances) and its actors were top notch from the Mexican cinema delivering good performances.

The plot revolves around this professor who lives with his family in a Mexican hacienda-like fortress in the countryside looking for a cure for lycantropy. On every full moon his silent henchman/servant/bodyguard, who looks like a hulking gypsy wrestler, locks all the doors of the house while its inhabitants remain in their rooms. Then one of the professor's two daughters turns into a werewolf and the gypsy lifts a secret door in her bedroom chimney so the Loba can leave the house and roam in the nearby forest (this is plain cruel for the poor people who live there or travelers crossing the forest, but hey, the film needs victims!). While local authorities don't have a clue about the murders, the professor gets the unexpected visit of one his students who turns out to be also a mad scientist who used himself for the experiments and is also a wolfman...and he is also his daughter's boyfriend. Long story short: the wolfman ends up killing practically all the family (there is a great hand-to-teeth combat with the gypsy bodyguard) and la Loba goes after a mute little girl by a cemetery and is confronted by a werewolf slayer and his trained white dog. Good mayhem at the end. No happy ending which was great for a 1965 film.

Sexy Kitty De Hoyos played the She-wolf, Joaquin Cordero was her boyfriend/Wolfman, Jose Elias oreno was the professor, Roberto Canedo played one of the detectives, Noe Murayama played the werewolves slayer.
Directed by Rafael Baledon.
6.5/10

 

The mute little girl hiding under the bed watches in horror the transformation of La Loba






The wolfman about to bring mayhem on the whole family

but is confronted by the gypsy


Kitty De Hoyos

 

Instead of posting a thread about one movie, why not a General thread about these types of (foreign) movies that not many others have seen?

 

I think I did that many years ago in the old movie thread titled 'Mexican horror films' if my memory serves me right.

 

Good review Panchy. Nice interesting read.

 

Thanks pal!