{"id":3182,"date":"2016-02-21T18:29:11","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T00:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=3182"},"modified":"2016-02-21T18:29:11","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T00:29:11","slug":"belated-movie-reviews-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/02\/21\/belated-movie-reviews-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Belated Movie Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

As darn near the only thing I can do today, we saw\u00a0Cry of the Werewolf<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (1944), a Nina Foch<\/a> vehicle in which an aged researcher working on werewolves amongst the Romany stumbles across important information concerning the Princess of werewolves, and is murdered for his troubles in New Orleans. \u00a0He is found hours after his son returns from research as a chemist in DC, and helps his father’s research assistant begin examining his\u00a0partially destroyed notes.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the police get involved, and this is the point where the movie departs the sidewalk for more elevated thoroughfares: as the detective talks on the phone, the door behind him slowly opens. \u00a0Oh, is the monster going to get him? \u00a0Is a henchcreature going to leap on him all unawares?<\/p>\n

No, he’s ready with a gun – “Come out of there!” he shouts, and we’re genuinely surprised as a trope is overturned. \u00a0How nice! \u00a0Even better, the surprises continue; a gun, casually shown in a drawer, is suddenly useful when a werewolf is ready to attack – wait, where did it go? \u00a0The Princess werewolf is … sad<\/em> that she must kill the blundering janitor? \u00a0These and several other unexpected twists\u00a0in\u00a0the plot (one even had us exclaiming as we watched) served to elevate the movie from mere horror flick to something a bit more interesting to watch, which helped as, honestly, none of the characters were particularly distinguished1<\/sup>. \u00a0The cinematography was excellent, although a dark basement was suspiciously non-dark in the light of a single match, and the dialog was merely adequate.<\/p>\n

Its merits discussed, in the end it still falls flat and fails to crawl from the great well of standard horror flicks, for the simple reason that no particular theme stands clear in the end. \u00a0The virtuous lady is rescued, the beast is slain, the bodies are cleaned up – but what light has the movie cast upon our own great moral problems? \u00a0None that I can see, and, so while the plot enraptures us with people making unexpected decisions or tropes not troping as expected, in the end we don’t feel like we’ve learned anything important. \u00a0And so the movie, like any story with similar failings, does not become part of the great moral landscape of American culture.<\/p>\n

\n
1<\/sup> A most helpful funeral director is the exception, as he’s most excellently cast and shines forth like a beacon, although none of the cast are the barren rocks of disaster; he simply, in this monochromatic presentation, wears a red sash of panache.<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As darn near the only thing I can do today, we saw\u00a0Cry of the Werewolf (1944), a Nina Foch vehicle in which an aged researcher working on werewolves amongst the Romany stumbles across important information concerning the Princess of werewolves, and is murdered for his troubles in New Orleans. \u00a0He \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3182"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3185,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3182\/revisions\/3185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}