Review: Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1960/1964)

Face of the Screaming Werewolf, which stars Lon Chaney Jr. as a mummy who turns into the Wolf Man (trust me, I'll try to explain later), has one of the most convoluted histories--and thus, one of the most confusing plots--I've ever seen.

Apparently, it started out as a south-of-the-border horror comedy called La Casa del Terror, with Mexican comedian Tin Tan as a night watchman in a wax museum. Then American producer/director Jerry Warren bought the rights to it, edited out most of Tin Tan's scenes and shot bridging scenes to explain what was going on. To further confuse matters, Warren also edited in scenes from one of the popular Aztec Mummy movies, perhaps to pad out the film's running time to a full hour.

But wait. It gets worse. In Nightmare of Ecstasy, Rudolph Grey's biography of legendary schlock director Ed Wood, film editor "Lucky" Brown recalls that Wood and cinematographer ÒBig BillÓ Thompson shot some footage of Chaney in full Wolf Man makeup climbing the outside of a building. The idea, apparently, was to raise cash for a film project. That project never came to be--or did it?Face of the Screaming Werewolf has a sequence that exactly matches the footage Brown describes. Did Wood direct parts of La Casa del Terror or sell his Chaney footage to Mexican director Gilberto Martinez Solares? Did Chaney own the footage and give it to the Mexican director? Did Warren stick the footage in? Is it all just an extraordinary coincidence?

But whatever the various sources of footage, one thing is clear: Face of the Screaming Werewolf is one fucked-up crazy quilt of a movie.

Doctor Edmund Redding and his two assistants hypnotize a young woman, Ann Taylor, who apparently was an Aztec princess in a previous life. She has a couple of flashbacks, including one really long one with dancing, singing and a sacrifice. A helpful announcer who looks like he's on TV, even though we later hear his voice coming out of a radio, tells us that Taylor, Redding and the other docs are all going to explore a pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Once in the pyramid, the explorers find two mummies: one looks an awful lot like Lon Chaney Jr. (because it is), and the other one is a thinner Aztec mummy who growls like the Frankenstein Monster. Redding throws something at the Aztec mummy and stops him (or at least I assume that's what happens, since the scene abruptly ends there). Both mummies are brought back to America, where the helpful announcer is joined by a helpful scientist, who explains that the Chaney mummy is a "modern man" placed in the pyramid by parties unknown after "exchanging fluids" with the older Aztec mummy in an effort to "simulate" death. (How exactly were these "fluids" exchanged? Do I want to know? And is this supposed to imply that Chaney is playing the same Wolf Man character he played in the old Universal flicks?) The modern mummy is put on public display (the growling Aztec mummy apparently gets locked up for safekeeping). Then thieves kill Redding, steal the Chaney mummy and take him back to their laboratory hidden in a wax museum, where Tin Tan (hey, wasn't he edited out of this mess?) can be spotted snoozing in the background in a couple of shots.

The thieves are doctors of some sort who experiment on Chaney with a huge centrifuge-type thing and electricity, but they can't revive him. (And nobody bothers to explain why they're even trying to.) The three rival docs, led by Professor Janning (who looks a lot like a younger, Mexican Boris Karloff), take a break and go to a cafŽ, where one of them calls another thief (back in the inserted American footage). The thief seems thrilled when he thinks the job involves knocking somebody off, but looks worried when he's told that he'll be stealing the Aztec mummy. (What, he has no problem with murder, but is queasy about stealing someone who's already dead?)

Meanwhile, back at the lab, lightning hits the equipment and revives Chaney. He gets up, goes to the window, looks up at the full moon (my, that storm cleared up quickly)...and turns into the Wolf Man! When the thieving docs return to the wax museum, the Wolf Man kills one of them. And then falls over unconscious. For no fucking reason.

Meanwhile, the hired thug goes off to steal the growling Aztec mummy, only to have said growling Aztec mummy knock him out cold. The mummy then roams the streets until he finds Ann Taylor and carries her off. The hired thug wakes up, gets in his car and accidentally hits the mummy, killing himself, the mummy and Ann Taylor. The next day, we get a smashing closeup of a newspaper headline: "Ann Taylor Dead! Mummy Destroyed!" And then we never hear about Ann Taylor or the Aztec mummy again.

Meanwhile (lots of "meanwhiles" here, aren't there?), back at the lab, the Wolf Man has been loaded onto a table. He wakes up, throttles another doctor and is about to escape when Jennings shines a flashlight in the Wolf Man's eyes and drives him into a cage. (Bet you didn't know werewolves were afraid of flashlights, now did you?) Then Jennings leaves again.

Two cops stop by to investigate the theft of the mummy, but get the door slammed in their faces. Remarkably, the cops just...leave. Later, they talk to the radio scientist, who talks a lot, but explains nothing.

Chaney wakes up in the cage and isn't a werewolf anymore. He gets to utter his one line of dialog--"No!"--before the full moon comes out again and he sprouts fur. He tears the lock off of the cage and escapes again. This time, he roams the streets, runs alongside a highway, grabs a woman and climbs the outside of a building with her on his back. Tin Tan gets up off a table (where he was napping?) and climbs up after the Wolf Man, then gets knocked off the roof of the building and lands safely on the awning below. The Wolf Man runs down the stairs (why'd he bother playing King Kong with the outside of the building anyway?) and lets the girl go. (Or does he? The woman he puts on the sidewalk is dressed differently than the woman he kidnapped.)

Then the Wolf Man runs along the highway again and follows another woman home. This woman looks exactly like the last one he kidnapped (and probably IS the same woman, but incompetent editing clouds the issue) and, after chasing her around the apartment for a few minutes, grabs her and takes her back to the wax museum.

The Wolf man kills the Mexican Karloff look-alike doc and wrestles with Tin Tan. A fire starts in the lab. Tin Tan picks up a torch and beats the Wolf Man with it. And Chaney falls over unconscious. Again. For no fucking reason. And he burns to death. (Who knew werewolves were so flammable?) The cops from the American footage show up, disappointed that instead of finding a monster, all they see is "an ordinary guy." The end.

You know, my head hurts just thinking about this movie. I think I'll go and lie down for a while.