Lycanthropus AKA Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory (1961)

Despite the suggestive title, this isn't a 1980s-style sexy girls' dormitory for teenagers to get up to sexy shenanigans; it's an boring, old, conservative, Italian girls' dormitory for adults to get up to boring shenanigans. The original Italian seems loosely dubbed on top and unsynced anyway, so, on this rare occasion, I watched with the dubbed English track so I don't have to pay attention. The English voice actors are horrific at reading their lines, much worse than their Italian counterparts. Not that the physical acting is any good, nor the script.

After dark, there are girls secretly prowling around the dorm compound, and wolves howling in the distance outside the walls. The girls are up to no good, dealing with corrupt outsiders. A man in a black suit chases one of the girls down and pokes her face with his hairy (and dirty) hands until she dies. It's one of the least dramatic werewolf killings I've ever witnessed.

It's a big, intertwined murder mystery with dozens of characters each having partial information and keeping secrets from each other, but it's all such a boring mess that it's not even worth keeping track of any of it. Priscilla is investigating who ate Mary, Mary was blackmailing Sir Whiteman, Mrs. Whiteman is trying to pay off Priscilla, and there's a new teacher with a mysterious past who was, at one point, a doctor. The director of the school is played by a guy who rescued bunches of Jewish children from Nazis during WWII, and sounds like Vincent Price.

The soundtrack is suspensefully dancing oboes and pianos, which is definitely the best part of the film. Mrs. Whiteman says she knows who the killer is, but refuses to say for a tenuously justified reason. In the next scene, she's knocked out with an ether rag and injected with a syringe of poison.

The still-suited werewolf tries to poke Priscilla to death, but a german shepherd bites him and he runs off. He says "grrrarrrrr!" while attacking, and "grrrarrrrr!" while running away.

The doctor turns out to be a secret werewolf researcher. Werewolves come from pituitary glands that enlarge during full moons, of course. He explains that dogs hate wolves, so nobody who has a dog can be a werewolf.

The head mistress is trying to save the school director, currently a werewolf, through secret medical experimentation, but a german shepherd randomly murders her so he's left uncured. The dog doesn't attack him, even though dogs are supposed to hate wolves.

The werewolf tries to kill the science teacher through the normal werewolf way: fisticuffs followed by strangulation. He gets distracted half way through, which gives the teacher time to shoot him a few times. It takes him ages to die.

"FINE" it says proudly in large letters as the film ends, even though nothing about that was very fine at all.