El bosque del lobo AKA The Ancines Woods (1970)

With an opening shot looking like a home movie as a Spanish narrator literally sings us an intro about a peddler traveling from town to town in Galicia, we have to immediately wonder if we have made a mistake. It is the true(ish) story of Spain's first documented serial killer, Manuel Blanco Romasanta, from circa 1853, and the only case of lycanthropic litigation in Spanish history. The real serial killer claimed in court he was not a murderer, but cursed as a werewolf.

A trio of kids watch some farmers breed horses in a stable. One of the kids totally freaks out, then starts a huge fire, and a farmer slaps him. He stares evilly into the camera, and it cuts to an old man with a similar evil stare. A jew's harp plays, then bagpipes. The intro credits roll for a long time over a still of the eyes.

The camera zooms out on an older man with a giant cube of a backpack, licking blood from his lip in the same place it was on the child, hinting that we've just traveled to the future. He wanders into a village where all of the townsfolk are grieving at the funeral of a 17-year-old boy. He has a letter to a woman in the town, advising her to move out to her godmother's by the sea where she will be well cared for.

The peddler tries to guide her to the sea, but gets weird and chokes her to death instead. He wakes up in the woods, alone and confused.

At the next town, he has some questionable dealings, carrying more letters for people in secret. He visits a pub where a giant lady dances with a dwarf while a legless man totters back and forth and everyone claps. They take a shirt from his bag and he gets most upset. He naps in the bar, and awakens to the townsfolk exchanging werewolf stories. There are flies all over the set, crawling on the actors.

A travelling bible salesman joins him uninvited on his hike to the next town. The bible guy never shuts up, at least until the peddler has an episode and the bible guy runs away. He makes it to the next town and checks into the hospital. He has feverish flashbacks to his childhood, marching around under the hot Spanish sun with catholic relics on fancy sticks.

He turns out to be a no good thief, and gets caught. He escapes by releasing the secrets of the sordid affair detailed in his transported letters. The conflict of this film is just that this somewhat sickly guy might be a werewolf, but mostly he just walks around talking to boring people. He has a flashback about his town catching a werewolf, which is a hairy man in a cage in a scene played at 2 frames per second.

He returns to the first town and tells them the mother from the first scene wants her daughter to join her. He ate the mother, of course. The grandmother insists on joining their trip. They all sit around eating a big bowl of literally flaming soup, then head out for the long hike. The jew's harp soundtrack kicks back in. They film the sun through a neutral density filter, I think we're supposed to believe it's the moon, and the peddler attacks the child. Grandma accidentally sets her on fire while trying to save her, then gets choked to death. No werewolfery involved, this was just regular murder.

A boy from town sneaks away to follow him. He is chased off, but definitely noticed that the two women are missing. He stops in to the tent of a healer who tells him that people who were cursed as children should take better care of themselves.

The honorable peddler gets less and less honorable. He goes to the woman from the affair letters, spies on her getting dressed, and chokes her to death. Although he always acts weird and tears up the ground afterwards, he is never visually wolven in any way. Lycanthropy is, perhaps, a mental disorder.

The people in all of the towns start to notice mysteries surrounding him. They pick up all of the sharp and pointy farm instruments, form a mob, and go on the hunt. The jew's harp and trash can drum hunt is slow and boring. The peddler gets caught by a random bear trap instead. It's handily the most boring climax of the month. The singing narrator sings us out, telling us the curse of the werewolf is ended. "Thank you for your attention, that's the end of the story!" sings the narrator.