YMMV / Cry of the Werewolf

• Fair for Its Day: While Femme Fatale characters were not uncommon in the 1940s, they were usually associates of the male lead or secondary antagonists, not protagonists or antagonists in their own right. Nina Foch's portrayal of Celeste as a Dark Action Girl who was the direct Big Bad of the story, and who was both willing and able to murder anyone who stood in her way was practically unprecedented by 1940s standards. Celeste arguably has more in common with "girlboss" villains from decades later than she does with other horror villains from the 1940s.
  • Furthermore, the Damsel in Distress and Monster Misogyny tropes are averted, which is extremely unusual by the standards of 1940s horror movies. The monster in this movie is female, everyone she attacks or kills in the movie is male, and the only woman she kidnaps is hypnotized into giving a false confession and pointing a gun at her love interest, instead of simply carried off to be bound, brutalized, or devoured. Celeste and Elsa even share a scene that passes The Bechdel Test (a Motive Rant where Celeste congratulates Elsa for being a Worthy Opponent, right before the aforementioned hypnosis.
• Moral Event Horizon: Marie LaTour had jumped over it when she murdered her husband and then ran away. Celeste crossed it herself by resorting to murder to keep her family secrets from being published.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Thoroughly averted, since Celeste only ever wearing nice and somewhat fancy dresses (whenever she isn't a wolf) doesn't make her any less of a Dark Action Girl, and Elsa also wears only dresses.
• Technology Marches On: Had this movie taken place in the 2020s rather than the 1940s, Celeste would have outed herself as a werewolf if she transformed in front of a security camera and been exposed as the murderer by DNA analysis of any fur left at the crime scene, the secret chamber in the museum would have been found much sooner using radar, and the gypsies would have been forced to abandon the custom of a mass funeral once a year for sanitary reasons.
  • On the other hand, Celeste could have tried to file a cease-and-desist lawsuit against the curator publishing her family secrets, sending him threatening Emails, Doxxing him, or Swatting him.
  • Had this movie been made in the 2020s rather than the 1940s, Celeste's werewolf form would have been depicted with CGI or puppetry rather than a live wolf.
• Values Dissonance: This movie is by no means a sympathetic depiction of Roma people, depicting them as wagon-dwelling nomads who practice Hollywood Satanism, and being a French-American werewolf's loyal Mooks.
• Values Resonance: On the other hand, this movie is surprisingly feminist, not only by the standards of the 1940s, but also for the horror genre in general or Werewolf Works in particular. The female lead actively helps solve the murder of her love interest's father, and is knowledgeable about what is going on, rather than being a Genre Blind Damsel in Distress like so many other female horror characters. Celeste is also practically a feminist icon by werewolf standards, since although she is a Dark Action Girl and an antagonist, her wolf form is not some mindless beast that kills everyone in her path (but rather just as cunning and calculating as she is as a human), her lycanthropy is not just a Body Horror puberty-allegory (but rather just one of many weapons in her arsenal), she does not inflict any physical violence against women (everyone she kills or assaults is male, and her only 'violence' against Elsa is hypnotizing and brainwashing her), and her motivations are not related to sexuality or male affection, all of which put her miles ahead of almost all other female werewolves in pop-culture.