I work at a literacy center. Most of my colleagues are younger women. The neighborhood ice cream truck approaches. We work in cubicles. Many of my students are refugees.

My colleagues practice self-defense moves. Bring them down. Yes. You’ll hear a crunch. Break them. Break them. Outside, Ice Cream Tony pauses.

Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory (1963) was an Austrian-Italian production filmed at Cinecitta Studios in Rome. It was Federico Fellini’s favorite studio. Active Shooter training is today.

European-American, Latina, Iranian and African-American women. I’m an older European-American man.  The cop shows us how to disarm the shooter. She wanted a slushy.

Cinecitta was built in 1936 by Mussolini to support the Fascist film industry. After the war it was a relocation camp for 3000 refugee Italians, Yugoslavs, Poles, Egyptians and Chinese.

At the active shooter training the black male cop and the black male colleague grapple with an orange toy semiautomatic handgun. She says, I wanted a slushy. Why did you send him away?

Made in a polyglot spell of 1960’s financing and distribution, multi-national productions like Werewolf were filmed without sound recording, dubbed into different languages.

The credits were anglicized for the U.S. market. The director Paolo Heusch appeared as Richard Benson. The star Barbara Las was Roman Polanski’s first wife.

Barbara Las has the same haunted look as Juliet Mayniel in George Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1962). British critics viewing it were said to have fainted, or vomited.

Bring his fingers down. Farther. Yes. You’ll hear a crunch. Bring them. Break them. Ice Cream Tony, a white European-American, slows under my window, and stops.
This introduced an air of artifice and unreality. All the characters sound brain damaged as they wander through the floridly appointed Cinecitta sets of Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory.

Grip here. Bend back the fingers. “The Entertainer” is playing outside. I slide the window open and call out apologetically.

Critic Scott Ashlin described its “dense tangle of unworkable and self-contradictory dialog” in a “talky, inelegant murder mystery.” Two of my colleagues are practicing self-defense moves.

Ashlin cited the title, the common practice of pervasive anglicizing in credits, and the American rock and roll theme song, “The Ghoul in School” as indicators of its most “serious handicap.”

Playing a teacher under attack, the cop grips the top of the orange plastic gun, stopping the action of the slide.

Grip here. Bend back the fingers. My refugee students are from Afghanistan, Bhutan, Iraq, Congo, Syria. I slide the window open.

Werewolf’s handicap was “unmet expectations…Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory sounds like a randy, silly monster romp…really, though, it’s something altogether different.”

Grip here. Bend back the fingers. I slide the window open and call out apologetically, no, no thank you. No ice cream. The colors of their ebony hands on the florescent orange plastic linger.

Another critic, Chav MacLeod, locates Werewolf in the pantheon of “title first, then poster, then movie” productions. American International Pictures first codified the method.

First, a producer comes up with a hot catchy title. Then a lurid poster promises lurid thrills. Then a script is whipped up, and a movie made. Within days is Beast with a Million Eyes (1955).

I hear the neighborhood ice cream truck drive past very slowly, playing “The Entertainer” over a wobbly megaphone. Tony leans out of the van window and our eyes meet.

Ashin continues: “People simply don’t come to a film with a title like that because they’re in the mood for a talky, inelegant murder mystery.”

Or I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958), or Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory (1963). Tony leans out of the van window and looks right up at me.

I am fascinated by analysis of lurid films. There is a quivering mystery at the delta between “sounds like a randy, silly romp…” and, “really, though, it’s something altogether different.”

Werewolf is supposed to be set at a school for wayward girls. In Vermont. It looks like Italy. It is. The girls are blond women in their twenties in gray work shirts, straight black skirts and pumps.

I wave and Tony waves back and I realize he has interpreted my greeting as interest in buying ice cream. No thank you, I’m sorry, I say. It is done in slow motion several times.

This dubbing introduced an air of artifice and unreality. She has done cage fighting. She says, I wanted a slushy. The werewolf in Werewolf looks like a hairy man with bad teeth who drools.

The delta between what you expect and what you get is not just unmet expectations or disappointment, but a rich alluvial mush of disorientation, and possibility.

The wayward girl-women have a distinctly Eastern European flavor of sexual-political repression/suppression. One of the bad girls is having a scandalous affair with an older man.

I slide the window open and call out apologetically, No, no thank you. He scowls, rolls up his window and leaves. From another cubicle, C, who has done cage fighting, comes to my cubicle.

This blocks the discharge of the empty cartridge, thus preventing the gun from firing. It is done in slow motion several times. Wide loops would allow the belts to be whipped free of the pants.

Critic Ashlin says, “As a consequence, WGD is apt to face audiences who are ill-disposed to forgive its intrinsic faults or detect any of its merits at all.” These reviews fill sleepless nights.

Playing a teacher under attack, the cop grips the top of the orange plastic gun, stopping the action of the slide. She says, why did you send him away? I wanted a slushy. You’ll hear a crunch.

The ebony skin on the florescent orange plastic. An older European-American male passes slowly under my window, walking with a walker. With one fast jerk the belt is free of the pants.

Now, after the training, I am scoping out everyone’s belts. I want to see which ones, in addition to my own, would work best to secure the outward-swinging classroom doors.

The handle would be held shut from the side with the belts. I am studying not only belts, but whether they are pushed through nice wide loops for ease of whipping removal from pants.

 Wide loops allow the belts to be whipped free and off in one fast jerk from the pants. Different styles of belts would wrap and hook together, in case you wanted a longer length of belt.

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