Columbia Pictures did not really embrace the horror genre in the 1940s in the way that Universal, and to a lesser extent, RKO did. They did produce Return of the Vampire (1943) which proved a good showcase for Bela Lugosi in one of his few on-screen vampire roles and a had a couple of eerie scenes as well as a very talkative tormented werewolf. Cry of the Werewolf is one of the very few other explorations in horror the studio attempted and it notably avoids the tormented werewolf trope of Lon Chaney and instead encases the lycanthrope lineage in the women of an extended family of gypsies....