In a dingy pet shop, a mad scientist experiments with lycanthropy.  Does the RSPCA have jurisdiction?

Simon and Eugene discuss What Big Eyes.

Synopsis:

Inspector Bob Curry of the RSPCA is playing hard with Mr. Jeeb, a local animal trader.  He doesn’t like the way he treats the animals in his care, and he’s come checking up on him after a cheetah died in transit the week prior.  He goes through his books looking for something suspicious and he thinks he finds it.  In the last 18 months 3 European wolves have been sold, supposedly, to a small pet shop on Westbury Rd.  It’s the kind of place that deals in kittens and hamsters, not wild animals.  Curry thinks this is a false paper trail to cover up something more nefarious.

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Visiting the pet shop he first meets the meek Florence Raymount, the shop keeper, and is surprised to learn that it’s true that this shop did take delivery of three European wolves.  She cannot, or will not, answer why and merely says, “You’ll have to talk to my father, the owner of the shop about that.”  He father, Leo Raymount, rarely talks to people, but Curry insists and is granted an audience.

Raymount isn’t particularly kind to him, and demonstrates clear contempt for his daughter’s intelligence.  He is a frail old man, but after admitting that he purchased the wolves, legally, for himself, he kicks Curry out.

Back at the station, Curry consults with his boss, Chief Inspector Nash.  He knows about Raymount, he’s a crackpot scientist with weird ideas about how Darwin got evolution wrong.  Curry, now more worried about the welfare of the animals than ever, rushes back to the shop, which has closed for the night.  Florence lets him in, but won’t let him talk to her father.  

Curry really upset him earlier.  She may be an idiot, she knows, but her father is a genius, and she can neither understand his work, nor is she willing to try to tell Curry what it is.

Surprisingly, Raymount shows up and invites Curry in.  This time, he’s welcoming.  He wants to tell him about his work.  He is bitter that he is where he is instead of addressing the Royal Society with his theories.  He quizzes Curry a bit to see if he’s even intelligent enough to understand the work.  Apparently satisfied enough, he attempts to explain it to him, rather contemptuously.

Inside the genetics of every mammal is a history of everything that came before, all the way back to origins of mammals before they’d even decided what form they’d take.  Given that premise, Raymount thinks lycanthropy is possible. The turning of a man into a werewolf.

Werewolves are real, he argues, the legends are mistellings of the original facts.  The legend of Little Red Riding Hood isn’t about grandma being replaced by a wolf, it’s about grandma transforming into a wolf.

He shows Curry his lab, and his dissection table.  Yes, he bought the wolves, and he used them in his experiments.  He extracted some fluid samples and he humanely euthanized them and conducted work on the bodies, disposing of them afterwards. All in accordance with regulations.

Now, Raymount is close to the culmination of his experiments and his vindication when his hypotheses are confirmed.  He has been injecting himself with a series of serums derived from his blood mixed with material from the wolves.  Soon, he will transform into a wolf.

Curry thinks him mad, and when the old man collapses, he makes to call for an ambulance, convinced he’s given himself septicemia.  His daughter stops him, but Curry elicits a promise from her that she’ll call for a doctor, and he leaves, very disturbed by the madness he’s witnessed.

The next day at HQ, Curry is telling Chief Inspector Nash about Raymount when a tip comes in by phone.  That pet store took delivery of another Europoean wolf just this morning.  Curry rushes back there.

The shop is empty, but in the house, Raymount is laid out on the sofa, nearly incapacitated.  In the back, Curry finds a caged wolf, still alive.  Raymount, delirious, howling along with the wolf, threatens Curry not to interfere with the final stage of his experiment.   He’s also talking to himself as if he’s addressing the Royal Society, and re-telling the tale of Little Red Riding Hood.  He convulses and dies. Curry covers him with a sheet.

Looking at his lab notes, Curry sees that Raymount has injected the pregnant she-wolf with serum from himself as part of his process.  Horrified, Curry returns to the wolf and euthanizes it.  Nothing more he can do, he leaves Florence alone with her father’s corpse.

Later, Curry returns to retrieve the body of the wolf.  He finds the pet shop destroyed.  Continuing into the house, it’s trashed, too and he hears the sounds of destruction from the lab.  Inside, Florence is destroying everything.  She sacrificed her life to her father.  He was a genius and she was an idiot, and she wanted to see him achieve the greatness that he deserved, but now she sees that he was just a mad old man that kept her down, destroyed her self-confidence, belittled her and ruined her life in pursuit of his madness.

She shouts at the covered corpse, which is still lying there on the sofa, and then… the sheet covering the body starts to move.  Suddenly, she believes again.  Curry is dumbstruck.  Florence pulls the sheet back to reveal… the dead body of her mad father, exactly as they left it.

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