Starring Calvin Lockhart, Peter Cushing, Marlene Clark, Charles Gray, Anton Diffring
Directed by Paul Annett
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A wealthy industrialist with a yen to hunt down and kill a werewolf invites six guests he suspects may be the supernatural beast, and sets up elaborate surveillance to track them.
An interesting production from Britain's Amicus company with an interesting cast and even the gimmick of a "werewolf break" to allow the audience time to guess which cast member is the beast, I found the film diverting and entertaining. Lockhart is a strong and distinguished lead, Cushing is logically cast as the lycanthropy expert, at times unrecognizable in a European accent, and familiar faces like Gray and Diffring are welcome as well. The script by Michael Winder, from a novel by James Blish, also sets up several suspenseful set pieces where Lockhart is either hunted or doing the hunting, as well as commanding his guests to touch pieces of silver one by one to prove their innocence. The film's big drawback is the lack of any creature makeup for the werewolf, replaced with a dog who doesn't seem very ferocious or dangerous with its tongue often sticking out. However, the werewolf scenes are quickly paced and sharply edited to make them still effective. I'd definitely have to say the film is not all that it could be, but I still enjoyed it.
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