Starring Clifford Evans, Oliver Reed, Yvonne Romain, Catherine Feller, Anthony Dawson
Directed by Terence Fisher
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A young boy grows up cursed to transform into a werewolf, which his adoptive father is able to combat with love, but when he reaches manhood, the beast is again unleashed.
Hammer's only werewolf film, to the best of my knowledge, it's a very good one, well-directed by Fisher, and with an exceptional performance by Reed in the title role. Based on Guy Endore's Werewolf Of Paris, but very loosely by Anthony Hinds, writing under his pen name of John Elder, Hinds provides a different setting and backstory. Wikipedia credits the film as being set in Spain, and production designer Bernard Robinson's set decorations and Molly Arbuthnot's costumes really add flavor to the film, and make it seem a unique world far away from Hammer's British studio. Roy Ashton's creature makeup for Reed is also exceptional, and packs a wallop when it's finally exposed to the audience at the film's climax. I've never really cared for the violent prologue in which an innocent beggar is imprisoned and turned into a beastly man who eventually becomes father to the werewolf, as it seems largely unnecessary but once the boy is adopted by the kindly Evans and his nurturing servant played by Hira Talfrey, and we see their relationship and their struggles with his curse, the film starts to take off for me. I found Benjamin Frankel's score, which features many sequences of cascading notes, a bit too busy for me, but it does convey the proper dark themes for the story. Overall, it's still a wonderful production from Hammer and a very memorable film.
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