The Company of Wolves 1984

  

This 1984 Gothic fantasy horror which was directed by Neil Jordan, who would later go on to direct The Crying Game as well as Interview With A Vampire, has been on my watch list for awhile now so I thought now would be a good time to watch it and to include it in the Countdown To Halloween Blog-A-Thon.  Besides directing, Jordan also co-wrote the script with Angela Carter who also wrote the short story the movie was taken from.  The film stars Angela Lansbury (Murder She Wrote), David Warner (The Omen, Portrait of Evil, Time Bandits just to name a few), Stephen Rea (Crying Game, Interview With A Vampire), and Micha Bergese as The Huntsman.  Child actress Sarah Patterson made her film debut as Rosalee an alternate reality version of Little Red Riding Hood.

  

This is what I would consider an adult take on a fairy tale even if it does have a child actress at the center of the story which does lead to some odd moments considering that Patterson was barely a teenager at the time the film was shot.  The film has several werewolf transformation scenes and while I wouldn't consider them complete failures all of them are at least partial failures.  The first time we see a transformation the effects are good and there are a few things I had never seen before in werewolf films.  Then the transformation ends with a really awkward looking werewolf skull that is a puppet.  Obviously a puppet.  I've seen better transformation effects in movies that were made before this one.  See American Werewolf In London for an example.  That leaves the argument that the effects were not sophisticated enough at the time to create better transformation scenes can't be made here.  What does work here is the scenes with the dogs/wolves who are at times very convincing and then very cute at other times and I just love dogs no matter what so that's a positive.  Also there's Micha Bergese who isn't in the film for very long but he steals every scene he is in for sure.   

After anthology films my favorite genre is werewolves so I really wanted to like this one but it just didn't do it for me.  The scenery and the cinematography were some of it to the point of awe inspiring.  If only the story could have done as much.  I chalk this one up to being another one of those films that does not equal the sum of all it's parts.  On paper (no I haven't read the short story this is taken from so maybe that should be something I should consider) this should have been better and of all the things I hate in horror films is a werewolf story done wrong even worse is one that is boring which this one suffers from a few too many times.  I give this one 2 Red Cloaks out of 5 while Denise The Horror Honey was a little more kind and gave it a half a star more than I did.  Overall though a big disappointment.