As we have been crossing the lines here in our group, Film Noir: Yesterday and Today, and including discussions of Horror Films with Noir Elements, I would like to offer, for your consideration, Curse Of The Werewolf (Hammer Films, 1961). If themes of obsession, terror, alienation, paranoia, loneliness, hopelessness, and a tragically doomed protagonist are Noir Elements that we all can agree on, then this grim entry in the Hammer canon surely fits the bill of being interpreted as a Horror-Noir. Oliver Reed is absolutely astonishing in the lead role of Leon, who is the child of an unholy coupling between a beautiful servant girl and a long forgotten beggar, who has been unjustly imprisoned for years in the dungeon of a sadistic noblemans castle...(a terrible rape scene which was initially cut from the first release prints, now has been restored, and is very hard to watch)...the girl miraculously survives, only to give birth to this doomed boy, and then dies in childbirth. A tragic omen for this child...this is Leons curse, and his destiny...it leads to his transformation into the dreaded werewolf...the spawn of the devil. This plot device, it seems to me, is unprecedented, as it is in Guy Endores book, and it is startling for its time. Unlike its forbearers, Werewolf of London (1935) or the most famous werewolf film of them all, The Wolfman (1941), there is no werwolf bite needed...just to be a child of a rape...this is the foundation for the dark and tragic story that follows. I wont go through the full plot description here, except to say..as you might predict, it doesnt end well. This film is far more violent than The Wolfman, and more disturbing than any other werewolf film Ive ever seen....it is more brutally realized, and even more deeply haunting than The Wolfman. In the Wolfman and all its sequels, death is the only cure...In Curse of The Werewolf, Leon, our doomed protagonist, finds that love is the only cure for his wretched curse, and yet, this proves to be unattainable. The ending, which seems inevitable, is as powerfully realized, and as overwhelmingly tragic as The Wolfman. I defy any viewer of this film to not drop a few tears at the end. From Hammer Films...a studio that started with British low budget Noirs in the late 1940s, and then went on to become renown as the greatest Horror Film studio of the 50s, 60s and 70s, this is one of the very best of their oeuvre. With brilliant performances by Clifford Evans, Yvonne Romain, Catherine Feller, Anthony Dawson, Richard Wordsworth, Hira Talfrey, Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper, and a stellar supporting cast. This film also features one of the most harmonically advanced and excruciatingly horrifying musical scores ever heard in any horror film, by the great British Composer, Benjamin Frankel. Production Design by Bernard Robinson. Art Direction by Don Mingaye and Thomas Goswell. Director of Photography: Arthur Grant. Directed by Horror Film Legend Terence Fisher. For the fan of great Horror Films, this one is not to be missed.
Posted on: Thu, 03 Jul 2014 22:20:28 +0000
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