THE WOLFMAN starts here in the UK this week. GRRRRReat!. It'll be interesting to see what Benicio del Toro does with the title role as it's the first serious re-make of the 1941 Universal classic when the iconic Lon Chaney Jr. played Laurence Talbot and His Hairiness. Lon's film wasn't the first proper bite at the story though, that accolade goes to Werewolf of London starring Henry Hull in 1935, a film which dived and didn't make Hull the star as they had four years earlier with Bela Lugosi in Dracula. Although I'm a huge fan of the Lon Chaney original, which created the werewolf mythos we know and love, it's not my favourite Wolfman film. That particular morsel is 1961's CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF starring one of the UK's original bad boys, Oliver Reed, in the title role. This spawned another of my top 'dogs', the less well-known but immensely entertaining LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF (1975) where a young wolf boy works in a zoo and stars the wonderful Ron Moody as the Zookeeper. At Christmas I watched a film I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed the first time round in 1984 (is it really so long ago!), A COMPANY OF WOLVES. Its haunting score and fairy-tale setting are mesmerising. As an aside, I've always been surprised that a 'werewolves in space' sub-genre never took off in the way that vampires have - I imagine that werewolves on the moon would always be in hairy mode but something tells me this is 'scientifically' wrong. There's no moonlight!
i love cmpany of wolves and Ollie Reeds film too - another fave is American Werewolf in London - a classic in its time!
ReplyDeleteYeah, forgot about that one. Superb. Could have been called American Werewolf in Yorkshire! I loved the whole Slaughtered Lamb pub thing! 'You made me miss' - cripes, being a Lancastrian in God's Own Country I feel like that all the time! Hee hee
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