The Curse of the Werewolf – 1961 | 91 mins | Horror | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Hammer filmed their version of Guy Endore’s 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris using the back lot full of sets from the scrapped project The Rape of Sabena. Allotted £ 100,000 for the production, producer Anthony Hinds found himself without sufficient funds to commission a script as a good deal of the money had already been spent on acquiring the rights to Endore’s novel. Consequently, Hinds decided to write the script himself – free of charge – under the pen name of John Elder, a pseudonym he would use again many times in the years to come. The film took Hammer into another staple area of horror: lycanthropy. The film is a case-book study of a werewolf from birth to death.

Set in the eighteenth century, The Curse of the Werewolf opens with a hungry beggar (Richard Wordsworth), whose quest for food leads him to Castillo Siniestro, where the Marquis (Anthony Dawson) is in the midst of celebrating his wedding. The beggar is thrown a few scraps from the Marquis’s table, but his presence ultimately irritates the Marquis, who has the derelict thrown into the dungeons, where he remains forgotten by all but the jailer and his mute daughter (Yvonne Romain) over the following years.

By now the Marquis is old and decrepit, but this doesn’t prevent him from attempting to have his way with the mute servant girl. When she rejects his advances, he has her thrown into the dungeon too, where the beggar, who has become a slavering animal, rapes her. The result of this liaison is a baby boy, born on Christmas Day. However, owing to the nature of his conception, it gradually becomes clear that, as he grows up, the boy, named Leon, is no ordinary child, especially when he begins to have nightmares about being a wolf. When sheep from a nearby flock are later found mutilated, it quickly becomes apparent that Leon has in fact been turning into a wolf.

Love and care from his adoptive father (Clifford Evans) helps to keep such manifestations at bay until Leon grows older and falls in love with a wine merchant’s daughter (Catherine Feller). Unfortunately, an incident at a brothel finally sees Leon transform into a fully-fledged wolfman, in which guise he murders a prostitute and two villagers, for which crimes he is thrown into the local jail. However, come the next full moon, Leon (now played by Oliver Reed) transforms again, escapes and is finally hunted down by torch-bearing locals as he attempts to get away across the roofs of the village.

Though now considered something of a classic, The Curse of the Werewolf is by no means the best example of Hammer’s output during this period, though it is not without interest. Arthur Grant’s lighting and photography and Bernard Robinson’s production design work again give the film a look that belies its budget, while Roy Ashton’s make-up effects for the wolf man, the decrepit Marquis and the ravening beggar are excellent indeed. However, Fisher’s direction is too frequently stodgy and the script seems unnecessarily ponderous in places. The script also attempts to convey Leon’s inner turmoil as he tries to come to terms with his fate, which makes for a more character driven piece, though as a result the film seems to lack the expected amount of action, which no doubt helped doom it at the box office at the time.

The performances are all up to the mark, particularly Anthony Dawson as the lecherous Marquis (quite revolting in his old age make-up) and Richard Wordsworth as the unfortunate beggar. Without question, however, it is Oliver Reed who holds the film together. Yet despite an energetic ad campaign which showed Reed in all his werewolf glory, and copy that read ‘His beast-blood demanded he kill… kill… kill!’, the film was generally perceived as a disappointment, perhaps because it promised more than it delivered. As a consequence, The Curse of the Werewolf proved to be Hammer’s only cinematic venture into the realms of lycanthropy.