BT1886

The Curse of the Werewolf

The Curse of the Werewolf is my first Terence Fisher film, my third Oliver Reed outing, and only the second Hammer production I’ve seen—the first being Val Guest’s The Quatermass Xperiment. So far, Hammer is two-for-two for me. I love how patient these movies are: an undeniable focus on atmosphere first and a lack of dependence on cheap scares. The Curse of the Werewolf in particular isn’t interested in being a standard horror movie. It plays more like a doomed melodrama stretching across years, beginning with an act of human cruelty and treating the resulting curse as something almost metaphysical—not a bite in the night, but more of a spiritual sentence. Leon’s (Oliver Reed) lycanthropy becomes a clear metaphor for inherited trauma: a life marked before it even begins. Fisher’s film is also surprisingly bitter about the limits of choice. It toys with the idea that love can save Leon—and for a while, it does. But the curse doesn’t just change his body; it slowly erodes his will. You watch him cling to the last scraps of humanity as if hanging on will be enough, even when the film is quietly insisting it won’t be. Arthur Grant’s cinematography is beautifully gothic, wringing style out of every corner of the film’s Madrid/Spain setting. Hammer may not have the biggest budget, but they know how to make their projects look expensive. And like the best classic monster films, Fisher frames Leon as a tragedy before he’s even fully formed. Those opening-title shots fixating on Reed’s eyes, wet with fear and pain, signal the movie’s real subject—not the monster, but the person trapped inside it. It isn’t flashy, the pacing will likely feel too measured for some, and it ends far too abruptly. But as Hammer’s lone werewolf outing, it’s a deeply respectable—and, at times, genuinely heartbreaking—piece of work. • Watched in 2025 — Ranked (https://boxd.it/C7Jq6)