lee-p-sherman
Joined Jan 2010
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Reviews10
lee-p-sherman's rating
I wanted to like this movie. I saw a Halloween mask tie-in for it when I was little, and thought it was cool. A year or two ago I saw that same face (a man with the snout of a wolf coming out of his open mouth) on a reproduced movie poster. I learned the name of the movie, and saw that David Warner was in it. "If any actor would make a good Werewolf, it's him," I thought. I frantically searched for the movie everywhere, but couldn't find it. But now I have Netflix, and it was just a matter of time before I watched "The Company of Wolves." David Warner is just the main character's father, and some no-name actor played the Werewolf. But that's not the only thing that disappointed me.
Basically, this is a liberal adaptation of "Little Red Riding Hood" padded out to 80 minutes. Much of the space is filled by short and inconsequential stories within the story. And the story itself is the dream of a teenage girl living in 1980s England. There are a few minutes in reality at the beginning, where we meet her parents and "much older" sister (they look the same age). Then the rest is her dream. You would think that at the end she would wake up and the P.O.V. would return to reality. But no, the credits just roll and there's a cheesy poem. It raises the question of why there was a frame story in the first place.
The dream is set in a Fairy tale world that is simultaneously the Middle Ages, the Georgian Era, and the Victorian Era. It casts her and her family members in roles, and includes toys from her room as characters (this and other parts may have inspired the makers of "Labyrinth," but don't mistake this for a film of that caliber). So why not just have the Fairy tale as the whole movie? My guess is that the frame story was tacked on at the last minute to keep a surreal film from losing audiences.
Still, it's hard to care too much about what happens in the dream. It's not utterly terrible, but it's overly melodramatic. It's also punctuated by random surreal sequences that don't make sense even in their Fairy tale context. Some are clever in and of themselves, but they hinder the narrative rather than help it. To make things worse, most of the supporting cast really ham it up. For example, the priest is played by Graham Crowden, infamous to "Doctor Who" fans for his abysmal performance as Soldeed in the serial "The Horns of Nimon." On the other hand, the production values are high, and there are some very creative designs and visual effects. Chief among these are the Werewolf transformations. In the one depicted on the poster, the Werewolf in human form licks his lips with a wolf's tongue, then convulses and opens his mouth wide. A wolf's snout protrudes and howls, and his skin splits like an insect pupa to reveal the body of a wolf. The other, better transformation shows the man actually tearing his skin off like a rubber mask, revealing the underlying musculature. The teeth lengthen, then the whole thing twists into the musculature of a wolf. The camera cuts away, and when it's back a new skin with a coat of fur has appeared, and the wolf is complete. The makeup and animatronics are good enough to make these sequences chillingly realistic, and stand out as some of the best Werewolf effects I've ever seen. In fact, I've studied human anatomy, and seen cadavers in photographs and preserved on display, and the skinless face in this movie may be the most realistic portrayal of the subject I've ever seen in film (much better than in "Darkman" or "The Dark Knight").
Sadly, such strokes of genius are not supported by the bulk of the film: a hazy, somewhat nonsensical dream that tries to tell an adult story in the over-the-top language of a children's movie. In my opinion, it averages out to a film that's a little below "passable." I suppose I could recommend this to film students and connoisseurs of practical special effects, but watch at your own risk: the quality of acting and storytelling is sub-par. It's also not for the faint of heart: there's an explicit nude scene with a filthy female Werewolf in human form that could turn someone off women for life.
Basically, this is a liberal adaptation of "Little Red Riding Hood" padded out to 80 minutes. Much of the space is filled by short and inconsequential stories within the story. And the story itself is the dream of a teenage girl living in 1980s England. There are a few minutes in reality at the beginning, where we meet her parents and "much older" sister (they look the same age). Then the rest is her dream. You would think that at the end she would wake up and the P.O.V. would return to reality. But no, the credits just roll and there's a cheesy poem. It raises the question of why there was a frame story in the first place.
The dream is set in a Fairy tale world that is simultaneously the Middle Ages, the Georgian Era, and the Victorian Era. It casts her and her family members in roles, and includes toys from her room as characters (this and other parts may have inspired the makers of "Labyrinth," but don't mistake this for a film of that caliber). So why not just have the Fairy tale as the whole movie? My guess is that the frame story was tacked on at the last minute to keep a surreal film from losing audiences.
Still, it's hard to care too much about what happens in the dream. It's not utterly terrible, but it's overly melodramatic. It's also punctuated by random surreal sequences that don't make sense even in their Fairy tale context. Some are clever in and of themselves, but they hinder the narrative rather than help it. To make things worse, most of the supporting cast really ham it up. For example, the priest is played by Graham Crowden, infamous to "Doctor Who" fans for his abysmal performance as Soldeed in the serial "The Horns of Nimon." On the other hand, the production values are high, and there are some very creative designs and visual effects. Chief among these are the Werewolf transformations. In the one depicted on the poster, the Werewolf in human form licks his lips with a wolf's tongue, then convulses and opens his mouth wide. A wolf's snout protrudes and howls, and his skin splits like an insect pupa to reveal the body of a wolf. The other, better transformation shows the man actually tearing his skin off like a rubber mask, revealing the underlying musculature. The teeth lengthen, then the whole thing twists into the musculature of a wolf. The camera cuts away, and when it's back a new skin with a coat of fur has appeared, and the wolf is complete. The makeup and animatronics are good enough to make these sequences chillingly realistic, and stand out as some of the best Werewolf effects I've ever seen. In fact, I've studied human anatomy, and seen cadavers in photographs and preserved on display, and the skinless face in this movie may be the most realistic portrayal of the subject I've ever seen in film (much better than in "Darkman" or "The Dark Knight").
Sadly, such strokes of genius are not supported by the bulk of the film: a hazy, somewhat nonsensical dream that tries to tell an adult story in the over-the-top language of a children's movie. In my opinion, it averages out to a film that's a little below "passable." I suppose I could recommend this to film students and connoisseurs of practical special effects, but watch at your own risk: the quality of acting and storytelling is sub-par. It's also not for the faint of heart: there's an explicit nude scene with a filthy female Werewolf in human form that could turn someone off women for life.
