31 Horrors Day 7: The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

Nate started this month by seeing The Curse of the Werewolf, and he reported that he enjoyed the film so when I saw it was being screened by the Austin Film Society I figured I should check it out. (You can read Nate's thoughts on the film HERE).

Lars of Alamo Weird Wednesday fame introduced the movie.  He explained how Hammer Films benefitted from a government imposed quota.  The UK put a quota in place that required a UK produced movie to be shown in theaters for every US produced film.  Hammer was churning out cheaply made films in order to keep up with this quota based demand, and because of all the films they were making, they actually started making fairly good films.

I agree with Nate that the films narration could probably be cut out, it was just unnecessary.  The film also has a pretty long backstory, some of which is probably unnecessary.  Because most of the audience was familiar with the Warner Brother's horror films, and their version of werewolves in The Wolf Man (which is an original story written by a WB writer) Hammer had to create their own backstory.  This takes up a big portion of the film, but when we finally get to the Werewolf, it's pretty spectacular.