BEFORE: It's the last day of New York Comic-Con, and it's a little weird to be on the sidelines when this event is happening just across town. My company decided not to spend money on a booth in San Diego this year, and instead we decided to focus on the NYC con, where our travel expenses would be next to nothing. But we decided to ditch the expensive booth on the main show floor and apply for a table in Artists Alley, but somehow the organizers' web-site didn't properly process our application, so when I asked when we were going to hear about our table, my contact didn't have any record of us applying for it. The best I could do was get us on the waiting list for a table, and hope that someone had to change their appearance schedule, or had massive problems traveling to New York. Since we didn't get a call, I'm assuming that everyone showed up as planned, and so we had to take a pass. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the time off, and the fact that I didn't have to scramble to get our supplies and merchandise across the six-block trip to the Javits Center, but still, I'm missing the hectic, chaotic fun/nuisance of that event. I'd been working a booth at the NY Con for 7 or 8 years straight.
Well, we had no new product to sell, anyway, so maybe it's for the best that we didn't go. I can start getting my ducks in a row for next October's event, and maybe taking a year off from going to Cons will make me feel less tired and more eager to go next year. I toyed with the idea of going to the Con today as a spectator, but when I saw that tickets were $50, and on top of that, the event was sold out, I quickly lost interest. I've never paid to attend either NY or San Diego Comic-Con, so why start now?
Besides, I've got plenty to do at home, like catching up on TV and staying current on horror films. I knew that if I could get to one of the Hammer Films, I could link to a bunch more, it was one of those studios that kept hiring the same actors again and again for different roles in each film. I saw this also earlier this year with the Sherlock Holmes films that starred Basil Rathbone, they were drawing from a very small pool of actors, so the same actors kept popping up in different parts in each film, an actor could be a criminal mastermind in one film and then a Scotland Yard inspector in the next, my guess is that the audience didn't really care all that much. George Woodbridge carries over from "The Mummy", and so do two other actors. I'll get back to Cushing and Lee tomorrow.
THE PLOT: In 18th Century Spain, an adopted boy becomes a werewolf and terrorizes the inhabitants of his town.
AFTER: This film took a LONG time to get to a damn werewolf - seriously, it was 45 minutes into the film before Oliver Reed's character showed up, and then he was played by a child for another 10 minutes? For a film called "The Curse of the Werewolf", it's BARELY about the werewolf, it focused too much on the curse, if you ask me. Back in my day, I think all they had to do was to have a character get bitten by a wolf and live, but BOOM, there's your werewolf. Oh, sorry, in the original 1941 film Larry Talbot had to get bitten by another werewolf, that's what spreads the virus, or disease, or whatever it is. But then there's that rhyme about how "even a man who is pure in heart, and says his prayers by night, May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright..." and that poem doesn't even say a THING about getting bit.
Here, things are much more complicated, since the film opens on a beggar in a village in Spain, wondering why the bells are ringing on a weekday. The villagers tell him it's because the Marquis has gotten married, and the beggar should go visit the Marquis' castle, since he's basically got all of the villagers' money. Umm, I came here for a monster movie, not a lesson on the economics of rural Spain in the 1800's, and besides, so the Marquis is a one-percenter, so what? That just means that nothing's changed in all that time. When the beggar arrives at the castle during the wedding feast, the Marquis calls for him to have food and drink and some money, provided he allows himself to be "bought" as a pet for the Marquess. But even though she seems like a (relatively) kind woman, the beggar gets "taken care of" by being thrown in jail, then forgotten about.
Time passes, and the beggar grows old in jail, the Marquess dies but he still gets fed by the daughter of the jailer, who is mute, and then SHE grows up to become a pretty woman, and gets groped by the Marquis, who gets angry because she won't tell him her name. Then SHE gets thrown in jail (victim blaming, am I right?) and the old beggar's still there, so one thing leads to another, and the old, mad beggar rapes her before he dies. (Like, is there a werewolf in my future, here? Come ON!)
When she's brought before the Marquis again, she struggles against her tormentor, and kills him, then flees into the forest, where she's found by Don Alfredo and his housekeeper Teresa, who nurse her back to health, only she dies in childbirth. However, this happens on Dec. 25, and there's some long-standing curse that an unwanted child born on Christmas would become a werewolf. See what I mean, it's a long, windy way to go to produce a werewolf - and then for another 10 minutes he's just a kid who sneaks out at night and enjoys late night dinners of lamb, very rare lamb that is. A herder's dog is blamed for the deaths of all the lambs and goats, and Leon's taste for blood is curbed by his surrogate parents for the next 13 years, though the film never explains exactly how.
Fast-forward to Leon as a young man, who leaves his parents' house and strikes out on his own, though later we learn that he didn't really go very far, he gets a job offer just walking down the street in the next town, to work in a vineyard doing very complicated tasks. Like, the wine goes IN the bottle and the label goes ON the bottle, I don't know how he manages to keep that all straight. Before long he falls for the daughter of the wine-maker, even though she's engaged to someone else, but it seems that's an arranged marriage and she doesn't really love the guy. But somehow the love he feels brings the hot, werewolf passion to the forefront again, and he kills a number of people at a local brothel.
This is also pretty confusing, because the priest said that the only cure for his condition would be if he somehow found one woman to love him back, but as soon as he meets this girl, he starts being affected by the full moon again. So, should he fall in love, or not? They said it would help, but it sure doesn't seem like it. Damn, this sort of thing was a lot easier back when it was JUST the full moon that would turn the infected men into werewolves - that way at least you'd know that if you locked the guy up when the moon was 95% full he might not kill anyone over the next few days. But what do I know?
I guess he learns here that being around Cristina can help control his urges, but before long he's put in jail without her, so that can't be good. And then when she finds out about his true nature, that's something of a deal-breaker - so he can't be with the one woman who could help cure his condition. But hey, don't look for a medicinal cure or expect any help from science, just keep hoping against hope to find love with a woman who's into very hairy guys.
The true moral here is that the criminal justice system has many flaws - here everyone who gets put in prison only becomes either a rapist or a killer, so that's hardly ideal. And we still don't have a way to reform werewolves, the only solution is to shoot them? That seems like a pity. I guess that's why Hammer Films only made one werewolf movie and was unable to turn this into a franchise.
Also starring Clifford Evans, Oliver Reed (last seen in "The Sting II"), Yvonne Romain, Catherine Feller, Anthony Dawson (last seen in "Dial M for Murder"), Josephine Llewelyn, Richard Wordsworth (last seen in "The Revenge of Frankenstein"), Hira Talfrey, Justin Walters, John Gabriel, Warren Mitchell, Anne Blake (last seen in "The Curse of Frankenstein"), Michael Ripper (also carrying over from "The Mummy"), Denis Shaw (ditto), Ewen Solon, Peter Sallis (last seen in "The V.I.P.s"), Martin Matthews, David Conville (last seen in "The Fourth Protocol"), Sheila Brennan, Joy Webster, Renny Lister, Loraine Carvana, Charles Lamb, Desmond Llewelyn (last seen in "Cleopatra").
RATING: 5 out of 10 goat herders
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