The Company of Wolves (1985)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Just perfect...

How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

While I've known of this film for the last 30 or so years, I only just watched this now online because of my commitment to watching various werewolf movies in chronological order for the last several weeks. Sarah Patterson stars as Rosaleen, a teen in modern times who dreams of living a couple of centuries earlier and being told various tales by her grandmother (Angela Lansbury). Many of those tales have wolves in them and her character also deals with many of those creatures when she steps outside. I'll stop there and just say that this is one of the most fascinating of these wolf movies I've been watching recently. The writer/director is Neil Jordan who would eventually cast Tom Cruise in a film version of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire. Anyway, I highly recommend The Company of Wolves.

Truly great mix of fantasy and horror, with it's own weird touch! The atmosphere is simply wonderful, again mixing the horror and fantasy vibes nicely. It could easily be mistaken for a forgotten early version of a brothers Grimm fairy tale. The practical effects are also a treat, making this a must watch for anyone interested in the genre or wishing to see something a bit different than a squad of mercenaries killing CGI creatures!

'The Company of Wolves' is an extraordinary dream-like series of set-pieces crammed with haunting detail and imagery. Young crimson-lipped Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson, impressive here and yet this is one of only a handful of film credits) sleeps - or sulks, as her spoilt sister Alice (Georgie Slow) would have it -in a glorious but ramshackle mansion that appears to get more untended the closer we get to her bedroom. She dreams of her precocious sister running through a haunted forest, fighting off giant teddy-bears, doll-houses and sinister grandfather clocks. It is a heady nightmare, with Rosaleen's disturbed sleep 'watched' by a Mrs Tiggy-Winkle doll strongly reminiscent of her eccentric granny, whom we meet later. Wolves are, of course, prevalent in her dream, just as they are throughout the film.Further into reverie we go, with mourners at the picturesque village burying Alice, with others played by such luminaries as Brian Glover, Graham Crowden, Stephen Rea, David Warner and magnificently eccentric singer/songwriter Daniella Dax as an unnamed wolf-girl."Once you stray from the path, you're lost entirely," warns Granny (top-billed Angela Lansbury). And that seems to be the metaphor for the film, which appears to be staged for the most part via tremendous studio sets. I mention this because such an arrangement allows for the world in which we inhabit to be entirely controlled by the film-makers - a village straight out of fairy-tale, a snowy-landscape made from every Christmas nightmare, and an autumnal air of folk-horror. Granny's stories/warnings permeate the narrative - Stephen Rea's travelling man marries Kathryn Podgson's young bride but disappears, only to return years later as a werewolf. In a second cautionary tale, the Devil (Terence Stamp) offers a young man a lethal potion. The third features a heavily pregnant enchantress 'done a terrible wrong' who arrives at (the child's father) an aristocrat's wedding party and transforms everyone into wolves. The final tale features a she-wolf (Dax), who ascends from 'the world below to the world above' meaning no harm, yet is shot by ignorant villagers.The stories are potent, haunting, mesmerising. The effects and transformations are excellent (particularly Rea's character - his werewolf alter-ego is beheaded, which lands in a vat of milk, only to surface as his human head once more) and the atmosphere absorbing. But what does it all mean? "(Men) are as nice as pie until they've had their way with you; once the bloom is gone, the Devil comes out," warns Granny. So, anti-men then? A coming of age parable? Certainly the Hammer-style horror-trappings and Red Riding Hood motifs seem only a convincing canvas on which to broadcast other things - a fear of adulthood, perhaps? Or maybe, given her ultimate fate, Granny's warnings are proven to be worthless? Whatever, Angela Carter and Neil Jordan's screenplay is an unspecific nightmare world of mindfulness and possibilities and remains not only one of the most original takes on the werewolf myth, but one of the most artistically successful too. Wonderful and extraordinary. An adult fairy-tale indeed.

A teenage girl (Sarah Patterson) in a country manor falls asleep while reading a magazine and she has a disturbing dream involving wolves which appears to take place in the woods visible from her bedroom window.How is it that after so many years as a horror fan, this title has escaped me? I may have vaguely heard of it, but certainly never saw it or had any reason to seek it out. Gee, I wish I had known about this much sooner.While the narrative is not very straightforward, and at times a bit confusing with its story-within-a-story structure, it is such a great blend of horror and fantasy. Horror fans get the werewolf, the gore effects, and some really cool transformation scenes. Fantasy folks get vibrant colors (especially red), and very dreamlike atmosphere.David Warner and Terence Stamp both have smaller roles, but add a bit to the picture that only they can. Angela Lansbury has a bit bigger role, though it is not one of her more flattering.As far as the so-called "wolf cycle" of the early 1980s goes, this has to be among the top three released at the time, perhaps second only to "An American Werewolf in London". Truly art in motion.