The Company of Wolves (1985)

'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.

Once upon a time, there was a up and coming director by the name of Neil who, for his sophomore movie, decided to create a dark fairytale based on a modern reworking of the classic tale of Little Red Riding Hood.He packed his film with Freudian symbolism—visual metaphors relating to it's central character's coming of age and inevitable loss of innocence—and filled it with wondrous, atmospheric imagery, effectively creating a disturbing and ethereal fairytale aesthetic. But as beautiful as his film was to look at, at it's heart it was still a load of pretentious and rather dull Gothic art-house twaddle.The narrative—a confusing dream-within-a-dream with interwoven stories recounted by various characters—quickly devolved into a surreal and plodding mess of trite, allegorical, feminist drivel that depicted men as beasts driven by uncontrollable lust. As for the much-touted transformation effects, they were less than special—mediocre animatronic efforts that paled in comparison to those other great werewolf films of the '80s (you know the ones I mean... they were fun, entertaining and made sense).

A young girl (Sarah Patterson) is warned by her grandmother (Angela Lansbury) about men, werewolves, and staying on the forest path. Very strange and not always coherent but undeniably intriguing. The movie is a series of stories/dreams full of symbolism, leading up to a variation of the Little Red Riding Hood story. Not having a linear narrative hurts it some, I think. But that's probably also one of the things pretentious types like most about it. It's a good movie but obviously not for all audiences. It looks terrific. There's a dreamlike quality about it that I enjoyed a lot.When I was a kid my older sister loved this movie and watched it frequently. I was never allowed to watch it but I would catch glimpses of scenes and I caught the part where Granny warns Rosaleen about men whose eyebrows meet in the middle being werewolves. For a long time I would think every time I saw a man with a unibrow that he might be a werewolf. Maybe I still believe it a little.

There's a family living in an English estate. The younger girl Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) is tired and starts to dream of a magical world. In that world, her older sister is dead. Her granny (Angela Lansbury) tells her stories of a werewolf (Stephen Rea) and a maiden. Granny knits her a red cape.This is a three layered world. The girl dreams of a world where the characters tell fables. It's probably one layer too many. Director Neil Jordan gives a much more sexualized version of Little Red Riding Hood. Sarah Patterson is able to project an innocent and sexual character. The big scene is when Rosaleen meets the Big Bad Wolf. I do wish that the rest of the movie had more of that energy. The other scene I liked is the Stephen Rea transformation. It's more bloody and grotesque than the regular werewolf transformations. It's very well done.