The Company of Wolves, 1984
The true pick for greatest werewolf movie. All due respect for
The Howling and its legitimately terrifying transformations, and
An American Werewolf in London for Blue Moon ridiculousness and a quadruped approach to the beast, but this film is such a delight.
For all the visual excellence achieved by its older siblings,
The Company of Wolves outdoes them, I think, and the result is a perplexingly vivid gothic aesthetic full of grisly vibrancy.
Quote:
The Company of Wolves was filmed in Shepperton Studios in England. The film's cast was primarily made up of British actors. Sarah Patterson made her screen debut, despite being much younger than the kind of actress the casting director had been looking for, and likely too young to understand some of the film's more adult concepts.[9] Her youth also meant having to make special arrangements with her school in order for her to be away for nine weeks while shooting took place.[9] Northern Irish actor Stephen Rea had already worked with director Neil Jordan in Angel and would later work with him again in The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire and Breakfast on Pluto, amongst others.
Jordan worked for several weeks in pre-production with artist filmmakers Nichola Bruce and Michael Coulson to create hundreds of detailed storyboard drawings. Also involved with production was production designer Anton Furst and his draftsman Nigel Phelps, who would later go on to work on Tim Burton's Batman. The film's visuals were of particular importance, as Jordan explains:
The visual design was an integral part of the script. It was written and imagined with a heightened sense of reality in mind.[5]
In the DVD commentary, Jordan notes the difficulty of having to create the look of the film on a limited budget, having to create a fairytale forest out of essentially "twelve trees".[7] He nevertheless succeeded in creating a sunless, mystical, wondrous and claustrophobic setting saturated with fantastic elements and symbols.
The script calls for a great number of wolves to appear. Due to budgetary constraints and other factors such as cast safety, most of the 'wolves' shown in the film are in fact evidently Belgian Shepherd Dogs, mainly Terveurens and Groenendals, whose fur was specially dyed. In the DVD commentary for the film, Jordan notes the bravery of young star Sarah Patterson when acting amongst the genuine wolves.[7] Using particular light angles, the eyes of both real and "shepherd" wolves are made to glow dramatically in the film.
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It's basically Little Red Riding Hood (well, it's actually the Company of Wolves, a story by Angela Carter), among other tropes, a veritable hodgepodge of villages and wolf crying boys that the villagers will have none of.
Amazingly, even while drawing from all your werewolf themes, it also strays from the stylings of other films, becoming a distinct representation of the terror. Most important in this regard are the beasts themselves. The archetypal wolfman is nowhere to be found, and these fiends, "hairy on the inside" as they say, shred into existence like a skinned dog ripping out of a distasteful coat of human skin. Overall it's incredibly sexy.
If furry depictions of modern werewolfery have ceased to do it for you than this should be greatly worth your time.