by Samantha McLaren, Staff Writer

In 1957, a British film production company caught the watchful eye of Universal’s lawyers. That company was Hammer Film Productions, known primarily at the time for its adaptations of popular radio serials and TV shows. The public reaction to one adaptation in particular, The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), had given Hammer an inkling that audiences were hungry for horror, leading the company to tackle one of the most famous Gothic novels of all time: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).

Universal might have put its monsters back in the coffin by the mid-1950s, but it wasn’t about to let a contender encroach on its turf. To avoid a lawsuit, Hammer tread carefully, ensuring it only reproduced elements that appear in the novel — by then long out of copyright — and not in Universal’s Frankenstein (1931). The end product of this approach, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), is a lush and morbid adaptation of Shelley’s work, shot in vibrant Eastmancolor and boasting the first collaboration between Hammer’s soon-to-be stars, the immortal Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

The film was an enormous hit both domestically and at the U.S. box office, and Universal’s interest in Hammer began to take on a different tone. During the production of Hammer’s next big Gothic adaptation, 1958’s Dracula (released in the U.S. as The Horror of Dracula), the two companies struck a deal that would allow Hammer to dip into Universal’s monstrous bag of tricks. Hammer quickly got stuck in, producing The Mummy in 1959, based largely on Universal’s Mummy sequels. To complete its set, the next classic Universal monster movie to get the Hammer treatment would, surely, be 1941’s The Wolf Man. 

It wasn’t. Instead, Hammer set about adapting the 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris, written by author and screenwriter Guy Endore. 

The resulting film, The Curse of the Werewolf—Hammer’s only werewolf movie—would prove a very different beast to The Wolf Man. While its themes are similar (loss of control, repressed desire, the duality of man, and so on), its central transformation is not. Unlike poor Larry Talbot and most other victims of lycanthropy, The Curse of the Werewolf’s titular wolfman is not born from a bite. Instead, the screenplay (penned by John Elder, the pseudonym of Anthony Hinds, son of Hammer founder William Hinds) focuses on an altogether more unholy creature: the offspring of a mute servant raped by a beggar driven mad by years of captivity, then born on Christmas Day — “an insult to heaven” as local superstition would have it. The baptismal font boils when the baby is brought near. Jesus wept. 

Yet the child in question, Leon, is not a monster. Played first by Justin Walters and later by Oliver Reed in his first starring role, Leon is portrayed as sensitive yet troubled, plagued with nightmares ever since tasting blood (literally and quite accidentally) on a childhood hunting trip. Leon’s adoptive father, Don Alfredo Corledo (Clifford Evans), and housekeeper Teresa (Hira Talfrey) soon realize that the boy transforms with the full moon and attacks local animals. They do their best to protect and shelter him, but after he sets out to make his own way in the world, the now-adult Leon transforms in a local brothel and kills a sex worker and his only friend. Upon learning what he has done, Leon begs to be executed — even if it means being burned alive.

It’s a heartbreaking situation, conveyed expertly by Reed in a performance that already bears the hallmarks of the legacy he would go on to forge. Like the Jack Pierce-designed creature makeup applied to Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man, Leon’s furry transformation (created by effects artist Roy Ashton, in some of his finest work for Hammer) retains enough humanity for the actor’s facial expressions and soulful eyes to shine through. This is perfectly encapsulated in the opening credits, which feature an extended close-up of monstrous, darting eyes as Benjamin Frankel’s rich and unconventional score starts to play. It’s freakish, frightening. As the titles continue to roll, however, we see a tear drip down the creature’s cheek. Then another. This is not a creature to fear, we realize, but rather, to pity. 

Reed’s performance is far from the only thing that makes The Curse of the Werewolf stand out amidst a sea of Wolf Man imitators. Another major selling point is the sets, created by Hammer regular Bernard Robinson, who had a knack for making things look lush and detailed on a tight budget. Originally built for a scrapped Spanish Inquisition project, The Rape of Sabena, that the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) — not to mention the Catholic Church — was up in arms about, the sets were repurposed by the ever-frugal Hammer, with Hinds transplanting the action of Endore’s novel from 19th-century Paris to 18th-century Spain and adding a few “Señors” into the script for good measure. Throw in masterful director Terence Fisher, the man who had helped Hammer bring three classic film monsters into startling color so far, and The Curse of the Werewolf seemed like a guaranteed hit. 

But the warm reception it deserved would be a long time coming, thanks largely to meddling from the BBFC, which tore the film to pieces before approving it for release in 1961. The untampered-with cut wouldn’t see the light of day for more than 30 years, killing any possibility of a sequel during Hammer’s heyday. The company would make eight Dracula sequels, six further misadventures of Frankenstein, and three more expeditions with The Mummy. But it only ever made one werewolf flick, and it stands alone as one of Hammer’s very best. 

The Curse of Werewolf is a shining example of why the names “Hammer” and “Universal” are so often said in the same breath. What Universal did, Hammer iterated on, often exploring different paths branching off from the main road (for legal reasons or otherwise), sprinkling in its own ideas and flair along the way. So while The Curse of the Werewolf isn’t a Wolf Man remake, it’s worth adding to your watch list in the lead-up to Leigh Whannel’s reboot. The details differ, but the beating human heart is very much the same. 

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