The Curse of the Werewolf Review

Review of The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) by screenqueeen: 👍 3.5/5

HOOPTOBER 8.0 DAY 5 26 DAYS REMAIN

This should get more recognition for its genesis of a truly miserable creature born of ill repute and under an actual bad sign...on Christmas day. The tragic aspect of the story becomes slightly hidden underneath the need to get across about 3 full generation's worth of time, not even arriving to the character's arc until roughly halfway into the 2nd act. It gives it a feeling of an epic but the scope is decidedly smaller in scale as it only applies to the small town where Leon was born and grew up in.

Reed's personal doom is all over this movie with Leon's day job duties plus his uncomfortable situation in a gambling tavern, where his coworker Jose disappears into the bottle just as soon as they arrive (which more directly mirrors Reed's binging habit). CURSE specifically lays on its dread in carefully measured ways in a fashion that responds spiritually to KING KONG and Hugo's Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

The latter of those two novels specifically calls inspiration to the tragedy on display in The Werewolf of Paris, the novel this film is mainly based on. However the subject matter in Paris is much more gruesome than this gets even in its adaptation of misbegotten woe.