Editorials
Celebrating 33 Years in ‘The Company of Wolves’
“Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle.”
The early to mid-’80s was a glorious time for werewolf movies. Between An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Wolfen, and Teen Wolf, the advances in practical effects created the perfect environment for lycanthropic horror. Right in the middle of the werewolf’s prime was Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves, released in the UK on September 21, 1984. The surreal horror-fantasy made its way to US theaters on April 19, 1985, where it would slip under the radar to become one of the most overlooked horror films.
Based on author Angela Carter’s short story collection The Bloody Chamber, namely the stories featuring werewolves, The Company of Wolves comes across as an outsider because of its unique blend of both fantasy and horror. A strange coming of age story, and the horrors of burgeoning sexuality, clashes with the bloody violence of werewolves. It is Little Red Riding Hood meets carnal werewolves. It was too horrific for fantasy fans and too close to Grimm fairy tales with its dreamlike quality for horror fans. The critics, for the most part, ate it up, but fans weren’t quite sure what to do with it. That it was essentially an anthology film told in a non-linear, disjointed way made it all the more difficult to market.
Young heroine Rosaleen begins and ends the film in a modern setting, stuck in a fevered dream of living a small village surrounded by foggy woods, inhabited by man-eating wolves, during the middle ages. She and her Granny, played by Angela Lansbury, tell each other stories of wolves posing as humans. Mostly Granny is warning her grandchild of the carnal evils of men, hoping to impart life lessons, and Rosaleen’s stories tend to favor the werewolves and look down upon humanity.
The visuals and tone would make the Grimm brothers proud, but Jordan never waivers from the gory nature of what werewolves should be. The budget was low, and it’s fairly obvious that the quaint village and its adjacent wood was really a sound stage in disguise. Yet Jordan does a great job of elevating the film beyond its meager budget, save for a few obvious missteps (like coloring Belgian Sheep Dogs fur to make them look like wolves in certain scenes), and the practical effects of the wolves go a long way in that.
For all of the different segments featured, the werewolves all share a common trait; their eyebrows meet in the middle. Yes, this was the movie that made me scared of unibrows. The transformations change, though. In one story, a young Stephen Rea plays a groom that abandons his wife for the call of the moon. When he returns years later, he literally rips off his skin, before a muscle and sinew transformation sequence. In another, a wolf emerges from the man’s mouth, shedding its human skin. It’s a clever way to weave in werewolf mythology and solve the budgetary constraints at the same time. A lot of credit also goes to production designer Anton Furst, who did so much with so little that Stanley Kubrick hired him for Full Metal Jacket based on his work for this film.
The Company of Wolves also features a young Terence Stamp as The Devil, riding up in a Rolls-Royce in a scene, because why not? Strange eggs that hatch to reveal crying baby figurines, hedgehogs that spook wild men during full moons and giant toys that torment their owners, The Company of Wolves does everything in its power to convey that lucid dreaming feel. It succeeds too. Ginger Snaps wasn’t the first horror film to use lycanthropy as a metaphor for an adolescent girl’s burgeoning sexuality; The Company of Wolves was. It just took a period approach wrapped in a bizarre fairy tale nightmare. Lionsgate’s resurrection of the Vestron Video brand for its Blu-ray collector series is missing this Vestron Video release, and I hope it’s on their agenda. The Company of Wolves is a unique addition to the werewolf sub-genre that could use more appreciation.
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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