The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

This 64-year-old guy I know has told me the story at least twenty-seven times about how he saw The Curse of the Werewolf at the Saturday matinee in West Texas when he was a kid and the movie scared him so much that he couldn’t sleep that night. I like that story, even if I can sleep just fine after watching Oliver Reed wolf out in Spain during the horse-and-carriage days. Though only a little over ninety minutes, this moves at a pace that might turn off modern viewers. Oliver Reed doesn’t even show up until halfway through. Before then, the film is some classic Hammer atmosphere-building, scene-setting and cleavage in full color. It explains the origin of werewolves (or of this werewolf, at least) as being the product of rape that results in a pregnancy that comes to term on Christmas Day. A tainted birth on a Christian holiday gives you a wolf baby. Makes sense to me. It’s some good junk.