The Curse of the Werewolf

A servant girl is imprisoned and assaulted by a beggar in eighteenth-century Spain, and the child born of it, on Christmas Day, carries a curse.

Terence Fisher spends most of the film on the tragedy: Leon is loved, is aware of what he becomes, and the werewolf is a burden rather than a monster, which is the older folkloric idea.

Oliver Reed was almost unknown and his face carries the film, particularly in the cell in the final act where he begs to be killed before moonrise. There is very little werewolf and a great deal of Reed.

Roy Ashton's makeup is good and used sparingly.

It was refused several sequels because it made less than Hammer's Dracula and Frankenstein films, which is why Hammer never made another werewolf picture.