A bold fantasy horror tale with sexual overtones from director Neil Jordan that crosses Legend of the Werewolf with Red Riding Hood.
An inconsistent pace is sometimes as torpid as the bizarre, almost medieval background music, and not all the acting matches that of Angela Lansbury’s faintly evil Granny in quality, who enjoys terrorising her beautiful adolescent granddaughter, Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) with grim and sexy stories of wolves and is destined to come to a sticky end.
During an erotic confrontation between the wolf and a surprisingly willing Rosaleen she is so taken with the creature (sensuously played by Micha Bergese, a dancer with the Mantis ballet company) that she doesn’t seem to care that he has just beheaded naughty old granny.
The special effects are gruesomely vivid, and the film successfully creates a fairytale horror environment inhabited by wolves, snakes, polecats, owls and toads, hopping, prowling and slithering round the crooked houses of the forest.
An early sequence with the heroine’s sister being pursued by wolves through a nightmare toyland is the most fully realised, although the settings throughout are vividly – if gloomily – imaginative in the Caligaristyle.
Granny
Angela Lansbury Father
David Warner Old Priest
Graham Crowden Young Bride
Kathryn Pogson Young Groom
Stephen Rea Mother
Tusse Silberg Huntsman
Micha Bergese Rosaleen
Sarah Patterson Alice
Georgia Slowe Amorous Boy’s Father
Brian Glover Amorous Boy’s Mother
Susan Porrett Amorous Boy
Shane Johnstone Witch Woman
Dawn Archibald Wealthy Groom
Richard Morant Wolfgirl
Danielle Dax Devil Boy
Vincent McClaren Dowager
Ruby Buchanan Ancient
Jimmy Gardner Eyepatch
Roy Evans Lame Fiddler
Edward Marksen Blind Fiddler
Jim Brown
