Curse of the Werewolf

(1961) *

Curse of the Werewolf is an excruciating endurance test that's so alarmingly dull, it feels like a movie you could fall asleep to in 7th grade history class. Fortunately it's not educational but it might as well be, what with the funny hats and white wigs and all. The first 7 hours (OK, it was more like 35 minutes) gives us the backstory of our werewolf's parents. His mother is a jailor's daughter and his father is a beggar/rapist. Disappointingly, the pace doesn't pick up much in the second act when our werewolf grows up, falls in love and engages in various meandering conversations about tea cozies and the like. As I recall, we were in the late 1700s at this point. The bottom line is that the werewolf in all his glory doesn't appear on the screen until the last 5 minutes of the movie.

Spoiler alert: He's quickly disposed of.