Saturday, October 09, 2010

The Company of Wolves

Now what was it Granny said about unibrows...
(1984) ***

This is a real jazzed up take on Little Red Riding Hood. Rosaleen is just getting to the age where boys are sniffing around and her womanhood is blossoming. Granny fills her head with stories of men becoming wolves as a warning for her not to be so trusting of them. Basically Granny has found a fancy and a little bit creepy way of telling her granddaughter that all men think with their dicks. She tells her that men are nice and sweet until you give it up to them, then they all become beasts. Of course she does this through a series of random stories. Though it pretty much backfires on Granny. Instead of getting scared Rosaleen's curiosity gets piqued. Granny warns her, if you meet a prince in the forest who has a unibrow beware, he's a wolf. Rosaleen doesn't care and goes on a picnic with the unibrow prince thus inviting trouble into her home.

Revelations that never made it into the Red Riding Hood story I heard growing up:

1. Some men are hairy on the inside.

2. Werewolves have unibrows

3. Granny is a frigid old bitch who hates sex

4. Red was going through puberty

5. She was also kind of a folklore slut

This was an unplanned watch. It just happened to come on the other night so I decided, why not. Really not bad either. Angela Lansbury does a great job as the weird old Granny. Puts a real nice jolt in the old fairy tale. I loved how the man/wolf transformation took place. The man got angrier and angrier, then started to tear off chunks of his own skin. He rips off his entire face and skinless begins to transform. The muzzle begins to grow and ears sprout from the head. Soon he becomes wolf. Not guy in a suit or Lon Chaney jr. wolfman but an actual wolf. This is perfect because it says hey, this isn't a werewolf story, it's a fairy tale remember. Granny wasn't eaten by a werewolf, just an ordinary wolf who talked and stole picnic baskets. Funny I don't ever remember watching this. I can't imagine how I missed it, came out shortly after “The Howling”.

6 comments:

50PageMcGee said...

by the way, congratulations to Catfreeek -- this review is the 10,000th post on Horrorthon!

JPX said...

10,000th post??? Holy crap! That's a lot of nerd talk! Congrats, Catfreek for hitting this milestone - great and funny review too - love the unibrow analysis!

Catfreeek said...

Woo Hoo!

Octopunk said...

That's amazing! It's so right that it's Catfreeek.

Somehow I never got around to seeing this movie, but there were so many werewolf movies popping up at the time I thought I did. I think Silver Bullet and this one were about the same time. Silver Bullet, bleah.

Landshark said...

This one looks pretty cool.

Whirlygirl said...

Congrats, cat!

Interesting movie. The pics crack me up.

Malevolent

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