The Company of Wolves
Irish director Neil Jordan worked with feted English fantasy author Angela Carter on this visually ravishing anthology of horror-tinged gothic yarns, which revisit “Little Red Riding Hood” and other familiar fairy tales through an erotically charged, post-Freudian, feminist-informed lens. Angela Lansbury co-stars as a grandmother figure whose bedtime stories are seductive warnings about the dangerous allure of beastly, hairy men. Launching the career of teenage screen novice Sarah Patterson, Jordan’s ambitious reworking of literary tropes about haunted forests and lycanthropic lust features lavish production design by Anton Furst, who later worked on Tim Burton’s BATMAN.
Sarah Patterson, Angela Lansbury, David Warner
- Notes From Duke JohnsonA meticulously constructed, atmospheric, nightmarish dreamscape (both figuratively and literally). There is profound artistry on display here. It’s one of my all-time faves. Neil Jordan is a spooky Irish demigod (HIGH SPIRITS,INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, BYZANTIUM, etc.), and in my opinion this is his masterpiece. The story is patched together from several of Angela Carter’s short stories. The aesthetic is—chef’s kiss—legit goth-boy daydream fodder. Stanley Kubrick was so impressed with the film’s design that he hired the production designer, Anton Furst, to do FULL METAL JACKET. Shout-out to the practical creature FX and to the real-life pygmy skull that Terence Stamp, who plays the devil, holds in his hand. Plus, it has Angela Lansbury! I saw her on a plane once. No one else seemed to recognize her, and when she noticed me and clocked the indelible impact she had on my childhood swirling around in my eyes, she winked. For a moment it was like we shared a secret, and I’ll never forget it.
- Notes From Sophie De Rakoff“The worst kind of wolves are hairy on the inside, and when they bite you, they drag you with them to hell.” A gothic fairy tale, a werewolf classic, an infinity mirror of stories within a story, Neil Jordan’s THE COMPANY OF WOLVES was a low-budget British fantasy horror film that elevated the genre to such a level that it is now regarded as a true classic. A maximalist study in brocade and chintz, the costumes designed by Elizabeth Waller dovetailed perfectly into the New Romantic movement in fashion and pop culture that dominated in the early 1980s.
