My favorite Irish film director is Neil Jordan, who has received a lot of attention for his contemporary melodramas, historical biographies, and sensitive transgender narratives. He also has a habit of regularly making some really gnarly horror and fantasy films, including the '90s version of "Interview With the Vampire." However, it was his werewolf picture that I was obsessed with as a teenager. In 1984 he made an adaptation of Angela Carter's short story "The Company of Wolves," a feminist take on The Little Red Riding Hood. He directed and co-wrote the film with Carter.
"The Company of Wolves" unfolds as a literal fever dream, offering several stories about monsters, wolves, and sexual awakening through a dark fairy tale lens. Most of the film is concerned with the familiar figures of a girl in a red hood, her storytelling grandmother, and the wolfish stranger met by chance in the woods, but in the nested realities of the additional stories told in the film, we also meet the distinguished Devil who arrives in a white Rolls-Royce, an enchantress who turns her betrayer into a beast, and multiple unfortunate creatures who are both human and wolf, or perhaps something in between.
The film is best known among special effects aficionados for its spectacular werewolf transformation scenes, including one where a snarling wolf muzzle erupts from the mouth of the huntsman as he violently sheds his humanity. However, other images have stayed with me longer - a woman's face smashing into pieces of porcelain when she's attacked, a wedding feast attended by wolves in human clothing, and human babies hatching from bird eggs. Jordan purposefully leans into the psychosexual symbolism, creating this uneasy twilight world where idyllic childhood fantasies are easily twisted and corrupted into nightmares. He also used this approach in later films like "The Butcher Boy," and "In Dreams," both exploring the psyches of disturbed killers.
Dark fantasy films were popular in the '80s, but few were as richly rendered as "The Company of Wolves." The surreal imagery appears throughout, often using disturbing juxtapositions and dream logic to impart a lasting sense of horror. This reflects the origins of many folk tales as morality plays and cautionary tales, the whimsical allegories having roots in much grimmer reality. Jordan's visuals have a beauty and a lyricism to them that is mesmerizing. I'm not fond of most werewolf films, because they're usually so focused on the monstrosity and gore. "The Company of Wolves" certainly has its share of blood and guts, but it doesn't forget about the seduction, that sweetest tongue comes before sharpest tooth.
In addition to the central narrative, the film features four stories told by various characters to each other, and there were a few more in early scripts that didn't make it into the film. They're variations on the same themes of love gone wrong and maturation bringing unexpected horrors, except the very last, which offers a more hopeful, conciliatory message. I love that "The Company of Wolves" heavily features the act of storytelling, and it's important who tells which story to whom, and what the motives for each telling might be. And characters who aren't telling stories are always offering advice and adages and explaining their own ideas of how the world works.
The budget on the film was low, and clearly most of the wolves in the film are actually large dogs with dye jobs. However, the practical effects work, the art direction, and the cinematography are all excellent, and the cast is fantastic. Having sturdy UK thespians like Angela Lansbury, Stephen Rea, and David Warner delivering the dire warnings about never trusting men whose eyebrows meet in the middle goes a long way towards setting the mood and tone. And it's astounding that this was Sarah Patterson's screen debut, playing our heroine Rosaleen, one of her only appearances in any film.
The moral, ultimately, is to beware of wolves in their many shapes and guises. However, wolves lurk everywhere, as the embodiment of our deepest unconscious minds, both in men and women. And I've never seen them summoned to the screen as beautifully as they are in "The Company of Wolves."
What I've Seen - Neil Jordan
The Company of Wolves (1984)
Mona Lisa (1986)
The Crying Game (1992)
Interview with the Vampire (1994)
The Butcher Boy (1997)
In Dreams (1999)
The End of the Affair (1999)
Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
The Brave One (2007)
Byzantium (2012)
Greta (2018)
Marlowe (2022)
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