A Companhia dos Lobos

The company of Wolves. why is it so underrated? A simple low budget sweet tale that everybody knows cleverly put together into this horror masterpiece with a few more short stories added. Special Effects are great. I love the first story the most where they cut the Werewolves head off and it turns back human. I'm probably going to upset a few people now when I rate the special effects more than In An American Werewolf In London. But the best bit if all is all the god damn German Shepherds jumping through the window at the end. Believable as Wolves Not - but still such a delicious, entertaining, humorous and gory. The Company Of Wolves is OK in my book.

The company of wolves is very far from being the typical movie about werewolves, it's very different from films such as An American Werewolf in London or The Howling. This film is full of symbolism, it's a kind of rewriting of Perrault's Little Red Ridding Hood with Freudian elements. The film was directed by Neil Jordan, but in it we can notice the writing of Angela Carter, an author who is mainly interested in rewriting folklore myths from a feminist point of view. If you see this film you will enter a world of magic, of dreams, not only by means of the script, but also by the settings, which are really wonderful. The film itself deals with the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence, with all its sexual connotations, and the loss of innocence. When we become adults we realize life is not a magic tale. All this is treated from a feminist point of view, the main character is a girl who dreams about several stories with werewolves. Visually the movie is incredible, and it manages to reflect the symbolism of woods, the mixture of light and darkness, the magic creatures which live there during the night and the dangerous inside them especially for the girls who don't follow the path. From my point of view the film is one of the best dealing with the myth of werewolves, mainly because the film is a metaphor of life, of the human specie, all of us have an animal inside.

Overall this film is pretty good; I wouldn't say it rivals "American Werewolf in London", or even "Dog Soldiers", but it's a fun fantasy horror flick. Though the film is only an hour and a half long, it does tend to drag in a few places, but overall it's worth your time. Great practical effects, atmospheric production design, and inventive storytelling make this film enjoyable, particularly for fans for gothic fantasy and horror.

I cannot recommend this movie highly enough.

The Company of Wolves is Little Red Riding Hood, expanded into it's essential truth, and told on the screen as stories within a dream. Everything is here; the girl, the wolf, the mysterious and terrible Wald that vomits up the kind of black myths which only inhabit the inner world of young girls and midieval Germans.

Angela Lansbury is Granny, the role she was born to play; "Never stray from the path, never eat a windfall apple, and never trust a man whose eyebrows meet."

I'd didn't realize how numb I had become to CGI until I watched this movie with it's meaty animatronics. Also featured is a very large and diverse cast of real animals, most of whom make brief cameos as portents in obscure corners of the frame. Man, there's nothing for communicating animalness like real animals. It must have been a pain to choreograph the animals in the movie, but so worth it.

If you've noticed that the more rich people get, the less able they are to distinguish human beings from animals (Picture: a dog, dressed in a sweater, seated at a high chair in a restaurant, eating off the table out of a crystal bowl. This actually happens in the tonier and more depraved neighborhoods in America) then you will love the 19th century wedding scene.

A true fairy tale doesn't have a moral, but it does have rules. "Mummy, does daddy hurt you when he... it sounds like... the beast Granny talked about." "Your Granny ... knows a lot, but she doesn't know everything. And if there's a beast in men, it meets it's match in women too."

Hahaha fair enough.

What a weird fairy tale: director Neil Jordan (Interview with the Vampire) seems to have had the intention of taking a Freudian approach to the story of 'Little Red Riding Hood'. The result is an almost surreal collection of stories about rather testosterone driven werewolves, who all have a little more on their minds than 'just' to kill. If you like old school practical effects and transformations, this film has 'em by the truck load (although they do seem a little dated by now). Not everything works in this strange tale; the mix of sexual symbolism, poetic beauty and gory horror moments seems a bit forced at times - but when it does work it's utterly fascinating. For fans of the weird and lovers of the pre-CGI era, this is a rare treat. 7 out of 10.

Favorite films: http://www.IMDb.com/list/mkjOKvqlSBs/

Lesser-known Masterpieces: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070242495/

Favorite Low-Budget and B-Movies: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls054808375/

Favorite TV-Shows reviewed: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls075552387/