Yay, we're doing this again! I am going to start seeking out weird old trailers to talk about, and I have found a few new sources for these; there are a couple of channels uploading a whole bunch of proper scans of old film reels, so I'll be using a few of those over the course of this month. Now for today, since we lost this year a couple of favourite actors of mine, I thought I'd include a trailer featuring the two of them together, as a sort of combined mini tribute. So in loving memory of David Warner and Angela Lansbury, this is 1984's The Company of Wolves.
It is so weird seeing the Cannon Films logo on this one, I keep forgetting that, though this was produced by ITC, they did the US distribution. It's very far from their usual fare though, and indeed from a lot of the 80s horror zeitgeist, something that you can tell the editors of this trailer were having a tricky time wrestling with. Though this film definitely owes a lot to the practical effects of the time for their werewolf transformations, owing a lot to the likes of An American Werewolf in London though not looking much like it, it's utterly different in style. Based upon the works of writer Angela Carter, what we have is a fairy tale adaptation far closer to the original text, but also taking an interrogative, deconstructionist angle, specifically in bringing the subtext of the stories right out to the forefront. As you can tell from that one sentence, quite a long distance from the slasher boom and creature effects revolutions happening at the time. As such, it was a much harder sell at the time, but I think this has aged well, to the point that I think it's my favourite of the 80s werewolf movies.
As for the cast members I wanted to highlight (and it is a terrific cast overall!), firstly David Warner puts in a fine performance, as the more caring father figure of the story. In fact, same year this came out, he played Bob Cratchitt in perhaps my favorite take on A Christmas Carol, and in many ways it's very similar to the way he plays it here. Warner was a fine performer, appearing in a lot of favourites of mine, and in a surprising range of roles. I would have first encountered him, unknowingly, in some of the cartoons I watched growing up, specifically Batman: The Animated Series as Ras Al Ghul, and Freakazoid as The Lobe. Over time though, I have checked out so many other works of his and loved them; The Omen, Time After Time, Time Bandits, From Beyond the Grave, The Man With Two Brains, the excellent Star Trek: The Next Generation two parter Chain of Command, and so much more. Recently, he had been doing much work with Big Finish Productions, even getting to play The Doctor himself, or rather an alternate universe Doctor, in their Unbound range. Apparently, there are things he recorded with them still to be released... including one for next year's anniversary where he acted opposite Christopher Eccleston! So yeah, one hell of a legacy, and so many ways we can keep his memory alive.
For his co-star who is sadly no longer with us, Dame Angela Lansbury, well firstly what a coup getting her for this film, a fine choice for the Grandmother character. This came out the same year Murder, She Wrote began, but even by then, she was a well-established name in film and on stage. We are talking about someone who got an Oscar nomination at age 17 for Gaslight, and that's not even one of her most iconic roles! I could go on about her various roles, from The Picture of Dorian Gray to The Manchurian Candidate, to The Last Unicorn, to Bedknobs and Broomsticks, to Death on the Nile- OK, I really need to stop because I want to highlight something else about her, namely that she was apparently one of the nicest actresses ever. Something of an icon to the gay community, she was one of the main celebrity names campaigning for various HIV and AIDS charities at the height of that crisis. She arranged for various older actors to have small parts on Murder She Wrote specifically to make sure they would have enough work done to get full union benefits and such. By all accounts, she was an absolute professional, and a lot of Jessica Fletcher's personality was truly hers. I wanted to mention this because, in this age of celebrity gossip, dark things being unearthed about them and such, we should note the times when the famous are and were good people, and by all accounts she was the best of them.
So, two fine performers (who incidentally would later appear in the same film again many years later; they're both in Mary Poppins Returns!), a fine dark premise, wonderful production design from Anton Furst, The Company of Wolves is one that I feel really needs to be talked about and seen more often. I know we've just had Halloween, but given we're moving into pantomime season, if you want something darker (perhaps less scary than this though; no Christopher Biggins in here!) for these dark winter nights, I recommend picking this one up. It actually has a new 4K restoration coming out from Shout Factory in the states, and I'm considering importing that one, should look great with a HDR lick of paint.
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