Hammer does what Hammer does best, make a lurid horror movie with sex and lots of violence. Oliver Reed is the werewolf and he looks like Oliver Reed even in his werewolf makeup (ha ha good joke).
Anyway, the director Terence Fisher is good with this horror stuff and holds off showing the werewolf until the end of the film. The story is completely original and not a remake of the unimpressive Wolf Man film that Universal filmed back in the 1940's. There is lots of mumbo jumbo about good vs. evil and evil spirits inhabiting the bodies of innocent people to turn them into werewolves. It's all presented very soberly even though it's a bunch of nonsense.
When it comes to acting, Oliver Reed is in a class by himself. This guy just never heard of the word "restraint" when it came to giving a performance. Even in the love scenes he's still kind of a scary guy.
The film ends with the usual angry crowd scenes of people running around with torches and the silver bullet through the heart. Hammer wrote a new werewolf story but couldn't entirely let go of the old cliches.
91 minutes.
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