Post by Kaz ~:~ on Dec 5, 2016 12:04:10 GMT -6
Directed by: Terrance Fisher
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Plot Summary
The story is set in 18th Century Spain. A beggar is imprisoned by a cruel marquis after making inappropriate remarks at the nobleman's wedding. The beggar is forgotten, and survives another fifteen years. His sole human contact is with the jailer and his beautiful mute daughter (Yvonne Romain). The aging, decrepit Marques makes advances on the jailer's daughter while she is cleaning his room. When she refuses him, the Marques has her thrown into the dungeon with the beggar. The beggar, driven mad by his long confinement, rapes her and then dies.
The girl is released the next day and sent to "entertain" the Marques Siniestro. She kills the old man and flees. She is found in the forest by the kindly gentleman-scholar Don Alfredo Corledo (Clifford Evans) who lives alone with his housekeeper Teresa (Hira Talfrey). The warm and motherly Teresa soon nurses the girl back to health, but she dies after giving birth to a baby on Christmas Day (a fact that Teresa considers "unlucky" since the child was born out of wedlock).
Alfredo and Teresa raise the boy, whom they name Leon. Leon is cursed by the evil circumstances of his conception and by his Christmas Day birth. An early hunting incident gives him a taste for blood, which he struggles to overcome.
Soon, a number of goats are found dead, and a herder's dog is blamed.
Thirteen years later, Leon as a young man (Oliver Reed) leaves home to seek work at the Gomez vineyard. Don Fernando Gomez (Ewen Solon) sets Leon to work in the wine cellar with Jose Amadayo (Martin Matthews) with whom he soon forms a friendship. Leon falls in love with Fernando's daughter, Cristina (Catherine Feller), and becomes despondent at the seeming impossibility of marrying her, and allows Jose take him to a nearby brothel, where he transforms and kills Vera and Jose, then returning to Alfredo's house. Too late, he learns that Cristina's loving presence prevents his transformation, and he is about to run away with her when he is arrested and jailed on suspicion of murder. He begs to be executed before he changes again, but the mayor does not believe him. His wolf nature rising to the surface, he breaks out of his cell, killing an Old Soak and the Gaoler. Shocked and disgusted by his appearance, the local people summon his scholarly stepfather, who has obtained a silver bullet made from a crucifix blessed by an archbishop. Though torn with grief, Alfredo shoots Leon dead and covers his body with a cloak.
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Cast:
Clifford Evans as Don Alfredo Corledo
Oliver Reed as Leon Corledo/Werewolf
Yvonne Romain as Servant girl
Catherine Feller as Christina Fernando
Anthony Dawson as Marques Siniestro
Josephine Llewelyn as Marquesa
Richard Wordsworth as Beggar
Hira Talfrey as Teresa
Justin Walters as Young Leon Corledo
John Gabriel as Priest
Warren Mitchell as Pepe Valiente
Anne Blake as Rosa Valiente
George Woodbridge as Dominique the goat herder
Michael Ripper as Old Soak
Ewen Solon as Don Fernando
Peter Sallis as Don Enrique
Martin Matthews as Jose Amadayo
David Conville as Rico Gomez
Denis Shaw as Gaoler
Sheila Brennan as Vera
Joy Webster as Isabel
Renny Lister as Yvonne
Loraine Carvana as Young Servant girl
Charles Lamb as Marques' Chef
Desmond Llewelyn as Marques’s footman