10 Most Ingenious Special FX In Horror Movie History

Continuing the trend for werewolf movies in the early eighties, The Company Of Wolves is, ahem, a different beast altogether, both Gothic and surreal. Based on the Angela Carter novella and directed by Neil Jordan, the werewolf transformation sequences in this film are exceptional and showcase the work of both production designer Anton Furst (who would win an Oscar five years later for Batman) and Christopher Tucker, the special effects make-up artist.

The Company Of Wolves takes the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale and reframes it as a metaphor for adolescence, sexual awakening and the dangers of "men who's eyebrows meet in the middle," expanding on Carter's feminist reimagining of cautionary childhood tales, first published in The Bloody Chamber. Here, the werewolf is graphically presented on screen, with two transformation scenes bookending the film.

The first sees actor Stephen Rea remove his clothes, then his skin, tearing at his face until his bloody and glistening musculature begins to expand, forming the wolf's muzzle and thick neck. This approach attempted to covey the very realistic physicality of the transformation, like An American Werewolf In London, while still retaining the elements of the lycanthrope folk mythology, of a man literally changing his skin.

The second sees the wolf bursting from the mouth of the host, using animatronic models of both actor and wolf: "Some men are hairy on the inside... " warns Angela Lansbury's expositional Grandma, and if Jessica Fletcher is warning you, you know it's serious.