"Hammer House of Horror" Children of the Full Moon (1980)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Director:

Tom Clegg

Writer:

Murray Smith (screenplay)

TV Series:

"Hammer House of Horror" (1980)

Original Air Date:

1 listopad 1980 (Season 1, Episode 8)

Genre:

Drama | Horror | Thriller

Plot:

A married couple, lost in the woods, stumble across a creepy mansion and its inhabitants - an overly-kind old women and deadly wolf children that scour the country-side looking for victims.

Plot Keywords:

Couple | Forest | Stranded | House | Gore

Cast

Christopher Cazenove	...	Tom Martin
Celia Gregory	...	Sarah Martin
Diana Dors	...	Mrs. Ardoy
Robert Urquhart	...	Harry
Jacob Witkin	...	Woodcutter
Adrian Mann	...	Tibor
Victoria Wood	...	Sophy
Sophie Kind	...	Eloise
Matthew Dorman	...	Young Boy
Wilhelmina Green	...	Young Girl
Corinna Reardon	...	Small Girl
Daniel Payne	...	Small Boy
Natalie Payne	...	Irenya
Daniel Kipling	...	Andreas

Runtime:

USA:60 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Netherlands:16

Company:

Hammer Film Productions

Decent werewolf story.

It's that old plot device again, the one that has served many, many horror writers over the years ... a couple travelling through the countryside has car trouble, pulls over, and discovers a secluded house in the middle of nowhere. Either the house has no phone or they simply can't reach anyone, so they are forced to stay the night.

So cue the vampires, ghosts, demons ... or in this case a family of werewolves. The supposed owner of the house is an unnervingly friendly old lady played excellently by famous actress Diana Dors, just a few years before her death. She is step mother to eight creepy children. The couple become increasingly worried as strange things start happening. The husband is attacked by a strange creature in the woods, the wife has some odd encounters with the children, and eventually they are locked in their room. He tries to climb out of the window and ends up unconscious on the floor below while she is raped by a werewolf.

Already there's some pretty twisted stuff going on, enough to make me think this could be a great werewolf story. Anyway, the couple then end up in a hospital, the wife seems to have no memory of the events, claiming they simply crashed the car, and the husband thinks it was a dream. Over the next month or so she begins to act strangely, eating lots of meat and increasing her sexual appetite. However, just as it starts to get interesting ... it's the end of the episode. D'oh! I understand that there's only so much you can fit in to an hour-long episode, but if they'd just cut down on the boring scenes it could have all led to a great climax and ended up as a well-constructed, original werewolf story rather than just an interesting idea. Oh, well. I guess if you have nothing better to do, you might want to give this one a look, but don't go out of your way.