By Terry Sherwood
‘Even a man that is pure in heart and says his prayers by night. May become a wolf when the Wolf bane blooms. And the unauthorized rubbish is found. “. Not exactly Curt Siodmak who wrote the classic The Wolf Man for Universal Studios in 1941 or the previous Werewolf of London in 1935 but the premise of Adam Mawson’s short film The Moors.
The Siodmak film set the pattern of the tormented monster for cinematic werewolves till The Howling and American Werewolf in London came along and changed the game. Gone in the swipe of a claw was the conscience and morals of the monster to be replaced by a killing machine till usually the very end. Loping into the cinematic wolf mythos is The Moors who brings back the beast with practical effects, a tang of comedy and some social conscience.
Set in a country village plagued by a nocturnal hairy-handed gent who prowls the Moors finding victims most of usually people fly-tipping. One could almost sense a threat to some of the ‘ dreaded” second homeowners in small villages or resort towns who come in dirty up the place with their trash and animal excrement, ignore laws and traditions on paths, wild swim wherever they want, ignore property lines, torment the local folk, clutter up the business markets,live for a bit and then head off to their regular large city homes.
The Moors draw heavily from American Werewolf in London in look, style, tension and shot selection which the Director admits. It’s not the fact one does a giant homage to something that influences you, it’s how the work is executed on the screen. The Moors do it right with the fog-shrouded exteriors in the best Hammer Studios tradition.
Deaths on the bleak peat landscape are being investigated by the police in the early morning. In the dreadful moments, you don’t see the dismembered bodies only the reaction of the actors to what is under the plastic sheet. While this is not what some people will like in their graphic blood-letting Terrifier-style horror, the sequences do harken back to what is now termed Classic Horror. Hammers Dracula’s Prince of Darkness (1966) had a lovely moment when Charles Kent sees the mutilated body of his brother in a truck, Alan, with the sequence sold totally by actor Francis Matthews’s onscreen reaction Director Adam Mawson and crew do it well with suspense being built with terror-filled experiences of people on the Moors with their breath visible in the cold. Growls, the ominous shot of empty fog landscape, the sheer terror of impending death by claws
The music score blends somewhat well however the film seems oddly padded at the end only to the full version of a song played in the soundtrack.
Rest assured your gore hounds, the tension builds quite well with bits of the beast seen, the sounds of howling, and a brilliant pursuit sequence across the Moors with nothing but a flashlight guiding a would-be trespasser. The monster of course is obvious to the audience even with the end of walking up naked (not in a good way) on the Moor, spitting out carrion after ripping and tearing a backyard party to shreds. Plenty of blood is spilled, limbs twitching, and perhaps the most horrific is the sound of munching bone and flesh
The Moors is a short, effective, well-done banquet of terror for an audience and a beastie who wants to stop outsiders yet is one himself making it an interesting twist even if there is no wolf bane or Mariphasa, the full moon blooming plant to stop the transformation.
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