Director/Screenplay/Producer/Photography – Charlie Steeds, Music – Simone Cilio, Creature Effects – Midnight Studios FX (Designer – Kyle Thompson). Production Company – Dark Temple Motion Pictures/High Fliers Films.
Cast
Reece Connolly (Archie Whittock), Tim Cartwright (Horrace Raycraft), Natalie Martins (Jane), Emma Spurgin Hussey (Martha Hogwood), Jessica Alonso (Minnie), Mark McKirdy (Reverend Gilbert Pankhurst), Rory Wilton (Bernard Bagley), Barrington de la Rouche (Vincent Hogwood), James Swanton (Willie Rider), Sam Lane & Derek Nelson (The Werewolves)
Plot
The 19th Century. Archie Whittock has been arrested and is taken away escorted by Parish Councilman Horrace Raycraft where he is to be hung for murder. Archie protests his innocence and says that he was only defending himself from a monster. They are forced to stop for the night at the Grittleton Marsh Inn, where they are welcomed by the sinister hosts, brother and sister Martha and Vincent Hogwood. They are warned to flee by other guests and the prostitute Minnie because tonight is the Blood Moon. However, as Archie discovers, the Hogwoods have slaughtered the coachman and the horses and are intending to sacrifice them to the werewolves that roam the forest.
Charlie Steeds is a rising British director who makes genre material on medium budgets. Steeds has put out a surprising body of films in the last few years including Deadman Apocalypse (2016) but quickly moved to strength with the likes of Escape from Cannibal Farm (2017), The House of Violent Desires (2018), Winterskin (2018), The Barge People (2019), Death Ranch (2020), An English Haunting (2020), Vampire Virus (2020), Werewolf Castle (2021), Freeze (2022), The Haunting of the Tower of London (2022), Gods of the Deep (2023), He Sees You When You’re Sleeping (2024), Lord of Wolves (2024) and Night Harvest (2024).
Here Charlie Steeds makes a Werewolf Film. This is a genre he has returned to again with Werewolf Castle (2021) and Lord of Wolves (2024). By its very title A Werewolf in England, the film harkens back to the classic An American Werewolf in London (1981), the difference of course being that this is actually an English-made production as opposed to one about Americans visiting England.
Steeds gives the film an unspecified 19th Century setting. The film has been shot on location at The Priory Hotel, a former monastery in Caerleon, Wales that dates back to the 12th Century, which Steeds and his set designers have transformed into the film’s 19th Century inn in the forest. Beyond the coach and costumes, the film does an effectively economic job of suggesting the 19th Century.
Werewolf on the attack
What also surprises about A Werewolf in England is that Charlie Steeds takes a broad, often quite comedic playing, something he has never done in his previous films. This is not quite full Horror Comedy territory but the characters all come with a frequently bawdy spin, while the script outfits the show with a range of colourful types whose interactions are played with a great deal of vigour by all involved.
By the time the horror element arrives, all of this tips over into what could almost considered a full-on Grand Guignol playing, especially the scenes fighting around the hallway with landlady Emma Spurgin Hussey wielding an axe. The werewolf scenes are more standard and by the book – although Steeds does give us scenes with one of the werewolves taking a crap (which must surely be a first for the genre) where Tim Cartwright naturally gets covered in werewolf poo. The werewolf makeups are of variable effectiveness – the body doesn’t quite seem right is all I can say – but at least Steeds builds everything to a reasonable siege climax.
