The Movie

"The Company of Wolves" is a 1984 gothic fantasy-horror film directed by Neil Jordan, and starring Sarah Patterson (Rosaline) and Angela Lansbury (granny).

The film is based on the werewolf story of the same name in Angela Carter's short story collection The Bloody Chamber. Carter herself co-wrote the screenplay with director Neil Jordan, based on her own short story and her earlier adaptation of "The Company of Wolves" for radio.

Carter's first draft of the screenplay, which contains some differences from the finished film, has been published in her anthology The Curious Room (1996).

The Company of Wolves was filmed in Shepperton Studios in England. The film's cast was primarily made up of British actors. Sarah Patterson made her screen debut, despite being much younger than the kind of actress the casting director had been looking for, and likely too young to understand some of the film's more adult concepts. Her youth also meant having to make special arrangements with her school in order for her to be away for nine weeks while shooting took place.

Jordan worked for several weeks on pre-production with artist filmmakers Nichola Bruce and Michael Coulson to create hundreds of detailed storyboard drawings. Also involved with production was art director/production designer Anton Furst who would later go on to work on Tim Burton's Batman. The film's visuals were of particular importance, as Jordan explains:

The visual design was an integral part of the script. It was written and imagined with a heightened sense of reality in mind.

In the DVD commentary, Jordan notes the difficulty of having to create the look of the film on a limited budget, having to create a fairytale forest out of essentially "twelve trees." He nevertheless succeeded in creating a sunless, mystical, wondrous and claustrophobic setting saturated with fantastic elements and symbols.

The script calls for a great number of wolves to appear. Due to budgetary constraints and other factors such as cast safety, most of the 'wolves' shown in the film are in fact evidently Belgian Shepherd Dogs, mainly Terveurens and Groenendals, whose fur was specially dyed. In the DVD commentary for the film, Jordan notes the bravery of young star Sarah Patterson when acting amongst the genuine wolves. Using particular light angles, the eyes of both real and "shepherd" wolves are made to glow dramatically in the film.

Jordan notes how Carter was "thrilled with the process" of making a film, as she "had never really been involved with one." After the film, Jordan and Carter looked for other projects which they could work on together. However, no others came to fruition, partly because of Carter's later illness. According to Jordan, he and Carter discussed a possible adaptation of Vampirella, Carter's radio play which served as the original version of her short story "The Lady of the House of Love" from The Bloody Chamber.