Benito Freire, a pedlar in a small village in northern Spain suffers from epileptic seizures and rumours start to spread that he may be a werewolf and responsible for a series of killings. The local Abbot is called upon to form a team to investigate, in an effort to halt the harrowing murders.
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Benito Freire, modest traveler who tries his best doing street trading of sacred images and errands along the 'camino de Santiago' in the early nineteenth century, is actually a solitary and unhappy suffering from a particular form of epilepsy that turns it into ferocious murderess of young women, with subtle pretexts, draws in its pilgrimage through the woods of Galicia. In spite of the confidence placed in him by the villagers that he frequents, the alarming disappearance of a young maiden, and strong evidence that weigh on his person, stir up a fierce manhunt that will lead to its inevitable capture. Based on the novel 'El bosque de Ancines' Carlos Martínez-Barbeito and inspired by the figure of the legendary bandit 'werewolf' Manuel Blanco Romasanta, the films of Spanish director Pedro Olea is an adaptation rather modest, which portrays the sad vicissitudes of a psychotic murderess Spain in the nineteenth century, trying to catch a reconstruction environment that evokes the spirit of the time between popular superstitions (the licantropismo) and the human drama of a 'be less' marked by the stigma of an unknown evil and terrible. Rather inconsistent and fragmented narrative level, it lacks the total lack of dramatic tension merely an elementary alternating convivial scenes and sequences that illustrate the mechanical simplicity rampage killings of the protagonist (limited to strangle the victims and take a nap, sic! ), lacking much in the development of a credible tragic subject (except for a brief prologue that exemplifies didactically childhood trauma suffered by us) as the pauperism of a staged purely illustrative and almost no digressions that emphasize the inevitability of the events narrated. The result is a collage rather static narrative sequences where it is entirely absent from the idea of mounting and sadly characterization and in particular of the protagonist, lombrosianamente presented as a poor demented afflicted with an incurable disease rather than as a mask monster brutal animated by the perversions of a ruthless killer intent (because then induce the unfortunate maidens to accompany him to the woods?). Are of some interest to certain scenes related to funeral rituals popular until a few years ago in the Mediterranean including the south of Italy (the mournful circle of men around the body of the young man at the beginning of the film, a scene that has a certain reliability anthropological) and the evocation of the legends about lycanthropy as a form of superstition tied to a dark interpretation of the epilepticus. Curiso role blond Presbyterian minister on the way to Santiago for the English character actor (Italian by adoption) John Steiner.The Curse of the Werewolf...in Galician sauce
Most effective matter of fact Spanish horror set in the mid 19th century and seemingly based upon a true story. Most convincing with ancient looking primitive village folk going about their very basic daily life and in their midst someone who, we have seen in the pre-credit sequence suffers a traumatic event whilst a young child. The implication is clear and gradually the ghastly tale unfolds as at first we seem to see the old peddler turn into a werewolf and kill and later clearly more the victim of his own being. Some of the village scenes are a little on the dark side but the woods look amazing and make for a superb setting for the various violent incidents, of which, it has to be said we do not see very much. The finale is a wondrous sight seeming as it is to be a realistic or even real version of what we have seen so many times before when the villages take up arms for the hunt.
If cinema is about moving your mind to another time or space, then this film is a masterpiece. Today, when you see an historical movie (at least an Spanish one), you can't help perceiving it just like several xxi century guys acting disguised like people of ancient times, but when you watch this movie you are literary moved 100 years ago, far way from your everyday life, and you can feel very well the darkness of these times, when the barrier among superstition and reality was confuse and someone like the mean character of the film, a miserable man unable to control his criminal impulses, could be confused with a "lobisome" (werewolf). In the other hand, on the contrary of most of American films, there is not unnecessary violence on this one and even when Benito Freire (the werewolf) is an assassin, as the film is going by you can just feel sorrow for him.
