Short Film Showcase: The Wolfman

Filmmaker Tim Hope began his career experimenting with computer graphics and editing packages. His short film The Wolfman was apparently inspired by a performance piece that he and a colleague created and titled ‘Man-chine’, a hectic story involving a character comprised of part man, part machine. Hope was eventually inspired to transform his ‘soundscape-laden mechano-human exploits’ into a short animated film. The result is The Wolfman, the strangely disturbing tale of an astronomer whose love of the moon is so strong he longs to become a werewolf. I just caught this by chance, very late one evening on Channel 4, a few years ago and it has remained lodged in my head ever since.

The film opens with a creepy fairytale-esque scene in which a young girl gingerly picks her way through a spooky forest – all the while she is stalked by intimidating camerawork while a worrying nursary-rhyme warns about a mysterious man with ‘a hairy back.’ Something pounces on the girl and an increasingly irritated analogue that combines with stomach-churning sound effects (including some from The Shining) and layered 2D/3D animation are utilised to convey the rest of the story, which takes up with the deceptively soft-spoken astronomer. The unnerving and in your face sound effects have something quite guttural about them – the ever frenetic editing also helps enhance an atmosphere of carnality and forbiddances as the film roars to its cacophonous climax, with the lycanthropic astronomer bounding off into space ‘smashing planets’ and wreaking bloody havoc.

The Wolfman went on to win the Edinburgh Film Festival McLaren animation prize in 2000, and was eventually abridged and converted into an advert for playstation2. Deranged and bloody good fun. Check it out here. Enjoy.

The Ash Tree

1975 Dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark Part of the BBC’s annual series A Ghost Story for Christmas , which ran from 1971 to 1978 and featured some of the small screen’s most chilling moments, The Ash Tree was the last of several MR James adaptations directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. Written for television by David Rudkin, It stars Edward Petherbridge in the dual role of Sir Richard, an 18th century aristocrat who inherits the vast estate of his late uncle, and of Sir Matthew, his 17th century ancestor whose role in local witch trials, and the death of Ann Mothersole (Barbara Ewing), haunts Sir Richard. With a slim running time (just over 30 minutes) The Ash Tree is one of the shortest entries in the series, but it is also one of the densest. The amount of detail and information packed in, without compromising or diluting the impact of the source material, is admirable. Clarke manages to convey events and flashbacks by utilising an interesting narrative structure and some ...

Mandrake (2022)

Mandrake tells of probation officer Cathy Madden (Deirdre Mullins), who is assigned to help with the rehabilitation of recently released ‘Bloody’ Mary Laidlaw (Derbhle Crotty), who had been incarcerated years prior for the murder of her abusive husband. Rumours have long swirled in the local area concerning Mary’s dabbling in witchcraft and involvement in cases of missing children. No sooner has she been released, than the bodies of several local children are found in the woods near her farmhouse. As Cathy and local police delve deeper, the veil between real and imagined starts to fray and Cathy is drawn into a dark world of occult ritualism and blood sacrifice. Directed by Lynne Davison and written by Matt Harvey, Mandrake is a delicious slice of witchy, Northern Irish folk horror, dripping with atmosphere and arcane lore. While Irish horror is having a moment right now, with acclaimed titles such as Aislinn Clarke’s Fréwaka and Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother mining rich and cr...

Kensal Green Cemetery

During a recent visit to London, a friend and I decided to explore Kensal Green Cemetery in the west of the city. Founded as the General Cemetery of All Souls by barrister George Frederick Carden in 1833, Kensal Green was inspired by the garden-style cemetery of Pere-Lachaises in Paris. Comprised of 72 acres of beautiful grounds, it was not only the first commercial cemetery in London, but also the first of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ garden-style cemeteries established to house the dead of an ever-increasing population. Campaigners for burial reform were in favour of “detached cemeteries for the metropolis” and in 1832 Parliament passed a bill that led to the formation of the General Cemetery Company to oversee appropriate measures and procedures concerning “the interment of the dead.” The company purchased land for the establishment of Kensal Green in 1831 and held a competition in order to select an appropriate designer. Among the prerequisites in the brief provided to entrants, we...

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