LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF
Great freakin' werewolf...on the cover
The cover shows an entirely different werewolf than that which we see in the movie. Hrmph.
This is a pretty good role for Peter Cushing, playing a determined police surgeon in 19th Century Paris, trying to solve some murders which are of course perpetrated by a werewolf. (no, they're done by a leprechaun. Jeez, read the title.) This furry fellow in question is a zoo worker who ran away from the circus after he killed the one-man band in a lycanthropic rampage. (he'd been "wolf boy" up until that day) He develops a crush on a Parisian prostitute, and, well, you figure out the rest.
Cushing is good in this, with a role that thankfully doesn't reduce him to the cowering ninny we often see him play. The rest of the movie doesn't really impress that much, however. The werewolf looks lame, far more man than wolf, and wolf attacks are largely shown by zooming in on the werewolf's bloody teeth, which gets tiresome. There's some laughs, like when Cushing tries to get a photographer to take some pictures of some corpses (keep in mind that 19th-Century photography, at least according to this movie, needed fifteen-plus-minute exposures). But largely, it's a rather humorless and joyless movie. Other than Cushing and a good ending in the sewers, there's not much to recommend here.
Directed by Freddie Francis, whose work I'm not familiar with but I just thought I'd say that this man may well have the gayest name I've ever heard. Really, think about it. It's just gay on so many levels. I'm not complainin' or anything; it's actually kind of cool.