Children of the Full Moon

Newlyweds Tom and Sarah set off for a small break in the country, their car spins out of control, and they end up seeking help in a nearby House, owned by the strange Mrs Ardoy.

Love it or hate it, Children of The Full Moon is without a doubt one of the more memorable episodes, it is loaded with atmosphere, it's decidedly eerie, but it doesn't take itself too seriously.

The game changer, the element that made this one a little different, for me, was the children, they're all so well presented and innocent looking, they somehow manage to unnerve.

One gripe, it's get another out of control car, it seems almost every other episode features a car that's gone out of control.

The makeup is a little on the raw side, so don't expect any kind of special effects, all I'd say is that the makeup team did a fine job with the resources they had to hand.

Hammer did Cannibalism, voodoo, and possessed children, as well as several other expected themes, it was kind of obvious that there'd be a werewolf theme, but it works well.

Christopher Cazenove and Celia Gregory are very good here, Diana Dors stole the show for me as Mrs Ardoy, what a glorious actress she was.

Thoroughly enjoyable, 8/10.

I don't think I will ever forget the first and only time I saw this mini horror movie. It was when I was 12 or 13 years old, and I was up late one night because I just couldn't sleep. I was watching the boob-tube around 1 or 2 in the morning, and I saw the start of this movie on TBS. I am not a big fan or horror movies, but for some reason I stuck around and watched it.

I remember the plot vividly. A young married couple are traveling through a remote part of England when their car stalls. They go in search of help in the woods, and find a mansion filled with children and a kindly old lady (maybe a little TOO kindly). They spend the night at the mansion, and learn that all of the parents of the children living their died mysteriously. One little girl even proceeds to tell about her own mother, who was just a beautiful as the visiting lady. Although the family living there is odd, the lost couple gives in to their agressive hospitality. During the night, a horrific event takes place and the young wife is raped by a werewolf.

The couple leaves the next day. The young wife ends up pregnant (due to the rape) and strangly drawn back to the house. She cannot stop talking about it, which drives a wedge between the woman and her husband. Eventually, near the end of the her pregnancy, the wife goes back to find the house. Her frustrated husband follows. The wife finds the house and is invited back in, and by some odd coicidence she goes into labor. Instead of calling the doctor, the kindly old woman offers to help deliver the baby. The young wife dies in childbirth, and the old woman remarks how the baby, a daughter, will make a fine addition to the family. The husband, meanwhile, gets close to the house and never gets in; a werewolf tracks him down and kills him. As it turns out, the children are wolves, too, and the parents are their prey. The new baby will be a wolf, too.

This movie is very unusual. First, the plot is pretty twisted. The movie iteself is also virtually unknown, as I cannot find any information about it on any other website besides distribution and limited cast information. I don't even remember the names of the characters, and I remember only a little about the old women (I have seen her act before) and the name Simon MacCorkindale, who is one if my favorite actors. I also remember the movie ending just as quickly as it began- it's only 60 minutes long, which is unusually short for a movie.

Overall, I liked the movie and I hope to see it again someday in the future now that I have more information about it. I have no idea why, but I never forgot it.

It's that old plot device again, the one that has served many, many horror writers over the years ... a couple travelling through the countryside has car trouble, pulls over, and discovers a secluded house in the middle of nowhere. Either the house has no phone or they simply can't reach anyone, so they are forced to stay the night.

So cue the vampires, ghosts, demons ... or in this case a family of werewolves. The supposed owner of the house is an unnervingly friendly old lady played excellently by famous actress Diana Dors, just a few years before her death. She is step mother to eight creepy children. The couple become increasingly worried as strange things start happening. The husband is attacked by a strange creature in the woods, the wife has some odd encounters with the children, and eventually they are locked in their room. He tries to climb out of the window and ends up unconscious on the floor below while she is raped by a werewolf.

Already there's some pretty twisted stuff going on, enough to make me think this could be a great werewolf story. Anyway, the couple then end up in a hospital, the wife seems to have no memory of the events, claiming they simply crashed the car, and the husband thinks it was a dream. Over the next month or so she begins to act strangely, eating lots of meat and increasing her sexual appetite. However, just as it starts to get interesting ... it's the end of the episode. D'oh! I understand that there's only so much you can fit in to an hour-long episode, but if they'd just cut down on the boring scenes it could have all led to a great climax and ended up as a well-constructed, original werewolf story rather than just an interesting idea. Oh, well. I guess if you have nothing better to do, you might want to give this one a look, but don't go out of your way.

CHILDREN OF THE FULL MOON is a well-plotted episode of TV'S HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR and one that packs a heck of a lot of narrative twists and turns into its short running time. The storyline involves a young couple whose car breaks down and who subsequently find themselves staying at the home of a friendly old lady who cares for a large brood of children. Before long they find themselves menaced in the woods by hairy beast-men and realise something very odd is going on.

I enjoy Hammer's reworking of traditional horror themes in this TV series and CHILDREN OF THE FULL MOON is no exception. Expect dense plotting, dumb characters, cheap but cheerful make-up effects, and a general spooky atmosphere that works to the movie's advantage. The casting director did a good job with a central role for the effective Diana Dors, Christopher Cazenove playing the out-of-his-depth hero, and an appearance from Robert Urquhart (who starred in Hammer's first horror flick THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN all those years before).

It was probably watching the Hammer House of Horror TV series as a kid in the 1980's that laid the foundations for my life long love affair for the genre. And this werewolf episode is one of the better ones. Yes, it's predictable and the make up is more old Universal than say The Howling or American Werewolf (which of course were made after this). But it is well acted, atmospheric, creepy and pretty shocking. Having children that are in fact monsters is always going to increase the scare factor. A nice little werewolf tale in well under an hour.