Children of the Full Moon

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.

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.

Tom Martin (Christopher Cazenove) and his wife Sarah (Celia Gregory) are taking a country drive when his car loses control.

Stranded in the middle of nowhere, they come across the country house where Mrs Ardoy (Diana Dors) is the over friendly housekeeper.

She invites them in to use the phone. With night encroaching she asks them to stay the night.

Also staying in the house are eight creepy children, they are fostered according to Mrs Ardoy. They have a taste for raw meat.

Sarah also develops a liking for raw meat after she was attacked by something in the middle of the night. While Tom ended up in hospital after he tried to clamber in from the outside and fell.

It is just now raw meat Sarah now like. She also now has a strong sexual appetite and a yearning to return to the country house.

Slightly sinister as the ever cheerful Mr Ardoy talks about her family's Hungarian roots. It is a werewolf story with a dark ending but I did thing it was flawed.

There was no reason to keep Tom alive after he fell. Even when Tom meets the the woodsman and his big chopper. You would think he would get the hell out of there.

The eighth episode of "Hammer House of Horror" was lacking the usual gore that the series has had previously, but I wonder if it might be that I was watching a cleaned up version. Never the less it was a decent episode, with the typical dark resolution.

A newlywed couple, Tom (Christopher Cazenove) and Sarah (Celia Gregory), lose control of their car on the way to a West Country holiday cottage. Though they escape without injury, the car is unusable, so they wander the woods looking for some form of civilisation. They happen upon a large manor house, in which a cheerful matron, Mrs. Ardoy (Diana Dors) looks after a large number of young children. After accepting an offer to stay the night, Tom is attacked in the woods by mysterious assailant, and on his return to the house - the pair hear the howls of a wolf.

Actually, that's just the first half of the story, I was pleasantly surprised by the mid-episode shift that sees them dismiss all of the above, only for it to return in typical dark fashion. Though the best known stars are in minor roles, that being Robert Urquhart's Harry and Dors' Mrs. Ardoy, it's Cazenove and Gregory that carry the whole episode. Gregory in particular has lots to do and though I thought the scenes when she's being menaced weren't particular convincing, the rest of the time she's an alluring presence. (Although, again, I think the edited version I saw might have made her a little more chaste than I would usual expect from Hammer).

Other than that, it was an OK episode. It's a little unfortunate that the title and pre-credits scene give the Werewolf game away so early, it might have improved the manor house scenes had we not known what was coming. It's nicely done, but not so well that I'd recommend hunting it down.

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.