Spain: A wandering beggar falls foul of the sadistic Marques Siniestro and is flung into a dungeon, where he remains for years, virtually forgotten. Then a young mute servant girl also upsets the Marques and, to teach her a lesson, she is put in the cell with the beggar, who rapes her and promptly dies. The girl kills the Marques and escapes, but now she is pregnant by the beggar. It seems that her baby will be born on Christmas Day and local legend has it that there is only one fate in store for an unwanted child conceived in such circumstances and born on the Lord’s birthday…
Original trailer
Production Details
A Hammer Film production released by Universal Pictures
Copyright MCMLXI by Universal Pictures Company Inc. – All rights reserved
MPAA Approved Certificate
Based on the novel “The Werewolf of Paris” by Guy Endore
The characters and incidents portrayed and the names used herein are fictitious and any similarity to the names characters or history of any person is entirely accidental and unintentional
RCA Sound Recording
Technicolor 88 mins
Filming dates: 12th September – 2nd November 1960
UK Release: 1st May 1961
Studio:
Bray Studios, Down Place, Oakley Green, Berkshire
Locations:
Black Park, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire – Exterior
Callow Hill Sandpit, Virginia Water, Surrey
Sand and Gravel Quarry, Wapseys Wood, Gerrard’s Cross, Buckinghamshire
Stills from film
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Cast & Crew
Cast – Verified complete
Original Poster
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Footnotes
Before this film was made, Hammer planned to make one about the Spanish Inquisition, but there were rumours that the Catholic Office would take a very dim view of such a movie and try to have it banned. The project was therefore abandoned, but not before Bernard Robinson’s sets had been constructed. Not a company to waste resources, Hammer transferred the action of Guy Endore’s novel The Werewolf of Paris to Spain and Anthony Hinds wrote the script for The Curse of the Werewolf, the first of many screenplays written by him under the pseudonym John Elder.
Welsh actor Clifford Evans returned to Hammer in 1963 to star as the vampire-killer in The Kiss of the Vampire.