This is an extremely low budget fantasy/horror film that fails at both genres. It’s not scary and it doesn’t have any of the magic of fantasy. I knew that going in, of course, but this is one of those films that bad in many ways but it competent enough in terms of the production that it is not an all time bad film.

This is one of those films that doesn’t know what it wants to be: it’s set in some vaguely medieval time and place but there are werewolves. But the werewolves behave like vampires only if they could survive sunlight so maybe actually they’re mostly just run-of-the-mill monsters. Why make a werewolf movie if you don’t even want to play with the conventions?

The acting is not good, though there are a couple people who are better than other but the accents are all over the place. The plot is also quite lazy: a werewolf raid requires a village to hire some knights (including one old dude) to fight them off. It’s the Magnificent Six only with werewolves that don’t behave like werewolves, and, um, a “quest.”

I have two favourite parts.

The first favourite part, and the nadir of the film, is when our hero is “climbing” up what appears to be a hiking trail, trying desperately to appear to be climbing up a cliff. There is a cliff next to him, that he is not climbing up, and the filmmakers seem to think that weird camera angles and bad acting add up to convincing the audience it’s steep. It’s such a bad seen it’s the reason to watch this movie. If the rest of the film was like this, it would be an all time bad film.

My second favourite part of the film is when he shows up at the titular castle, which looks quite small. But he enters and it’s not the same castle.

So, back in 1992 or thereabouts, I went to England for the first time. Our friends lived in Somerset at the time, which is not far from Wales. So we went to Wales for a day. We went to a coal mine and we went to Raglan castle.

And I’m watching this movie, and he enters this small castle and it turns into this large ruin and I say to Jenn “I think I’ve been there.” And sure enough, it’s Raglan castle. Somehow I remembered this place 30 years later. I am way too happy with myself.

Anyway, this film is just competent enough to not be absolutely terrible. But its pretty bad.

3/10