The Curse of the Werewolf (Terence Fisher, 1961)

Oliver Reed in The Curse of the Werewolf

Cast: Clifford Evans, Oliver Reed, Yvonne Romain, Catherine Feller, Anthony Dawson, Josephine Llewellyn, Richard Wordsworth, Hira Talfrey, Justin Walters, John Gabriel, Warren Mitchell, Anne Blake. Screenplay: Anthony Hinds, based on a novel by Guy Endore. Cinematography: Arthur Grant. Production design: Bernard Robinson. Film editing: Alfred Cox. Music: Benjamin Frankel. 

Hammer Films thoroughly exploited the public taste for monster movies by borrowing story ideas from the classic black-and-white horror films of the 1930s and '40s that originated at Universal Studios. It gave Dracula and Frankenstein's creature multiple outings, but surprisingly only once made a film about a werewolf. It was a success, and launched the career of Oliver Reed, who played Leon Corledo, a young man afflicted by lycanthropic tendencies. Reed actually doesn't appear in The Curse of the Werewolf until well into the film, after an extensive backstory that explains how he became a monster under the spell of the full moon. That's the chief flaw of this otherwise solid, if not terribly scary film, which is handsomely photographed by Arthur Grant and moodily scored by Benjamin Frankel. The bulk of the narrative is handled by Clifford Evans as Don Alfredo Corledo, Leon's adopted father. Reed doesn't get a chance to wolf out until the very end of the movie, but he does so effectively.  

The Big Sleep (Michael Winner, 1978)

Cast: Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, Richard Boone, Candy Clark, Joan Collins, Edward Fox, John Mills, James Stewart, Oliver Reed, Harry Andrews, Colin Blakely, Richard Todd. Screenplay: Michael Winner, based on a novel by Raymond Chandler. Cinematography: Robert Paynter. Production design: Harry Pottle. Film editing: Frederick Wilson. Music: Jerry Fielding. 

Just don't. At least not unless you've seen Howard Hawks's 1946 version of Raymond Chandler's novel, which is set, as it should be, in Los Angeles. The shift of the action to London is disastrous, necessitating some lame exposition about why Philip Marlowe and the Sternwood clan are in England. Chandler's plot remains as enigmatic as ever, but in the hands of Hawks and screenwriters Jules Furthman, Leigh Brackett, and William Faulkner, we didn't much care whodunit and why. Michael Winner's screenplay just leaves us with a muddle that has no redeeming flavor and texture. Seldom has a cast of superbly accomplished actors been so sadly wasted as they are here under Winner's direction. 

The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971)

The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971)

Cast: Oliver Reed, Vanessa Redgrave, Gemma Jones, Dudley Sutton, Max Adrian, Murray Melvin, Michael Gothard, Georgina Hale, Christopher Logue, Graham Armitage, Brian Murphy, John Woodvine, Andrew Faulds, Kenneth Colley, Judith Paris, Catherine Willmer, Izabella Telezynska. Screenplay: Ken Russell, based on a play by John Whiting and a novel by Aldous Huxley. Cinematography: David Watkin. Production design: Derek Jarman. Film editing: Michael Bradsell. Music: Peter Maxwell Davies.

Oliver Reed, the bad boy of British movies of the 1960s and '70s, seems an odd choice as the hero of The Devils, Urbain Grandier, the "hot priest" who inspires lust in an entire nunnery but also goes to the stake as a martyr to the cause of individual and religious freedom. He also gives the most controlled performance in a film in which everyone goes well over the top, including Vanessa Redgrave, who does a lot of seething and writhing as Sister Jeanne, the hunchbacked prioress of said nunnery. Glenda Jackson was originally thought of for the role, but turned it down because she didn't want to play another madwoman after Peter Brook's Marat/Sade (1967) and Russell's The Music Lovers (1971). I tend to sympathize with her: The Devils became a cause célèbre when the censors took offense at its nudity and supposed blasphemy, earning it an X rating in the United States and Britain, but today, when it would receive only a rather stern R, it feels more like the product of a director given to a kind of adolescent excess. There's a smirkiness in Russell's approach to what purports, in an opening title, to be a true story drawn from historical documentation. David Thomson has said that Russell "is oblivious of his own vulgarity and the triteness of his morbid misanthropy," which is taking it a bit further than I would. I think instead that Russell celebrates vulgarity, but not with any sense of irony about it, to the point that the luridness of The Devils becomes boring. 

Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000)

Richard Harris and Russell Crowe in Gladiator

Maximus: Russell Crowe
Commodus: Joaquin Phoenix
Lucilla: Connie Nielsen
Proximo: Oliver Reed
Marcus Aurelius: Richard Harris
Gracchus: Derek Jacobi
Juba: Djimon Hounsou
Falco: David Schofield
Gaius: John Shrapnel
Quintus: Thomas Arana
Hagen: Ralf Moeller
Lucius: Spencer Treat Clark
Cassius: David Hemmings
Cicero: Tommy Flanagan
Tigris: Sven-Ole Thorsen
Slave Trader: Omid Djalili

Director: Ridley Scott
Screenplay: David Franzoni, John Logan, William Nicholson
Cinematography: John Mathieson
Production design: Arthur Max
Film editing: Pietro Scalia
Music: Lisa Gerrard, Hans Zimmer

"Are you not entertained?" Well, to answer the question Maximus bellows at the crowd: No, not very much.