Made by junior members of the York Apollo Cine Club, this is their take on the classic werewolf horror story.  Shot in black and white, and with the use of special effects, this atmospheric film tells the tale of a teacher who is cursed to turn into a werewolf when the moon is high.  The film was shot on location in York.   With thunder and a howling wind in the background, and a vision of a corpse in a coffin and a graveyard, the opening credits appear on screen: Roy Clinch Penny Nicholls...

Made by junior members of the York Apollo Cine Club, this is their take on the classic werewolf horror story.  Shot in black and white, and with the use of special effects, this atmospheric film tells the tale of a teacher who is cursed to turn into a werewolf when the moon is high.  The film was shot on location in York.   With thunder and a howling wind in the background, and a vision of a corpse in a coffin and a graveyard, the opening credits appear on screen: Roy Clinch Penny Nicholls Elizabeth Nicholls In When the Moon is High Photography Antony Booth Recording an Symonds Editing John Skelton Graphics David Porteus Directed by William Thomson A hand appears from under the lid of the coffin. A young couple, visibly in love walk hand in hand along the river.  Their walk is intercut with scenes of them cuddling on a bench, sitting at an outdoor café, and looking in the window of a jewellery show.  Then, while they couple are sitting near the river, the young man proposes, placing a ring on his new fiancé’s finger.  The couple is next seen coming out of the Odeon cinema in York where The Knack is advertised to be playing.  This is followed by the man in the coffin speaking out loud, “Fancy that.  I have been dead for just one month, and my daughter is engaged already.” He then explains how he came to be in his current situation.  The man says it all goes back two years when his wife died, leaving a son and daughter.  The man is walking along a country lane and across fields, looking up through the bare branches of the wintry trees.  The wind kicks up, and he seems to get disorientated.  He then appears to be attacked by an unseen creature that makes horrifying sounds.  Afterwards he says that his head felt strange, as he stumbles across the fields.  He staggers home, feeling strange, and makes his way up to his bedroom where he blacks out. In the evening a woman is seen to be leaving her house, and as she walks along a street, she too is attacked by an unseen creature. The man in the coffin states that the next morning he remembered nothing of the previous night, as we see his place of work, Woodfield College, from the outside and inside a classroom.  Back home he snoozes in an armchair as his daughter sits chatting with a friend.  He wakes with the strange sensation that there is something he has to do.  His daughter sees her friend off at the door, and he gets his coat and follows her as she walks home along the streets and through a wood.  She too is attacked by an unseen assailant, screaming as she is strangled.   The next day, while teaching a class, he reports that he feels full of life.  He then comes over feeling unwell and so dismisses his class early.  One of the students is late to leave the classroom and witnesses his transformation.  With the use of makeup and stop-motion animation, the man transforms into the werewolf, getting hairier and more terrifying as the transformation nears completion.  Unable to escape, the werewolf proceeds to strangle the student to death.  He then staggers out of the college, to a river, and across fields to a road where he is hit by a car, upon which he returns to normal.   From his coffin he explains that is how he ended up where he was.  He then says that now he has to be excused, as he explains that tonight is a full moon, and breaks out into crazed laughter.  As the church clock strikes midnight, he rises from his coffin. Title – The End