The Wolfman cometh
Trashin tan: A torch wielding mob visits the victorian Romany encampment (French language version)
From the original vampire and werewolf films of the 1930s and 1940s to the modern day, Gypsy characters have always had bit parts in Hollywood horror films. On February 12th, the Hollywood remake of the 1941 classic horror film the Wolfman will be released featuring the cinematic debut of the Anglo-Romani language as well as one of the greatest collection of authentic Romany wagons ever seen on film.
Filmed at Pinewood studios in Buckinghamshire and in Wiltshire, the film tells the story of a man who experiences an unsettling transformation after he returns to his ancestral home in Victorian-era Great Britain and gets attacked by a rampaging werewolf.
When haunted nobleman Lawrence Talbot's (Benicio Del Toro) brother disappears without a trace, Lawrence returns to his family estate to investigate. Upon re-uniting with his estranged father (Anthony Hopkins), however, he discovers a destiny far darker than his blackest nightmares as he becomes a werewolf. As you can see from the trailer below, the producers spared no expense in making the Wolfman as realistic as possible, but they also went out of their way to represent Romany history and language properly too.
In May last year, as they prepared to film the dramatic police hunt for the Wolfman, Universal Pictures gathered over 60 authentic Romany wagons at Pinewood studios as a backdrop for a scene where a village lynch mob comes looking for the werewolf. Gathering wagons from across southern England, the producers employed the services of the South East Romany Museum in Marden. Kent and the Romany Life Centre in Cranbrook, Kent to recreate the exact look and feel of a Victorian Romany camp.
But when it came to the confrontation between the lynch mob and falsely blamed Romany community, the producers went further employing Gypsy actors Dean Loveridge, Sharon Loveridge, Damian Le Bas and Jake Bowers to coach a studio full of actors on how to swear and shout in the English Romany dialect known as Poggadi Jib. From calling Victorian police officers “jukel’s coaries” and telling members the local torch wielding mob to “jel and suv yer dai” the film features the choicest of Romany phrases never to be found in a Romany dictionary.
The Wolfman goes on general release on February 12th