The actors are extravagantly good: Hauer, as always, with a sense of intelligence behind his physical exploits; Pfeiffer, strong and exquisite, and Broderick, embroidering on his role as go-between, is irresistible, comic and wistful by turns.

Here is the kind of elaborate, gothic tragedy that fuels Germanic operas and Heavy Metal ballads — the lovers who can remain together but forever be apart.

Unfortunately, director Richard Donner never quite gets the tone right, and the pace is positively stuporous. The horses gallop, but the film barely canters.

Michelle Pfeiffer as the title's pretty predator and Rutger Hauer as a legendary lycanthrope give human poignancy to this medieval fairy tale about lovers cursed to shape-change into animals.