THE Wensleydale cheese-loving Wallace (Peter Sallis) and his ever faithful dog Gromit - the much-loved duo from Aardman's clay-animated Wallace & Gromit shorts - star in an all-new comedy adventure, marking their first full-length feature film.

As the annual Giant Vegetable Competition approaches, it's "veggie-mania" in Wallace & Gromit's neighbourhood. The two chums have been cashing in with their pest-control outfit, Anti-Pesto, which humanely dispatches rabbits that try to invade the town's sacred gardens. Suddenly, a huge, mysterious, veg-ravaging beast begins terrorising the neighbour-hood, attacking the town's prized plots at night and destroying everything in its path.

Desperate to protect the competition, its hostess, Lady Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter), commissions Anti-Pesto to catch the creature and save the day. Lying in wait, however, is Lady Tottington's snobby suitor, Victor Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes), who'd rather shoot the beast and secure the position of local hero - not to mention Lady Tottington's hand in marriage.

With the fate of the competition in the balance, Lady Tottington is eventually forced to allow Victor to hunt down the vegetable-chomping marauder.

A number of writers collaborated with Wallace and Gromit creator Nick Park to craft the story and screenplay for The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

"It took a while to come up with an idea we felt was expansive enough to suggest a full-length movie," Park recalls. "We suddenly hit on this idea about a Were-Rabbit. You know, the Wallace & Gromit movies have always referenced other film genres, and we thought a great genre to borrow from would be the classic Universal horror movies. But, in our movie, instead of a werewolf, we have a Were-Rabbitand instead of devouring flesh and blood - in Wallace & Gromit's world, it's got to be something more absurd - we made it vegetables. It's a vegetable-eating monster so, in effect, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit became the world's first vegetarian horror movie."

Without question, the least challenging aspect of the making the movie was the casting of the title roles: Gromit, for the obvious reason that he never speaks; and Wallace because Peter Sallis has been the voice of Wallace since his inception.

Park affirms: "I couldn't imagine Wallace without Peter now. Peter is Wallace and vice versa. Back when I was in college creating these characters, Peter seemed like a natural for Wallace. I knew him from his (TV) series, Last of the Summer Wine, and his voice just stood out to me. I was a shy student with not a lot of money to make the film, but I wrote to him and he very happily obliged me."

Sallis recalls: "Nick Park liked the sound of my character on Last of the Summer Wine, and that was really what started it all. I went to the Beaconsfield Film School, where Nick was a student - this was back in 1983 - and we literally sat side-by-side and recorded A Grand Day Out (Wallace and Gromit's first short film) with a microphone on the desk in front of us, no fancy glass booth or anything like that.

"I would say the lines and Nick would interrupt and say things like, I think it would be better this way' "At first, I'll admit, I was just a little bit sceptical. I thought, This guy is a student here, and I've been in the theatre for, how many years?' "But it dawned on me, after a very short time, that he was absolutely rightand he's been absolutely right ever since."

Helena Bonham Carter, who voices Lady Tottington, and Ralph Fiennes, who plays her pompous suitor, Victor Quartermaine had been long-time fans of Wallace & Gromit, so both actors jumped at the chance to be a part of their world.

"There was never any question of whether or not I wanted to do the movie," states Bonham Carter. "I love everything Aardman (The Wallace & Gromit creators) does. Their films have such great heart and such a keen observance of human nature.

"They are very good at picking up on those little idiosyncrasies that make people tick, and with Wallace & Gromit, they hit upon two adorable characters who are a terrific double act.

"They are like a great comedy team who have a different way of communicating."

Fiennes notes: "One of the reasons I wanted to do this film was I particularly like this form of animation. Clay animation doesn't have the graphic slickness of other kinds of animation; the very fact that the animators have to animate each figure gives it a hands-on quality.

"There is something about it that is akin to a child playing with toysa feeling that you could possibly reach out and play with these characters.

"Then there is the sheer imagination and inventiveness of the Wallace & Gromit films. I was a huge admirer of the films even before this. I find the sublime silliness of the comedy to be very funny."