For tonight’s October Challenge review it’s time to fix a gaping hole in my Horror viewing and check out the Universal Horror classic and one of the earliest werewolf movies “The Wolf Man” from 1941. This wasn’t the first werewolf movie as they’ve been around since 1913. “Werewolf of London” came out only a few years earlier in 1935 and that movie largely created the modern concept of the Werewolf including passing the curse from a bite and full moons triggering the transformation. This however was the gold standard and the most famous Werewolf movie for the next 40 years (Until “American Werewolf in London” came out in 1981)
Whoever Is Bitten By A Werewolf And Lives…
The Wolf Man was written by Curt Siodmak (Robert’s brother) and directed by George Waggner. The movie stars Lon Chaney Jr. in the titular role as “Lawrence Talbot”. The supporting cast included Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Bela Lugosi and Evelyn Ankers. Lugosi’s role is brief but pivotal. The movie begins with Lawrence’s return to the Talbot estate after the passing of his brother. He hasn’t been back for a while but he and his father (Played by Rains). Larry becomes infatuated with a local girl called “Gwen” (Ankers) and takes her and her friend “Jenny” to have their fortune read by some local gypsies.
While Jenny is having her fortune read, Larry takes Gwen off for a walk. They hear Jenny screaming and Larry rushes to her to find her being attacked by a wolf. Larry is unable to save Jenny but kills the wolf with his cane (A cane with a silver wolf head on it, purchased from Gwen’s shop earlier in the day). Having been bitten during the struggle, Larry is injured and taken home. The next morning the body Jenny is found alongside a dead gypsy that has been killed with a blunt instrument.
Lawrence is told by another Gypsy that he was bitten by a Werewolf and is now doomed to become one. This upsets Larry, who can sense something is wrong but is not yet willing to accept it. However over the following nights Larry finds he is transformed into something part way between a man and a wolf and though he has no memory of it, he has been killing people while in that form. Larry suspects the truth and as a good man at heart he is broken by it. This is a story that can only end in tragedy.
There’s Something Very Tragic About That Man
This is the archetypal tragic monster story. Larry’s battle is more of an emotional and psychological one than a physical one. From the moment he is bitten he is not the same. No longer bold, confident and charming. Instead he uncertain of himself and of the world around him. Now punished for his act of heroism in facing the wolf by being cursed until the day he dies. Lon Chaney Jr. performs his part perfectly and broadcasts an air of tragedy in every scene he is in after. The rest of the cast is solid, but outside the brief Lugosi appearance nothing particularly stands out.
What does stand out is the visuals. The sets are very well made, the use of fog and lighting make the whole picture very aesthetically pleasing and atmospheric. It would be many years before you could really pull something like this off in colour and this movie makes maximum use of the benefits of black and white. It’s the kind of lighting and shot framing used in this kind of horror movie that would later be a big influence of Film Noir directors.
Bark At The Moon.
Of course this is a very short movie at only one hour and ten minutes long. Fortunately the plot is very focused and straight forward, so there are no obvious holes. This was the standard Universal way of working for these horrors. To a modern viewer now it definitely feels a bit rushed, especially towards the ending.Much like with Frankenstein, most of the movie is the origin story and then it’s a rush to the finish line. In many ways it’s actually a very similar story to American Werewolf and the contrast between the two exposes the two main weaknesses, the first being the legnth.
The second weakness in comparison to modern movies is of course the effects. After American Werewolf showed us a full on Werewolf transformation and The Howling presented truly monstrous Werewolves it’s hard to look back at the limitations of 1941 and fully appreciate what they achieved. The Wolf Man make up does look pretty good and we do see a sort of transformation with spontaneous appearances of hair. The problem is when we see the original Werewolf it is a full on wolf (Or wolf prop for most of that fight). That made it seems sort of strange that Larry doesn’t go full wolf. I guess having Larry fight a man-wolf at the start would have made his skepticism not make sense.
Conclusion
Overall this is a great tragic horror that in some regards has aged badly but still largely holds up. Ultimately Werewolf movies are hard and most of them are not especially good, so that this early entry in the list is still in the top ten (Possibly even top 5) is a great testament to the quality of the film making. In it’s day I’d say this was a 7/10, but for the modern day I rate it a narrow 6/10.
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