The Wolfman(1941)

Always liked it.

Not really a horror or monster fan BUT this one I REALLY like from start to finish !
I really CARE what happens to this guy and feel for what he is going through … none of it is his fault... he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time !

Chaney at his best … perhaps even better than his Lenny Small in OF MICE AND MEN ! (Possibly !

Named a dog after poor Larry Talbot. Usually called him 'Lah'

And let's not forget Bela Lugosi's in the film

Not a screenshot from the film but too good not to share

"Even a man who is pure in heart
and says his prayers by night
may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
and the autumn moon is bright."

Perfect timing as I'm currently reading through Universal Studios Monsters - A Legacy Of Horror. Reminded me that I hadn't seen The Mummy sequels - or if I have then it would have been when I was a kid! So have ordered them for some October viewing. As for The Wolf Man >

The Definitive Midnight Monster.


WARNING - SPOILERS

Out of Universal Pictures comes The Wolf Man, directed by George Waggner and written by Curt Siodmak. It stars Lon Chaney Jr, Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Bela Lugosi, Patric Knowles, Maria Ouspenskaya & Evelyn Ankers.


"Even a man who is pure in heart-and says his prayers by night-may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms-and the autumn moon is bright"

Larry Talbot (Chaney) returns to his ancestral home in Britain after learning of the death of his brother. Looking to solidify his relationship with his father, Sir John (Rains), Larry also starts to fall for local antique shop girl Gwen Conliffe (Ankers). While purchasing a silver wolf headed walking stick from her he hears of the werewolf legend; about how a man turns into a wolf at certain times of the year. Later that night Larry takes Gwen and her friend Jenny (Fay Helm) to a gypsy fête out in the countryside, from where Jenny then gets separated from the other two and is attacked by a wolf. Hearing her cries Larry comes to her aid and kills the animal, but during the mêlée he was bitten and soon he finds that the legend of the werewolf is not merely hearsay.

In 1935 Universal Pictures were still on a crest of a wave with their forays into horror. However, their release of Werewolf Of London was met with poor box office returns and critical indifference. Rightly seen as a fine film now, it was back then deemed too similar to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931 Paramount Pictures) and some way away from the tone of Frankenstein, Dracula & The Mummy. It seemed that there was no cinematic life in some poor lycanthrope. Forward 6 years then, and springing from the brain of Curt Siodmak (Wolf Man has no direct literary source), a legacy was about to be born.

The Wolf Man, the character, in the pantheon of Univeral Monsters, is as iconic as his stable mates who blazed the trail 10 years previously. The film itself is a classic of sorts, but a long way from being a truly great movie. Good? Yes of course. Just not as awe inspiring as the legacy would have us believe. Waggner's movie is shot on a B movie budget, with himself only being a modest studio director: lets be honest here, he wasn't, for example, fit to shine the boots of Messrs Whale & Browning. His direction is competent here but devoid of any visual flourishes or boldness of vision. There's also many flaws to be found on revisits, not just the continuity errors that scream out that a rush edit happened, but also in instances within the story. Notably; we are first asked to believe that the small in stature Claude Rains has sired the oak like Lon Chaney; then the big question of how come when Lugosi's wolf attacks Jenny, it is actually a wolf, but Chaney's is actually a wolf-man? Yes indeed.

But The Wolf Man is adored by many in spite of its flaws. And not just by people like me, who after viewing the film as a child was too scared to look out into the garden at nighttime for fear of some hirsute beastie coming to get me! As noted, the budget was B level, but there's nothing B level about the cast here. Rains, Bellamy & Ouspenskaya were class acts. Lugosi = respect and Chaney, with his slick transformation from amiable gent to tortured soul, put a marker down in horror cinema that is still remembered fondly today. The sets too belie the budget; where the Universal crew come up with a Gothic cobblestoned village, bordered by a moonlit and misty forest, where the gloom is only punctured by the glow of shotgun bearing villagers flaming torches. Now that's classic Universal alright, atmosphere goes a long way, and The Wolf Man has it in spades. Credit too has to go to Siodmak, two fold in fact. Most tellingly on why we forgive Wolf Man its problems is that the story is such a good one, so good in fact that most of it has been believed to be based on archetypal legend. Then there's the fact that our protagonist here is an average Joe, not an ignorant scientist or a cursed creature with dodgy family ties, an affable guy who whilst committing an act of bravery is doomed for his trouble. It's a nice veer from the norm of Universal Monsters.

Also impressive is the makeup by Jack Pierce and the lap dissolve effects by John P. Fulton. Dated now for sure, but the artistry shown by these guys back then is nothing short of amazing. Another point of reference to Chaney's eagerness to deliver was that he went all in for Pierce to work his magic. Henry Hull in Werewolf Of London six years earlier refused to succumb to the full makeup treatment. Chaney did, and immortality was secured as he turned into a horror star overnight. The Wolf Man was a big hit with audiences, so much so that the character would appear in 4 further movies as part of a creature feature ensembles (House Of Frankenstein et al); with Chaney playing him/it every time. Odd that such an iconic monster never actually had his own sequel really! Just one of the many strange and interesting things attached to this flawed but truly enjoyable movie. 8/10

Excellent film featuring an amazing cast; and a fine review once more from Hitchcock the legend. If I have gripes with this film, and it's mostly small ones, they it keep it from my Inner Pantheon (such as it can be called), as the title monster, his fate, his legend, the entire lycanthropy business, are well realized, something in The Wolf Man fails to gel.

Curt Siodmak's script is rich, the village ambiance is just right; and yet for all that the movie simply fails to jump off the screen. It deals with larger than life issues (even as created by Siodmak), and the cast is high caliber, and yet it can't shake the air of a B that surrounds, indeed, literally, envelopes it, making is often feel smaller than it is rather than, as great horrors always do, larger.

The Wolf Man is a major motion picture that feels like a second feature. Such was so often the fate for even the best of the later Universal horrors, such as Son Of Dracula. It was as if just being a horror dragged a film down from its A level aspirations, including budget, players, art direction, photography and all the rest.

Yet considered as a movie, by itself, it actually plays quite well, is actually a grade A production after all. If one can get past its B air this is one classy movie. Yet the same could be said for the Val Lewton horrors from his literally B unit over at RKO.

The Val Lewton B horrors were unique in feeling like A's, as they mostly received largely respectful and positive reviews from such prestigious critics as James Agee and Manny Farber; while no major critic that I know of championed Universal's horrors of the 1940-46 period.

Yet many fans of the film born well after it was made champion The Wolf Man, regard it as a classic, There are entire blogs and websites dedicated to horror films; and a large number of in many cases well written and professionally researched books have been written about Uni horror in general, including the studio's Forties output.

Thus, while the movie is often classed with such early Uni classics as Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy, along with other later horrors from the studio, it's gained a new respect over the past forty or fifty years. A sharp-eyed viewer can still spot things in the film that make it feel "cheap", that seem to pull it down from its pedestal, it's won many younger fans over; and by and large, for all my reservations and criticisms of the film, I am one of them.