I’ve set myself the challenge of watching all 28 films from Universal Studios’ golden age of horror that feature Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man and the Creature from the Black Lagoon…
Spoiler warning: these reviews reveal minor plot points
There had been plenty of werewolf stories beforehand, of course: lycanthropy myths can be found in numerous cultures; Little Red Riding Hood and Dr Jekyll are spins on the idea; and Bram Stoker used a fair amount of the lore in his 1897 novel Dracula. But there hadn’t been many werewolf *movies* before 1941. Other than a couple of now-forgotten silent films – The Werewolf (1913) and Wolf Blood (1925) – the only true example had been made by Universal Studios in 1935. The creaky, stagey Werewolf of London starred Henry Hull as an English botanist who is bitten and cursed to become a wolf while in Tibet.
When the same studio decided to commission a new horror picture on the theme, they didn’t have a foundational text to adapt like with Dracula, Frankenstein or The Invisible Man. So instead they took the key tropes of the genre and weaved an original story, creating an effective chiller that would become arguably the most influential werewolf tale of all time.
As the story begins, the second son of the aristocratic Talbot family returns to Talbot Castle after the death of his elder brother. Larry, who has been away for 18 years, is back to reconcile with his father and help run the estate. While he settles in, Larry also meets and flirts with a local woman called Gwen who works in an antiques shop. (When and where all this is taking place is debatable. The outside world is not referenced, we see both cars and horse-drawn carriages, and there’s a panoply of accents in the cast. A 1943 sequel confirmed that we’re in Wales, but no one familiar with the nation would guess that based on this movie.)
When some travelling gypsies arrive in town – they come every autumn, we’re told – Larry takes Gwen and her friend Jenny for a fortune-telling. However, in the woods near the gypsy camp, Jenny is attacked by a wolf. Larry manages to kill the animal, though is bitten in the process. Then later both Jenny and a gypsy called Bela are found dead. Suspicion quickly falls on Larry and Gwen, and they become pariahs in the town. Eventually, Bela’s elderly mother Maleva explains to Larry that Bela was a werewolf. *He* was the animal who attacked Jenny and bit Larry, and that means that Larry is now a lycanthrope too… The next night, Larry undergoes a grisly transformation and becomes a hairy, savage man-beast who – now out of control – kills a villager. Consumed by guilt after he morphs back into a human, Larry confesses all to his father, but Sir John just assumes Larry is deluded…
The film is powered by economic storytelling and moves at a canter. But the script and the cast still pack in plenty of feels for a horror quickie – characters are sincerely upset when there’s a murder, Larry is driven close to tears by his ordeal, Maleva has a scene of genuine melancholy as she grieves for her son. Meanwhile, multiple references to dogs, wolves, wolfsbane and the moon keep things thematically pleasing, and the movie is moodily staged by director George Waggner and cinematographer Joseph Valentine, with plenty of fog, high-contrast light, big sets, expressive camera moves and tight cutting.
For a relatively cheap B-movie churned out in just 25 days, The Wolf Man also has an impressive cast. Claude Rains adds authority and paternal weight as Sir John; fellow Brit Evelyn Ankers is likeable as Gwen; while Ralph Bellamy, whose career stretched from 1931’s The Secret Six to 1990’s Pretty Woman, appears as Gwen’s bland fiancé Paul. The poor gypsy Bela is played by his namesake, Dracula star Bela Lugosi, who only has seven lines of dialogue but still makes a big impression. Veteran Russian actor Maria Ouspenskaya, a former student of Soviet theatre bastion Konstantin Stanislavski, is both memorable and moving as Bela’s wise, wisened mother, Maleva.
The lead character of Larry, meanwhile, was a star-making role for Lon Chaney Jr. Just 35 at the time of filming, but looking 10 years older, Chaney was the son of the first Lon Chaney – the ‘Man of a Thousand Faces’ who had been the 1920s’ biggest horror star, had revolutionised the use of macabre movie make-up, and was earmarked to be Universal’s Dracula before cancer killed him in 1930. Junior had spent a decade in bit-part roles before The Wolf Man, and while he never reached his father’s heights as an actor, he ended up as one of Universal’s most bankable assets. In the seven years between 1942 and 1949, he played the Wolf Man five times, the Mummy three times, Frankenstein’s Monster and Count Dracula once each. (He also ultimately appeared in eight films with The Wolf Man co-star Evelyn Ankers… despite the pair hating each other off-camera.)
At several points in The Wolf Man, villagers recite a piece of doggerel: ‘Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and autumn moon is bright.’ Heavy-handed, perhaps, but it does flag up the subtext. If this film is about anything beyond movie thrills, it’s about the duality of mankind; the potential in all of us for dark, dangerous impulses. Larry’s transformation into a werewolf is achieved simply, via dissolves, but the full body make-up looks rather comedic to modern eyes. So Chaney’s decision to play the character with real anguish when in his human form goes a long way in selling the horror.
Eight mazes of his own mind out of 10
Next: Frankenstein’s a ghost!
Ian Farrington 