Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers at night;
May become a wolf when the wolfs bane blooms and the Autumn moon is bright.
I find that there are some horror movies that I can sit down and watch any time. Usually when they come on TV I just stop whatever I’m doing and sit down in absolute hypnosis. George Waggner’s “The Wolf Man” is without a doubt one of those movies. It’s what I consider to be one of the perfect Halloween-time movies, as it just seems to dredge up more memories from that holiday's past than any other horror flick in my collection. Even in April, all I have to do is sit down and watch “The Wolf Man” and it’ll feel like its October.
Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) has just returned to his hometown in England to manage his family’s vast estate. He isn’t home for more than a day when he encounters a beautiful young lady (Evelyn Ankers) and the two decide to go visit a gypsy fortune teller (Bela Lugosi) out in a dark forest. Their romantic evening turns to horror when Larry is attacked by a giant wolf and is bitten before killing it with his silver cane. Though his father (Claude Rains) won’t hear of it, local superstition has Larry believing that the curse of the werewolf has been passed to him. Sure enough, beneath the light of the full moon, Larry transforms into the Wolf Man and begins hunting and killing villagers, unable to control himself.
Of Universal’s lineup of classic monsters, “The Wolf Man” stands out as being more tragic than all the others. Most of the installments, such as “Dracula” and “Creature from the Black Lagoon”, have a pretty clear dividing line of good and evil; the good guys fight the monster and call it a day. “The Wolf Man” isn’t quite so black and white, with our leading man becoming the monster we’re supposed to be rooting against. The ending also forgoes the typical “Hollywood solution”, denying the audience a happy conclusion and being fairly depressing. It all may sound fairly ho-hum today, but this is one of the reasons why I find it really stands out amongst the Universal Monster series.
If there’s one other thing I love about this movie, it’s the setting. The murky, fog-shrouded forest is both eerie and effective. It can be a little obvious that it’s a set, but I won’t hold that against a production from 1941. As for the title monster, I definitely prefer my wolf men to be more wolf than man, but that seems to be a product of more modern special effects-driven werewolf movies. While the make-up and transformation sequences aren’t the best I’ve seen from werewolf movies of the era (I actually liked the transformation in “Werewolf of London” better), it is none-the-less iconic.
Despite it being one of my favorite Universal Monster films (my second, actually; right behind “Frankenstein”), I’ve found there really isn’t a whole lot to talk about, here. Clocking in at about seventy minutes in length, “The Wolf Man” is a pretty short trip. But as with “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms”, I believe the brief length is actually one of its strong points, making it excellent horror movie marathon fodder (adding to my earlier assertion that it’s a perfect Halloween-time movie).
If you take away the dynamic of the hero being the villain, “The Wolf Man” is pretty simple. Still, as old as it is, it paved the way for an entire subgenre of horror (even if it wasn’t really the first werewolf movie, it still popularized them). So we owe it that much.
Grade: A- (as in “Anyone else find that naming Bela Lugosi’s character ‘Bela’ was a little too on the nose?”)
May become a wolf when the wolfs bane blooms and the Autumn moon is bright.
I find that there are some horror movies that I can sit down and watch any time. Usually when they come on TV I just stop whatever I’m doing and sit down in absolute hypnosis. George Waggner’s “The Wolf Man” is without a doubt one of those movies. It’s what I consider to be one of the perfect Halloween-time movies, as it just seems to dredge up more memories from that holiday's past than any other horror flick in my collection. Even in April, all I have to do is sit down and watch “The Wolf Man” and it’ll feel like its October.
Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) has just returned to his hometown in England to manage his family’s vast estate. He isn’t home for more than a day when he encounters a beautiful young lady (Evelyn Ankers) and the two decide to go visit a gypsy fortune teller (Bela Lugosi) out in a dark forest. Their romantic evening turns to horror when Larry is attacked by a giant wolf and is bitten before killing it with his silver cane. Though his father (Claude Rains) won’t hear of it, local superstition has Larry believing that the curse of the werewolf has been passed to him. Sure enough, beneath the light of the full moon, Larry transforms into the Wolf Man and begins hunting and killing villagers, unable to control himself.
Of Universal’s lineup of classic monsters, “The Wolf Man” stands out as being more tragic than all the others. Most of the installments, such as “Dracula” and “Creature from the Black Lagoon”, have a pretty clear dividing line of good and evil; the good guys fight the monster and call it a day. “The Wolf Man” isn’t quite so black and white, with our leading man becoming the monster we’re supposed to be rooting against. The ending also forgoes the typical “Hollywood solution”, denying the audience a happy conclusion and being fairly depressing. It all may sound fairly ho-hum today, but this is one of the reasons why I find it really stands out amongst the Universal Monster series.
If there’s one other thing I love about this movie, it’s the setting. The murky, fog-shrouded forest is both eerie and effective. It can be a little obvious that it’s a set, but I won’t hold that against a production from 1941. As for the title monster, I definitely prefer my wolf men to be more wolf than man, but that seems to be a product of more modern special effects-driven werewolf movies. While the make-up and transformation sequences aren’t the best I’ve seen from werewolf movies of the era (I actually liked the transformation in “Werewolf of London” better), it is none-the-less iconic.
Despite it being one of my favorite Universal Monster films (my second, actually; right behind “Frankenstein”), I’ve found there really isn’t a whole lot to talk about, here. Clocking in at about seventy minutes in length, “The Wolf Man” is a pretty short trip. But as with “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms”, I believe the brief length is actually one of its strong points, making it excellent horror movie marathon fodder (adding to my earlier assertion that it’s a perfect Halloween-time movie).
If you take away the dynamic of the hero being the villain, “The Wolf Man” is pretty simple. Still, as old as it is, it paved the way for an entire subgenre of horror (even if it wasn’t really the first werewolf movie, it still popularized them). So we owe it that much.
Grade: A- (as in “Anyone else find that naming Bela Lugosi’s character ‘Bela’ was a little too on the nose?”)
1 comments:
Just watched this for the first time last night and loved it, even if some parts of the plot direction leave me scratching my head and the dialogue isn't always easy to follow. I also listened to the commentary track by Tom Weaver. Apparently the original plan was for the audience to be left in suspense on whether Lon Chaney was really transforming or if the whole thing was in his mind. I like the wolfman scenes, but that would have been an interesting angle.
Also, there was a notion that the werewolf would be a four-legged creature, similar to Bela's form seen earlier in the picture, but eventually they just settled for the classic look.
Great piece. The brevity really does add to its appeal.
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