The Wolf Man

(1941)***

"Even a man who is pure at heart/And says his prayers by night/May become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms/And the moon is full and bright."

Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney) returns to his English childhood estate after being away in America for many years. Apparently his older brother was killed in a hunting accident and Larry is now the new heir apparent. Although we’re not provided with too much information about his family relationships, it is made clear that Larry had a falling out with his father some years earlier. After patching things up with the old man Larry gets down to business, flirting with Jenny, the attractive owner of a local curio shop. In an effort to gain her affection, Larry feigns interest in her wares and purchases a silver cane with a [really cool] wolf’s head on top. Easily won over, she agrees to go out with him and the two make plans to see a traveling gypsy family to have their fortune’s read. Of course they do this at night when the setting is at its creepiest. With barren trees, leaves blowing all over the place, and a foot of fog on the ground, the happy couple weave their way through the woods, where the stumble upon fortune teller, Bela (a very fat looking Bela Lugosi). Things go horrible wrong from here and the night ends with Larry being bitten by a werewolf, which he is ultimately able to kill with his [way cool] silver cane with the wolf’s head on top. Believing that he is now a werewolf himself, Larry begins what will be the first of several werewolf movies detailing his torment over his affliction.

I’ve been won over by these old Universal monster movies and the Wolf Man dovetails nicely with his gruesome brethren. I love the creepy, [obvious set] forest setting and the sound of wolves howling in the distant background. I love how nobody keeps an eye on Larry at night even though he continually decries that he’s a werewolf and even though people keep mysteriously dying from some “large animal”. The one odd thing is that we never see a full moon. I mean, what the hell? Isn’t that what the Wolf Man is all about? Historically, a lot has been made about how great the make-up is [I think he ends up just looking like Mr. Kotter], and the wolf transformation scenes [which actually suck really hard]. Nonetheless, Lon Chaney plays the dysthymic Larry fabulously. That might be the key difference between the Wolf Man and the rest of the Universal monsters. Larry doesn’t like being a monster and his torment is a mainstay of all his future wolf man film appearances. Personally I’d rather be the invisible man.