‘Now you will have peace for eternity…’
As the excellent horror podcast Halloweenies is currently embarking on a series charting all the Universal monster movies, I will be watching along with them. While I generally prefer the later and more sophisticated Hammer Horror efforts, the Universal monster movies essentially formed the blueprint for the entire horror genre. As genuine cinematic artefacts, there is nearly always something interesting hiding in the shadows, even if the production design and plotting may seem crude and primitive. While The Wolfman has much to recommend, it’s perhaps not as essential as some of the other films released around the same time…
Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) pays a high price for his questionable decision to visit Wales by being turned into a werewolf. We know he is going to be turned into a werewolf because the sitcom-style opening credits announce him as ‘The Wolfman’. Talbot spends much of the film pursuing his love interest, Gwen (Evelyn Ankers) and trying not to be bludgeoned to death by his father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains). The film also features a cameo from Count Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi, who appears as a Romani fortune teller imaginatively named ‘Bela’.
At 80 minutes, there is no reason for any self-respecting horror fan not to check out The Wolfman. Chaney Jr. made this role his own, appearing in four more Universal monster movies, and it is clear from this entry that he adores playing the role. Sure, he might be having more fun than the audience, and the transformation sequence is rudimentary, but George Waggner’s film provides a satisfying snapshot of Hollywood filmmaking at the start of the 1940s. It also provides valuable context as a point of comparison. 1941 was also the year of Citizen Kane, after all.
The Wolfman isn’t essential cinema, but it’s a charming and influential film that provided the prototype for every werewolf film that followed.
