31 Days of Horror Reviews 2018: The Wolf Man (1941)

Lon Chaney Jr., son of famed Silent Horror star Lon Chaney, follows in his fathers footsteps and portrays another iconic Universal Monster.

REVIEW

Kind of like The Mummy, Universal Studios’ The Wolf Man was not based on a novel; the concept of a man turning into a wolf actually comes from folklore. The Wolf Man is solely responsible for the modern myths associated with werewolves: the curse spread from a bite, the weakness to silver and the pentagram marking the creatures’ victims. It should also be noted that The Wolf Man was actually Universals second werewolf movie, the first was Werewolf of London; it wasn’t that much of a success and I hadn’t heard of it until I bought The Wolf Man Legacy Collection DVD and even James Rolfe (AVGN) never reviewed it on Cinemassacre.

Lon Chaney Jr. plays Larry Talbot, the man who will eventually become the Wolf Man. He does a good job portraying a scared man who’s at his wits end. The scene with the gypsy has nostalgic value to me because it was shown in The Sandlot when The Beast chases Benny. I watched that movie so many times that “Wipe Out” plays in my head. Bela Lugosi returns to Universal and plays a gypsy named Bela ironically. He isn’t so much a character as he is a plot device. It’s revealed as the film progresses that he was a werewolf and was killed by Talbot. During the fight Wolf-Bela bites Talbot transferring the curse over to him.

The actual Wolf Man doesn’t show appear until about 40 minutes in and the film is only 1h 10min long, but it builds up really well. That’s the thing about the Universal Monsters, the atmosphere they had made up for either the lack of a monster or the lack of any action. In fact the atmosphere actually enhances when the monsters show up. Nevertheless, The Wolf Man is a great great film and another hit for Universal.