I have never been more happy to be mistaken! With powerful acting from both Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. (son of the famous silent film actor), as well as a slow build of tension and mood, The Wolf Man is by far the most elegant of the Universal monster films and one which holds up quite well today.
The story follows Larry Talbot, a rich young man who clearly has spent most of his life without pain or responsibility. However, following the death of his brother, Larry must return home to his estranged father and the stately manor. The father wants him to be ready to take on his inheritance and responsibility, but Larry is a bit uncomfortable with that role. He shirks his father's responsibilities for him and instead uses his time to... spy on cute girls in their bedrooms.
Yes, that is the one area where '1940s' is stamped all over this movie. Larry uses his father's expensive telescope to spy on a shop-girl through her bedroom window. This scene was likely not supposed to seem as incredibly creepy then (after all, Alfred Hitchcock would take another decade to be a household name in the United States), but today it seems shockingly invasive. Especially as Larry uses the information he gained from spying to try and seduce the shop-girl (played by Universal darling Evelyn Ankers).
But you'll notice that, so far, I'm discussing father-son relations, shop-girls, and creepy questions of consent. Not one mention of a wolf. This movie does an amazing job of creating a nice, slow build which allows us to get to know the characters before there is any supernatural action. I can't imagine any film in Hollywood doing this anymore, which is a shame because it allows us to really create a connection to the characters and see how they change and grow. I became invested in the tense father-son relationship, really wondered if Larry would grow up and stop acting like a playboy.
The first hint at the movie's werewolf theme comes from a cane that Larry buys to impress the shop-girl, Gwen. It is silver, with a wolf head and a pentagram, something everyone in the story but Larry seems to know as the sign of the werewolf. Larry then asks Gwen out on a date to get their fortunes told by gypsies who had just come in to town. She never agrees, firmly telling him no, but he shows up anyway and so she brings along a friend to make it clearly a not-date.
Here we meet Bela Lugosi in a borderline-racist gypsy caricature. Borderline, but Lugosi brings a gravitas to the role and we can see the man is struggling with something deep inside of him. When Gwen's friend gets her fortune read, Lugosi reads a pentagram in her palm, a sign that a werewolf will kill her. More specifically, the gypsy man himself. He sends her away, straining to keep his werewolf-self in check, but soon we hear (off camera) screams and growls. Larry, who has used the time to try and get closer to Gwen, rushes to see what is wrong and sees a wolf attacking the girl. He beats the wolf to death with his cane, but is wounded in the process.
What happens from then on should be familiar to anyone who knows of basic werewolf lore. However, far before we see any evidence of Larry turning into a werewolf himself, the film leisurely takes us through how the town deals with the pain of the girl's death, the fact that the evidence shows no sign of a wolf (officers instead found the body of the dead gypsy fortune teller), and that Larry now must struggle between his own memory of events and the fact that the police think that he killed a man.
The effect is powerful, and over halfway through the film the audience has still seen not a hair of the titular wolf-man (Legosi's wolf was mostly shrouded in darkness and fog). It allows us to not only wait in anticipation for the wolf to finally appear, but we follow Larry's journey much more intensely.
The scenes with Larry and the gypsy woman are wonderful. He witness her mourning for her son, and he weeps for the unknown death he caused. Even before he learns of the curse, Larry is broken down. There is a real character arc here. No longer is Larry the bravado-filled rich boy; he is a man who has experienced and caused loss, and who worries about his own deadliness. When the gypsy woman calls out to him later, she warns him of his curse and what is to come. Larry expresses realistic disbelief, but there is also a conflicting trust in this woman who tries to comfort him even in the death of her son. It's beautiful, and not something I would have expected from a Universal Monster film.
When Larry finally does transform the effects... leave something to be desired. Slow fades make hair seem like it is "appearing," and while it is a nice trick, it requires Lon Cheney Jr. to stay perfectly still. The transformation is magic, and doesn't seem to affect him physically. It doesn't itch, doesn't hurt, nothing. Maybe it's because Eli Roth's gruesome werewolf transformation is so fresh in my imagination, but the transformation was by far the least interesting part of this film. It is, besides the soundtrack, what makes the film seem the most dated.
The rest of the film follow's Larry's struggle with his transformation, but the script also parallels that struggle with the one between both magic and reason, and good and evil. Characters are constantly trying to find the rational in the irrational, the logic inside the emotional panic.
The ending of his film is one of true gothic horror. It is tragic, but perhaps the only way the film could have ended (if we ignore the fact that Universal then essentially "retconned" the ending in order to make several sequels). This film is most definitely worth your time if you want to see likely the best Universal Monster film and some overall great acting by Lon Cheney Jr.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 bites
Lon Chaney Jr. was the greatest wolfman ever.
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