She-Wolf of London (1946)

Film: She-Wolf of London (1946)

Stars: June Lockhart, Don Porter, Sara Haden, Jan Wiley, Lloyd Corrigan

Director: Jean Yarbrough

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

We are entering the final week of our Halloween Classic Horror Month, and with that we're hitting the conclusion of our three years worth of Universal Monster Movies.  Today we are discussing the finale of the initial Wolfman series, and we're weirdly getting a break from Lon Chaney Jr. even though this is the part that made him a star.  Instead, we're going to head into a mildly different direction, one that is more about bumps in the night than opulent makeup & iconic monsters with She-Wolf of London, a spinoff of the series featuring future TV staple June Lockhart.

(Spoilers Ahead) Set at the turn-of-the-century, we see Phyllis Allenby (Lockhart), a beautiful-but-sheltered woman who is engaged to be married to the wealthy Barry Lanfield (Porter).  She lives with her Aunt Martha (Haden) and cousin Carol (Wiley), though we learn early in the film that they aren't actually her relatives, but instead are her relatives through Martha's relationship with Phyllis's late father (first as his intended, then as his housekeeper when she spurned him...basically they are in a position they have no legal standing to be in since they're living in Phyllis's house without any claim to her fortune).  Phyllis starts to believe that the murders that are occurring in the nearby parks are actually the result of her turning out to be a werewolf, a legend associated with her family, but as we continue, it becomes pretty obvious that there is no werewolf, and it is Aunt Martha trying to drive Phyllis mad, and in the process both keeping her access to the fortune and securing Barry for Carol, ensuring she marries a wealthy man in the way that Aunt Martha didn't.  In the end, Barry & Phyllis end up together (and Carol ends up with her penniless lover), while Aunt Martha falls down the stairs and stabs herself in the heart in the process.

She-Wolf of London is unusual in the long run of Universal monster movies for a variety of reasons.  For starters, it's one of the only (I think the only-I've got one more to go but so far this is it) films in the series to not actually feature the titular monster.  Aunt Martha is not a werewolf (though she is a cold-blooded murderer), and so the title character doesn't actually exist, and is just a figment of everyone's imagination.  It also is more plot-heavy as a result.  You do, in fact, need to pay attention because most of the clues are given to you in the first few minutes of the film, and though it's not a hard-to-follow plot, it is a film that has a plot, unlike most of the Mummy movies we've been frequenting in the past few weeks.

The problem is that it's just not very good.  While some of the parts are plum, particularly Aunt Martha, the actors in them aren't strong enough to keep this campy or scary enough to hold your attention.  It's not an actively bad movie, but it's more disappointing because there's promise here.  Lockhart would eventually become not just the toast of Broadway, but a television staple in the decades to come as a series regular on Lassie, Lost in Space, and Petticoat Junction, but so new to her career (she was not yet 21 when this was released), she doesn't have this role down, and Sara Haden (most famous today for her work on the Andy Hardy pictures), is trying her best to be Judith Anderson, but she's...not talented enough to pull it off.  She-Wolf of London therefore becomes a missed opportunity rather than a failure with this ensemble.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Phantom of the Opera, Son of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Mummy's Ghost, The Uninvited, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, The Masque of the Red Death