The Wolf Man (1941)

Film: The Wolf Man (1941)
Stars: Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Maria Ouspenskaya, Evelyn Ankers, Bela Lugosi
Director: George Waggner
Oscar History: The Best Makeup category didn't come around until 1981, so Jack Pierce's iconic work in The Wolf Man didn't end up with a trophy that it surely deserved.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

One of my favorite guilty pleasures is watching old horror movies, something I don't get to do very often as they're not nearly as featured on Turner Classic Movies in recent years (it used to be you couldn't turn on the channel without Vincent Price bellowing into the night).  But it's October, and Halloween approaches, and as a result they're looking through the Universal vault this month which led me to finally see one of the remaining Universal monster movies that I haven't caught.  I've long thought it was essential that you eventually see all seven of the biggest headliners of the Universal collection's origin stories (the seven being Dracula, Frankenstein, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Phantom of the Opera, the Invisible Man, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy), but for some reason The Wolf Man is missing on Netflix DVD so I have been patiently waiting for TCM to show it.  Thankfully last week they rewarded me, and so I got to catch this oft-imitated original.

(Spoilers Ahead) Nothing thrills me more than finding out a genuinely unknown fact during the TCM intros, and I had never realized how much of werewolf lore (like being killed by a silver bullet and turning into a werewolf if bitten) wasn't from centuries of stories about lupine men, but in fact came straight from the script of Curt Siodmak.  Kudos have to go to Siodmak for so well-establishing something that would be central to dozens of other movies (though the full moon bit would come from the next Wolf Man picture, as it's less clear what drives the transformation in this film), and for creating a story that feels cliched by the time you finally watch it, you know the picture by heart.

The film centers around Larry Talbot (Chaney), a man who has returned home for his brother's funeral at the behest of his distant father Sir John (Rains).  Larry hears tale of werewolf culture from a beautiful girl named Gwen (Ankers) whom he meets, well, stalking her (seriously-the most shocking thing about this movie may have been that they tried to romanticize Larry pulling a Peeping Tom routine on Gwen that turns into a burgeoning flirtation).  Gwen is engaged, but still drawn to Larry, and they go out one night with another of her friends, meeting a fortuneteller named Bela (Lugosi, in a brief part), who bites Larry after he transforms, leaving him the Wolf Man.  Unable to control his urges, he kills (though almost always men who are largely inconsequential to the actual plot), and is haunted by what he's become but unable to stop it.  Eventually he tries to get Gwen to flee, as she bears the mark of the werewolf's next victim, and is killed by his own silver walking stick by his father, Sir John, who looks on in horror as his son is transformed back into a man, and we're left to wonder if Sir John has been bitten, thus carrying on the curse.

The movie is short, clocking in at 70 minutes, a brief interlude of a picture which saves it as the clunkier parts (namely anything involving the doomed romance between Chaney and Ankers) doesn't have much time to simmer.  If you're able to appreciate the film as both a pretty universal metaphor (homosexuality and alcoholism seemed most obvious, but I'd buy nearly anything you hid about yourself) or just as sheer camp, it's quite fun to watch.  The makeup effects are still pretty fresh if admittedly not insanely lifelike, and the film's supporting players like Lugosi and Ouspenskaya are creepy enough that you actually might get a scare or two as you're watching the dated effects unfold (also cinematographer Joseph Valentine does an ace job with mood lighting for a B-Picture...he's clearly an underserved talent who would eventually graduate to the movies of Alfred Hitchcock and win an Oscar for Joan of Arc).  Plus, the ending is actually solid-I didn't entirely expect the Wolf Man to die, assuming he'd be just left-for-dead to provide sequel fodder, but Universal wasn't shy about killing off their monsters (though they knew reincarnation was always an option).  All-in-all, it's worth an investigation, particularly if you're at home on a Saturday night and want a scare (but not a big one).

Those are my thoughts on this screen classic-how about yours?  Anyone seen The Wolf Man for the first time recently?  And if you've seen al seven-who is your favorite Universal monster (I'm still finishing up the list on my end)?  Share your thoughts down below!