The wolf-man (V.O. The wolf-man)
USA, 1941
Director: George Waggner
Genre: Horror, drama
Script: Curt Siodmak
Production: George Waggner
Music: Charles Previn, Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner
Production Company: Universal Pictures
Distribution: Universal Pictures
Running Time: Approximately 67-70 minutes
Film Genre: Horror, Fantastic
Starring:
Lon Chaney Jr. as Lawrence “Larry” Talbot / The Wolfman
Claude Rains as Sir John Talbot
Warren William as Dr. Lloyd
Ralph Bellamy as Colonel Paul Montford
Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva, the gypsy fortune teller
Evelyn Ankers as Gwen Conliffe
Patric Knowles as Frank Andrews
Bela Lugosi as Bela the Gypsy
J. M. Kerrigan as Charles Conliffe
Fay Helm as Jenny Williams
Forrester Harvey as Twiddle
Plot
After the death of his brother in a hunting accident, Larry Talbot returns from the USA to the small village in Wales where his family originated. Larry belongs to an aristocratic and wealthy lineage, and his father, Sir John, owns a castle in the Welsh countryside. Observing the neighboring village through a telescope from the castle, Larry sees an attractive young woman who catches his eye. The next day he goes to the antique store where the girl works, and pretending to be a customer tries to gain her trust. Gwen, the girl’s name, is the daughter of the store owner. Larry decides to buy an old cane with a silver knob shaped like a wolf.
After dark, they meet with the intention of going to the gypsy camp in the woods to have their fortunes told by the gypsies. Jenny, a friend of Gwen’s, accompanies them. Jenny is the first to enter the caravan of Bela, the gypsy fortune teller. When he reads the young woman’s palm, she is shocked; for she perceives for her a horrible destiny very near. Sensing that the gypsy has seen something extremely negative, Jenny leaves in fright as her friends wander through the misty forest. Suddenly, Larry and Gwen hear her screams of terror. Larry comes over, and seeing that Jenny is being attacked by a wolf, he hits the animal hard with his cane. But before it died, the wolf had managed to bite him.
Larry is taken to his father’s castle, where he recovers from his wounds. Jenny is not so lucky, as the wolf’s bite to the jugular has killed her. Detectives arrive at the Talbot castle to ask Larry a series of questions: Jenny was not the only mortal victim of the strange attack of the previous night… Next to her corpse they also found the body of Bela, the gypsy, who had received severe blows to the head. Rationalizing, her father establishes that when Jenny was attacked by the wolf, Bela and Larry came to her aid and in the scuffle against the animal, the latter escaped but Bela received the blows that were intended for the beast. Larry insists that the creature he struck with his silver-tipped cane was a wolf, he is absolutely certain of it. But from that moment on he is considered a suspect in the gypsy’s death.
Maleva, Bela’s gypsy wife, explains to Larry that the wolf who tore Jenny’s throat and whom he clubbed to death was not a conventional wolf, but a lycanthrope. Bela was a werewolf, and by biting Larry she has infected him, thus perpetuating the curse. Maleva gives him an amulet to prevent the mutations in the full moons from taking place. But Larry does not quite believe these stories of lycanthropes, and gives the amulet to Gwen, to “protect her”. Larry is in love with her, although the girl is already engaged to another.
At night, Larry begins to worry seriously, fearing that what the gypsy woman told him might be true. He looks carefully in the mirror to make sure he is not transforming. But, as expected, hair begins to grow all over his body and Larry turns into a werewolf. He wanders around town, growling aimlessly, and pounces on the undertaker he finds by the cemetery.
When the next morning the undertaker turns up dead in the same way Jenny was killed, with a mangled neck and wolf marks nearby, panic takes hold of the inhabitants of the small town…
Commentary
This sample of classic horror cinema is one of the pioneer films in the subgenre dedicated to lycanthropy. It has a good gothic atmosphere characteristic of the old horror films of the time (such as Tod Browning’s “Dracula” or James Whale’s “Frankenstein”), with ancient castles and forests covered by dense fogs.
The story of Larry Talbot narrated in the film is an adaptation to the big screen of the typical werewolf legends present in the folklore of different peoples: The lycanthrope is both victim and executioner, always transforming against his will. The tormented Larry ends up being aware of his tragic situation, but suffers the helplessness of not being able to do anything to remedy it. He knows that during his wolf phases he loses control over himself and becomes a mortal danger to those unfortunate enough to be near him – including his loved ones. The easiest thing to do would have been to ask Gwen to give him back his amulet, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to occur to our protagonist.
Larry is played by Lon Chaney Jr., son of the famous “Man of a Thousand Faces”, a silent film star. The gypsy, fortune teller and first lycanthrope, is Bela Lugosi; a myth of the genre in the ’30s and ’40s, who is best remembered for playing Tod Browning’s “Dracula” (1931). His wife, Maleva, is played by Maria Ouspenskaya. Originally a Russian stage actress, she emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1920s and began her career in film.
Get The Wolf-Man HERE!
(This is an affiliate link. I may earn a commission if you purchase through these link, at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.)