When I was a child, the local Milwaukee UHF stations aired adventure films such as Tarzan on Friday evenings.  Saturday nights were dedicated to “Shock Theatre” or “Nightmare Theatre”, often featuring a film with one of the famous Universal monsters of the 1930s and 1940s.  This makes the Universal monsters some of my earliest film memories and one of the genres to which I attribute my love of classic films.  Now, I find myself writing a review in 2021 of a film I first watched fifty years earlier around 1971 that was made thirty years before that in 1941.  Classic movies have a way of staying with you forever.

Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) returns home to his ancestral home in Wales after the death of his brother.  He begins the process of reconciling with his father (Sir John Talbot played by Claude Rains) and meets a girl (Gwen Conliffe played by Evelyn Ankers) from the local village.  Unfortunately, while visiting a travelling gypsy encampment, he and Gwen are attacked by a wolf.  Larry kills the wolf but is bitten during the fight. 

It turns out that the wolf was really a gypsy named Bela.  Bela’s mother explains to Larry how Bela has been released from his own curse but has passed it on to Larry.  Larry is doubtful at first but when he wakes up the morning after the next full moon, he comes to believe in the curse.  Now, he must find some way to protect those he loves from himself. 

The Wolf Man was released only a few days after the Pearl Harbor attack.  Many thought the release should be postponed but it turned out that the public was hungry for entertainment.  The film was a huge box office success that created a genre, added another popular monster to Universal’s stable and established Lon Chaney, Jr. as a horror star. 

The Wolf Man defined the werewolf genre for all subsequent films.  Interestingly, while lycanthropy existed in folklore, The Wolf Man redefined it.  In folklore, lycanthropy tales varied by culture but werewolves were generally the product of dark magic and the condition was not passed on as the result of being bitten.  Also, lycanthropes were shapeshifters and could transform at will rather than unwillingly by moonlight.  While departing from traditional folklore, these changes created a new kind of monster – one that is itself a victim and one that we sympathize with.   Chaney is perfectly cast as the Larry Talbot.  His performance captures the confusion and self-loathing of a man who realizes he is the victim of an inescapable curse and is a danger to those around him. 

The Wolf Man was released nearly a decade after Universal’s other famous monsters, Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and The Mummy (1932).  It lacks the grainy picture and slightly hollow sound of those earlier films.  On the one hand, those qualities created a palpable creepiness in Universal’s early films.  On the other, The Wolf Man just looks and sounds better and reflects a decade of advancements.  The foggy moors create the perfect atmosphere for distant wolf howls and unexpected shapes seemingly emerging from nowhere.  

In addition to Lon Chaney, this film is packed with a host of classic horror stars.  Claude Rains, who had risen to fame as The Invisible Man (1933), stars as the aristocratic John Talbot.  Evelyn Ankers, who became a Universal horror staple, stars as the village girl Talbot attempts to romance.  Bela Lugosi, of Dracula fame, makes a short but memorable appearance as a gypsy fortune teller.  Maria Ouspenskaya stars as Bela’s mother Maleva, a role she reprised in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943).  Patric Knowles and Ralph Bellamy also appear in the film.