The Wolf Man

(1941) dir. George Waggner
viewed: 10/30/09

Well, the halloween spirit and our adventures in the “classics” of Hollywood monster movies brought us to The Wolf Man, oddly enough another story that the kids didn’t exactly know.  And truth be told, of all of the old films that we’ve watched, The Wolf Man was one that I really hadn’t seen since I was a kid, I think.  I had only the vaguest memories of the actual film.

Frankly, in comparison with Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), the qualities of period detail get pretty well muddled by 1941.  Or maybe it’s just plain old carelessness.  Here we are in either England or Wales, presumably semi-present day, and yet the local police is very American (played by Ralph Bellamy), and a few of the townspeople as well.  While Lon Chaney, Jr.’s character’s Americanism is explained by his 18 year absence from the family, it’s a bit more of a mishmash of place.

The Wolf Man himself was always kind of cool to me, but kind of disappointing.  I used to rationalize that he was more human-like because he was a “wolf man” and not a “werewolf”.  But the make-up is good, and the transformations, while not up to the quality of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), is still not too shabby.

Chaney is a lunk of a man, and oddly enough, much better in acting the tortured pathos part than the suave, charming lady’s man that he plays in the beginning of the film.  But we get a brief piece of Bela Lugosi playing a gypsy named “Bela” who is the original werewolf that bites Chaney and transforms him into the beast.  It’s interesting how everyone in the film tries to rationalize the story with psychological analyses rather than believe in good old folklore.  Except the gypsies and the villagers, of course.

As far as the major monster movies of the era go, The Wolf Man is a decidedly second-rate franchise-starter, and while the whole film clocks in below 80 minutes, it’s still not the most riveting of thrillers.  But it’s interesting the way that the initiation of the self-hatred and tortured soul of the human being behind the beast is started, a psychological point of sympathy and pathology of its own.

The kids liked it.