Rotten Tomatoes score: 94%
This movie is often lumped together with Frankenstein and Dracula as one of the major Universal Studios monster movies. But in fact, The Wolf Man is different from the others in two big ways: First, it came out 10 years later; and second, it wasn't based on a book. And actually, there was a previous Universal movie about a werewolf (Werewolf of London, 1935), but no one seems to remember it, and I've never seen it.
This movie is the story of Larry Talbot, a Welsh gentleman who has just returned to his family home. It's not clear where he's returning from--his accent would suggest he grew up in America, but in this movie lots of Welsh villagers speak with American accents for no discernible reason.
Larry is welcomed home by his father Sir John, and he soon learns to enjoy local pastimes, such as astronomy and spying on strange women through shop windows in broad daylight. In an effort to hit on an engaged antique shop owner named Gwen, he makes small talk while buying a silver-handled cane. Gwen and every other human being in the village recite a weird poem about werewolves, but Larry thinks it's silly.
He learns better when he, Gwen, and Gwen's friend Jenny go walking in the woods in the middle of the night. They encounter a gypsy camp, where they meet an old fortuneteller and her son Bela Lugosi. Unfortunately, Bela Lugosi is a wolf man, and when the moon rises, he transforms into a wolf and attacks Jenny. Larry bludgeons the wolf to death with the handle of his cane, but not before it somehow bites him in the middle of the chest.
The fortuneteller tells Larry that anyone who is bitten by a wolf man and survives will become a wolf man himself. Larry thinks this is nonsense, but he is puzzled when he discovers that the dead wolf has transmogrified back into Bela Lugosi. The police believe that Larry has murdered Bela Lugosi, but nothing really comes of this plot point.
Larry turns into the Wolf Man and kills an innocent person, and eventually the fortuneteller persuades him that her story is true. He then spends a long time trying to persuade his father and others that he is the Wolf Man, but they all think he's crazy. The murder the Wolf Man committed is preposterously blamed on a real wolf (preposterous because the Wolf Man always kills by strangulation--you know, just like a wolf).
(This is as good a place as any to point out that, when Bela Lugosi transformed, he looked exactly like a real wolf. But when Larry transforms, he looks like a hairy guy with wolf teeth. I always imagine that a wolf person becomes more and more wolf-like with each transformation, so that after many years Larry will look just like a wolf. Unfortunately, the movie never gives this or any other explanation.)
Eventually, the Wolf Man tries to murder Gwen (because of a convenient rule that wolf men always kill their beloved), but Sir John gets a hold of the silver cane and kills the Wolf Man. The police discover Larry's dead body and brush the whole thing off without investigation, John withholds the truth, and the movie ends, all within 15 seconds. It's the most abrupt movie ending I've ever seen, and it's great. I wish more movies would just suddenly end, instead of dragging things out. Actually, this whole movie is only 70 minutes long, which is a huge relief in a world of three-hour King Kong remakes (we'll get to that).
Speaking of overly long remakes, there was a new version of this movie in 2010. It changed most of the story, and there was a surprise twist where Sir John was also a wolf man. Oh, sorry, spoiler alert. I guess you don't have to watch it now.
Did You Know?
There were no wild wolves in the British Isles in 1941. (There were only werewolves.)
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