The Wolf Man (1941)

Official trailer

Lon Chaney Jr. plays Larry Talbot and Claude Rains plays Sir John Talbot, with Evelyn Ankers as Gwen Conliffe, Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva, Bela Lugosi as Bela the gypsy werewolf, Warren William as Dr. Lloyd and Patric Knowles as Frank Andrews. Curt Siodmak wrote the screenplay.

Universal Pictures produced and released the film in December 1941 as a major entry in the Universal Monsters horror cycle. I have a soft spot for this film that its flaws can’t touch. Chaney’s Talbot is the saddest monster Universal ever made, and I rate him above the film around him. Waggner’s direction is solid studio work with no personality of its own, and that’s what holds the picture at an 8.

The Wolf Man is the foundational text for American werewolf cinema. Curt Siodmak’s screenplay invented most of the werewolf-myth elements that later productions have treated as traditional folklore: the silver vulnerability, the pentagram appearing on the victim’s palm, the werewolf-bite transmission of the curse.

Each element was screenplay invention instead of real European folk tradition. The film’s commercial success embedded the invented mythology so thoroughly in later culture that most viewers assume the elements are traditional instead of 1941 cinematic invention.

The Invented Mythology

Curt Siodmak invented most of the modern werewolf-myth elements while writing The Wolf Man’s screenplay. The silver vulnerability, the pentagram palm-mark, the werewolf-bite transmission: none of these elements appear in real European werewolf folklore. Siodmak created them for the film and they have later been treated as if they were traditional sources.

Siodmak’s gypsy-folk poem about wolfsbane and the autumn moon, recited by the wandering gypsy Maleva, has become a permanent werewolf-cinema reference. The poem itself is screenplay invention. Later werewolf productions have quoted the verses as if they were real folk material. I get a real kick out of that. A screenwriter made up a piece of folklore for a studio horror picture, and eight decades later people recite it as if their grandmothers taught it to them.

Lon Chaney Jr.’s Performance

Lon Chaney Jr. plays Larry Talbot with the vulnerability that distinguishes The Wolf Man from contemporary 1941 horror productions. Chaney’s Talbot isn’t a brave action hero or a calculating villain but a decent man trapped by a curse he didn’t choose and can’t defeat. The performance gives the film its tragic structure instead of only its horror content.

Chaney’s transformation-resistance sequences, where Talbot tries to prevent his own attacks through restraint and confession, are the film’s strongest emotional material.

They get to me every time I think about them. Watching him confess and ask to be restrained, knowing it won’t be enough, makes the monster the person I feel sorriest for in the whole film. Later horror productions have developed that sympathetic-monster type again and again, and they all start here.

The Universal Monsters Continuity

Ten years after Frankenstein and Dracula and six years after Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man arrived. The Universal Monsters cycle was by 1941 a mature production system with established visual style, recognizable supporting cast members, and settled commercial expectations. The Wolf Man both extended the cycle’s standard practices and introduced new mythology that later entries developed.

Bela Lugosi’s brief appearance as Bela the gypsy werewolf connects the film to Universal’s larger horror universe. Maria Ouspenskaya’s Maleva would return in later Wolf Man appearances and crossover films. The film’s success led to Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943 and additional Wolf Man appearances through House of Frankenstein in 1944 and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948.

I enjoy Lugosi’s few minutes more than they probably deserve. Seeing him in a Universal horror picture beside Chaney feels like one generation of the studio’s monsters meeting the next. I think Talbot works best on his own, though, and I’d take this film over any of the crossovers that followed it.

Does The Wolf Man still hold up?

Within the Universal Monsters cycle, The Wolf Man is a foundational entry and the source text for modern werewolf cinema. Chaney’s sympathetic Talbot and Siodmak’s invented mythology are why I rate it an 8, and Waggner’s workmanlike direction is why it stops there. I’d hand it to anybody who wants to understand where every werewolf movie since got its rules, and Talbot’s discovery of what he’s become still moves me.

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