THE WOLF MAN (1941)

Like the vampire, the werewolf is a classic staple of mythology in modern western society. Whereas Frankenstein and The Mummy generated their appeal to the imagination from specific single stories that fed into the culture, the origins of vampirism and lycanthropy have vague connections with scientific phenomena but go further back into the fog of harder-to-source ancient superstition. The werewolf has been used most famously in the morality story of Red Riding Hood as a symbol of the eternal, shape-shifting trickster of evil appetites. He or she has even been presented for sheer grotesque shock value in the guise of the Bearded Lady or Dog-Boy of P.T. Barnum’s travelling sideshows.

Universal’s Dracula (1931) made much of a demonic link between the Romanian Prince of Darkness and his vulpine “Children of the night”, giving him the power to assume their form. His transformation though was deliberately staged off-screen as the studio feared the effects (and probably the difficulty of achieving them) of such metamorphoses. Even four years later in 1935’s Werewolf of London (reviewed here 2/7/2016), photography lap dissolves artfully hid each stage in Henry Hull’s transformation behind a succession of foreground pillars.

When it came to creating a prospective new horror franchise in The Wolf Man, Universal realised that they must be bold if their man/werewolf creation was to work. After all, Paramount and M-G-M had demonstrated with their iterations of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (in 1931 and 1941 respectively) that a graphic and gradual facial changeover could create more wonderment and fear than unintentional laughter if the effects were supported properly by budget and that all-important strong screenplay.

The writer hired to tame the beast was Curt Siodmak who could relate well to the persecution theme of The Wolf Man. He had escaped from the genocidal terror of Nazi Germany and into his lycanthrope mythology he weaved aspects from his experience. The branding of the werewolf’s next victim with the pentagram symbol upon their hand is a direct reference to the targeting of the Jews and their singling out for ostracism, then capture and extermination in his former homeland.  Siodmak also took great care to ground his scripts somehow in as believable a reality as he could. In Universal’s excellent accompanying DVD documentary Monster by Moonlight, he recalled: “All of my pictures have some scientific background - which makes them authentic”. Though The Wolf Man was more supernatural than his science-fiction ideas, in the film Siodmak allows modern psychiatry the chance to explain the cause. Warren William’s Dr Lloyd aims to explain the condition with his limited professional expertise: “Any disease of the mind can be cured with the co-operation of the patient”.

Siodmak claimed that his original screenplay was deliberately ambiguous as to whether Talbot actually becomes an externalised werewolf or was only convinced of it in his own delusions. The studio however pursued the unambiguous real monster manifestation and one other change that Siodmak found lacking in credibility. This was related to the central character, a star-making role for Lon Chaney Jr (now billed with thrusting, canny confidence by Universal as Lon Chaney). The assuming of his father’s name would never mean the young son of Lon Chaney senior could ever eclipse his talent, but he was about to emerge ironically as his own actor playing The Wolf Man in a vehicle that capitalised on his imposing size, much as 1939’s Of Mice and Men and Man Made Monster (1941) had done. Siodmak felt that Chaney’s burly presence as the character of Larry Talbot would make a realistic mechanic, travelling to Scotland to fix a Lord of the manor’s telescope. The studio sacrificed some believability by instead making the likeable, blue-collar chap the estranged returning son of said nobleman.

To the manor born though he was not, Chaney does fine work as Talbot. He is convincing in his doomed descent from the relaxed, brash American ‘abroad’ into the gnawing fear of a paranoid fugitive. Initially, his State-side accent is explained (with what I would call the Van Damme defence) as having been away from what is meant to be Wales for almost eighteen years. Producer-Director George Waggner needn’t perhaps have bothered with this back-story detail since film’s setting is that fantasy Neverland known as ‘Universal Backlot’. The Ruritanian village streets architecture created for their filmed Dracula onwards is a quaint back-drop merged with horse-and-carriage as well as 1940’s automobiles. The period clash is continued by a cast that once more endearingly mixes British with American residents. Reliable Chicago pipe-man Ralph Bellamy, who played similar slow decency in His Girl Friday (1940), was supposedly a childhood pal of Larry’s as Chief Constable Colonel Mountford. Moreover, the local British antique store owner (J.M. Kerrigan) has a daughter Gwen played by Evelyn Ankers, an American-sounding Chilean.

Let’s not split hairs – there’ll be enough of those sprouting in coarse, fearsome abandon soon. This is essentially Universal’s Everyman universality of location and the actors are all excellent in their parts, none more so than the prized asset of Claude Rains giving his honeyed tones as Sir John.  His relatively diminutive stature against Chaney helps in contrasting against his son’s size. His urbane warmth toward him and sincere concern aids in weighting the film’s pedigree. “I do believe that most anything can happen to a man in his own mind”, he says with fatherly tact at one point.

Ankers and Chaney make a charming couple when they meet cute in her father’s shop. He, the voyeur who’s been spying on her through her bedroom window via the telescope. She, the secretly-engaged beauty confident enough not to worry at being perved over by a stranger across the street. “What big eyes you have, Grandma”, teases Larry in a nice nod to folklore after she sells him a silver-topped, wolf’s-head cane. We also hear the celebrated and oft-quoted verse that everyone in the town knows, haunted as the region is by the werewolf story:

Even a man who is pure in heart, and says his prayers by night

May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.

More of the less pleasant side of superstition is close by, courtesy of the Gypsy encampment where they go to have their fortunes read - or rather Gwen’s chaperoning girlfriend Jenny (Fay Helm) does.  It could be worse. She at least gets to meet Bela Lugosi using his own first name and his perfect-fit Hungarian accent as the Gypsy chiromancer. As I mentioned in my earlier Invisible Ghost article, in real life Lugosi hankered after the lead role in this movie during his second wind of gaining horror traction. It was not to be, and although he endured the knock-back of this single scene cameo, it is pleasing to see a rare, engaged vulnerability in his eyes crying out in horrified distress at Jenny’s impending demise. “Go away! Go quickly!” It is not quickly enough though. She dies by his transformed lyncanthropic paws. At this point we see an actual wolf committing the savagery as opposed to the potential movie-reality sabotage of an aging Were-Lugosi at it. As this also conceals the human alter-ego of her killer, the audience is better for dodging that silver bullet. (Until the poor actor’s monkey-business merger in 1943’s The Ape Man).

Larry throws himself into trying to save Jenny, and for his pains is bitten by the wolf before he brains it with the cane. A good deed never goes unpunished, and from here onwards the werewolf curse is transmitted to Larry. He manages to escape a death-sentence for murdering what reverted to being Bela the Gypsy, but in classic horror film style he is shunned by the outside jury of the townsfolk. Gwen’s reasonable schlub of a fiancé Frank observes: “There’s something very tragic about that man”. (Patric Knowles who plays Frank would tangle with the vulpine again in the first sequel Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943)

Bela’s death prompts the appearance of one of the most famous supporting character players in horror movie history: Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva. She is a fortune-teller like her accursed son and crops up repeatedly to deliver more intoned verse we heard at the start. To begin with, she stands over Bela’s body, quietly offering comfort: “Your suffering is over, Bela my son. Now you will find peace”. Then upon knowing that Larry now has the evil virus within him, she transfers her fixed stare of supernatural intensity to warning him of his fate, gifting him a silver pentagram medallion for safety.

No matter what he is given, Larry’s fate is sealed and back home we witness the first of his full-moon manifestations. Using dissolve photography, the close-up focus is on Chaney’s legs as they transmogrify into hairy tree-trunks (actually rubber boots) ending in gnarled, root-like toes. The prosthetic effects were once more undertaken by resident make-up genius Jack Pierce. His build-up of Chaney’s facial features, shown already fully changed in the following rampage scene, was done using his trusty technique of layering cotton and collodion. Inspired future make-up supremo Rick Baker (a multi-Oscar winner himself for werewolf films) felt that it was ultimately Pierce’s reluctance to move with the times that was responsible for his later unceremonious firing and replacement by Bud Westmore. The Wizard of Oz (1939) had recently pioneered foam rubber appliances: “It sped up the process. It kept the continuity better. It was more comfortable for the actors and it took a lot less time to make them up”.

Chaney’s relationship with Pierce suffered from impatience at the six-hour sessions he spent in the chair and also on-set while the progressive dissolves were painstakingly realised on camera. The result though was still striking. Pierce eschewed wild head hair for a tonsorial neatness, composed of layered-in yak hair then singed for added animalistic coarseness, that drew attention more to the face itself,  A rubber porcine snout gave further proof that Pierce did actually work with other materials, and a lower arch of protruding fangs completed the bestial look. The artist was admirably keen to ensure that vulpine veracity was never allowed to mask the actor’s flexibility of expression.

Conceived on purpose by Siodmak as a Greek tragedy, the plot moves inexorably toward Talbot’s death.  There is no cure, whether physical or talking, and it is a brutal climax that sees father killing son with the same wolf-headed cane that signposted his fate. Rains strikes each blow with committed, unavoidable ferocity leaving his poor offspring to change back just as Rains himself did at the end of his own berserk reign of terror in The Invisible Man (1933). Similarly, Larry is now believed to be in 

eternal peace, the poetic leitmotif intoned more fully and gracefully now by Ouspenskaya:

The way you walked was thorny through no fault of your own.

But as the rain enters the soul, the river enters the sea.

The tears run to a predestined end.

On the subject of themes, we must not forget the terrific music score by Charles Previn, Hans J. Salter and Frank Skinner with its infamous, demonic tri-tone ‘daaa-da-daaa’ augmenting the frissons on screen.

Universal realised they had a hairy hit on their hands with The Wolf Man and promptly found ways, as with all of their iconic monsters, to continually revive him, no matter how conclusively he appeared to die at the end of each sequel. Although Chaney was arguably typecast in such a role, not only was he the only actor to play Talbot as we have discussed, but his work in horror roles afforded him a long career. As with Bela Lugosi, from his signature character part onward he was to spend the next three decades building a legacy that would outlive him.