Horror Movie Review #31 - The Wolf Man (1941)

I've reviewed a lot of werewolf movies this month, but this was the very first one ever made as far as I know.  Lon Chaney Jr, man of a Thousand Faces, plays Lawrence Talbot.  Ralph Bellamy, who was in this one, and lived long enough to star with Eddie Murphy, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Akroyd in Trading Places, played an investigator.  Claude Rains and Bela Lugosi co-starred.

"Even a man who is pure of heart,

and says his prayers by night,

may become a Wolf

when the wolfbane blooms,

and the autumn moon is bright."

The Wolf Man (1941) opens with repetition of the above phrase.  No less than three separate characters repeat it to the main character, as if to warn him that his good natured-ness cannot defend him from the supernatural.  The main character is, of course, Larry Talbot, an Americanized descendant of the Talbot family, who has been called home to take over the family estate on the death of his older brother.  As the second son, his only goal is to prove to his father that he can handle running the family affairs now that his older brother has passed away.  Larry's father, for his part, embraces Larry warmly, and father and son make a pact to never have secrets from each other.  Larry meets a nice young girl by the name of Gwen, and while trying to get her alone in the woods, runs across a wolf attacking a friend of Gwen's.  Killing the wolf with his newly-purchased silver cane, Larry is savaged by the beast before he can manage to kill it.  But in the morning, Bela, the gypsy fortune teller, is found dead as well as the girl, with Larry's silver-handled cane nearby.  Worse, Larry's wounds are healed, so he can't verify his part of the story.  Larry begins to doubt his own version of events, and seeks out the dead gypsy, Bela, regretting whatever part he had in the man's death.  An old Gypsy woman, Bela's mother, speaks another phrase over the corpse of her son, a phrase that will soon begin to haunt Larry's life as well:

"The way you walked was thorny

through no fault of your own

But as the rain enters the soil,

the river enters the sea, 

so tears run to a predestined end."

This was classic horror.  Great acting has to compensate for the simple makeup effects of the transformation sequence.  This was 1941, after all.  A shorter movie, a lot of action happens in a short time span, between the sudden appearance of the first werewolf to the frenzied hunting of the second.  There's not a ton of character development, but I think you get to see the characters truly reveal themselves as the story proceeds.  Lon Chaney Jr does a great job trying to portray a man of reason and skill driven to near-madness by a supernatural curse, and then finally accepting his fated end.

No nudity, of course, so fun for the whole family, if your whole family is into monster movies, of course.  lol  That's it for the October Horror Movie Review-a-thon!  I did it!  Wheeeeee!  I made it to the end!  YEEEEHAAAWWWWW!!!!!  Now, I overdose on Halloween candy, and spend the weekend playing computer games while drunk!  Yea, that's almost as much fun as watching Horror movies.  :-)

Fun event of the day, I was driving down my street on my way home today, and a black cat ran across my path!  I wasn't even close to the cat, but I'm pretty sure it definitely was black, or at least, very dark charcoal gray.  I've almost never had a black cat cross my path, and to have it happen on Halloween was awesome!  I cracked up laughing at the coincidence of it.  Or... was it a coincidence?  Maybe Witches are running rampant in my neighborhood!  :-o  lol

I hope everyone enjoyed this year's Halloween Horror review a thon!  Happy Halloween, everybody!  :-D