The Wolf Man (1941)

Directed by George Waggner. Starring Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, Warren William, Maria Ouspenskaya, Ralph Bellamy, Patric Knowles, Béla Lugosi, Fay Helm, J. M. Kerrigan, Forrester Harvey.

Chaney returns to his ancestral home in Wales after his brother’s passing; there, he tries to reconcile with his estranged father (Rains), catches the eye of lovely local Ankers, and gets attacked one night by what he believes to be a wolf…but is actually a werewolf, and its bite will soon transform him into the same kind of unruly beast. Unusually high-quality horror film for its day, a late addition to the cavalcade of Universal Classic Monsters (the studio previously produced the picture Werewolf of London in 1935, but that one has been largely forgotten today outside of horror fanatic circles); strong production values, eerie and evocative music, and a surprisingly stacked cast for a “low” genre effort. Waggner’s direction lacks visceral influence, however, with restrained suspense and violence too “classy” for its bestial profile (even against the Production Code requirements, there must have been a more chilling or stomach-churning way to show the attacks than grappling and strangling—it’s supposed to be wolf-like, after all). Chaney makes for a sympathetic tragic figure, Rains is excellent as usual, and Lugosi has a small but important role as the brooding son of vamping gypsy Ouspenskaya. Released just two days after Pearl Harbor, but its box office returns didn’t seem to be affected by the event; so popular, in fact, that Chaney would reprise his role four more times in spinoffs/crossovers with other Universal monsters, and the original film would be remade in 2010 as The Wolfman.

74/100