The Wolf Man (1941) When I first got a look at Lon Chaney, Jr., my first thought was, "is this our
leading man?" I mean, this guy was an unattractive, husky, simpering doofus.
How was I suppose to care what happened to this guy, if I couldn't stand
looking at him? I see people that look like him at Wal-Mart about everyday and
I don't believe I would cry too many rivers if any of them got bit by a gypsy
werewolf, turned into a wolf man, and then was clubbed to death by their own
father. But then the movie unspooled (okay, that's poetic license since it's
really all digitally encoded on a disc, but you can smell what I'm cooking,
right?) and I slowly came around to what was happening here. It's precisely
because he doesn't look like the classic leading man that he engenders the
audience's sympathy.
First of all, you should know that Chaney played the part of Lenny in Of Mice and Men back in 1939 and received the best notices of his career for that role. That
role was a big lug kind of part, dumb and happy and not understanding
everything that was happening to him. The Wolf Man part is similar. Larry
Talbot comes from America back to his ancestral home in Wales where his father
still resides in the Talbot castle (remember, this is a horror movie). It seems that Larry's older, first born brother has died and
now Larry can come back and claim everything that the first born was originally
entitled to. Is he bitter that he's had to wait 20 years? If he is, he doesn't
show it. He's genial, kind of goofy and immediately volunteers to put a new
part in his father's telescope.  Of course he uses it to spy on a beautiful woman in an antique store and
immediately goes over there to ask her out. He's so simple, he thinks that
after he tells this woman he was spying on her that she'll think he's more
handsome than 10 movie stars (well, maybe more handsome than co-star Ralph
Bellamy at least). He's such a maroon that even after she tells him to get lost
and that she is engaged he announces that he'll be by at eight o'clock to pick
her up for a walk! That's not too far away from Lenny if you ask me. You really
can't help but root for somebody who just doesn't care that he's got no chance
in hell. Of course, this is a movie, so she goes on a walk with him, but since
it's 1941, she takes her girlfriend with her. And since this is a horror movie,
her girlfriend is chomped on by a big nasty wolf that Larry kills in an effort
to save her, but is bitten in the process.
Larry becomes convinced that he will become a werewolf due to the bite,
especially with all these gypsies milling around in the foggy marshland around
the town filling his head with creaky old folk tales of men who become wolves
once bitten by another werewolf. This involves Lon weeping in a couple of
scenes. You see, he isn't scared for himself, he's given up trying to figure
out why any of this is happening to him, just as Lenny never could comprehend
what was happening to him. He's concerned that he will hurt those close to him,
particularly this girl who already has a fiancee (Memo to the Wolf Man: Fiancee
needs rabies, stat!). He's tormented by what he's become and by what he has done and will do again
once the transformation takes place. He keeps telling his father that he's
become this murderous creature and his dad refuses to believe it and just
thinks that Larry is a little bit off. He is so convinced that while all the
townspeople are hunting Dog Boy, the father and Larry's big plan is to tie
Larry to a chair and lock the door while it's night and then I guess the father
thinks this whole, "I'm a werewolf and I eat people" thing will blow over and
Larry will go back to fixing telescopes and playing peeper again, just like the
good old days. Well, as you may have surmised all doesn't go according to plan
and Larry turns into the Wolf Man and runs amok in the forest until he runs
into his father. His dad, wielding the silver headed cane that Larry had given
him caves his skull in repeatedly until Larry can bark no more (at least until
1942's Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man ).  Lon Chaney, Jr. always seemed to be proudest of this role and the role of
Lenny. You wonder how much of that had to do with his own relationship with his
father. Jr. always wanted to be an actor and hoped that his father could get
his foot in the door. His father wouldn't help him and Jr. seemed destined to
be a plumber (really). In fact, Jr. never got the chance to shine in Hollywood
until after his father's death. It's ironic that he then had to adopt his
father's name to succeed in film. The Wolf Man role had him finally being
accepted back by his father, only after the death of an older brother, and even
then it got all screwed up to the point where the father whose acceptance he
craved so much whapped him upside his head with silver cane until he was mere
pulp. Maybe Chaney identified with The Wolf Man because they both had sucky
dads.
The other thing about this movie that makes it work in spite of all the hokum
(Bela Lugosi as a gypsy named Bela? Ugh!) is that this was way back when you
could actually empathize with the monster on screen. These were guys like you
or I, turned into creatures that did their terrible deeds without really
wanting to. In many of today's horror films you have monsters and killers who
either commit mayhem for no discernable reason or simply because they like it.
Can anyone really identify with Freddy Krueger? Would you want to? And aren't
his movies less effective because of it? Larry Talbot came across as a regular
guy who had regular guy dreams (Get father to like him, get hot chick to like
him, fix telescope). And those were taken from him by the caprice of fate. How
many of us feel the same way about the dreams we once harbored? The DVD is, like all of Universal's classic monster movies available on DVD,
is just jacked full of bonus materials. You get a 30 minute documentary about
the film. The best parts were the comments of writer Curt Siodmak and the
remarks that were made about the parallels between this movie and Siodmak's
experience with the Nazis before fleeing Germany. There was also an in depth
talk with modern make-up FX guru Rick Baker, who had lots of interesting things
to say about Jack Pierce, the guy who came up with all the Universal monsters
and pretty much defined how the world thinks a mummy, wolf man, Dracula, and
Frankenstein Monster should look. There's also production notes, cast and
filmmaker biographies (did you know that gypsy woman Maria Ouspenkaya died in a
fire after she fell asleep with a lit cigarette in her hand?), and an archive
of images from the movie.  The best feature is the audio commentary from film historian Tom Weaver. He
narrates along with the film, providing information about the cast, the making
of the movie, other werewolf movies, and even points out bloopers and lapses in
logic in the film. The best bit we heard from him was that Lon Chaney, Jr. and
female co-star Evelyn Ankers pretty much hated each other's guts, even though
they went on to star in several more horror vehicles together. Apparently Lon
got P.O.ed at her when he found out that she somehow had gotten his dressing
room. It turns out the studio did that because at night Lon and fellow actor
Broderick Crawford would take booze into the dressing room, move all the
furniture out of the way and then fight all night long. In the morning the room
would look like wartime London. I can't believe the Wolf Man would do that! I
bet it was his dad's fault.
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