Susan Year Itch

Lycanthropic Review

George Waggner, 1941

I’m not going to lie to you, I’m writing this just because I wanted to use that title. But also, I’m really busy these days learning about horror films, so I’m going to cheat and review a film that I had to watch in class.

Vampires and zombies are all very good and duly represent our repressed desires come back to the surface etc etc. Universal Studios figured out how much money they could make with these sorts of films and, beginning with Dracula, spat out a series of monster-driven horror films over the next ten years. Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man…all these movies were creepy and groundbreaking, but it didn’t last, and eventually horror went into a dormant period, giving way to parody until the wave of sci-fi stuff began in the Fifties.

Dracula, 1931, you should stop reading and put this on your queue.

And what, pray, what was the movie that heralded the death of the Universal monster? Have you ever heard tell of the 1941 film that features what appears to be John Goodman in too-tight overalls, hiding behind trees and growling at passersby? Well, stranger, pull up a chair and pop in the DVD of the worst horror movie ever, The Wolf Man!

Lon Chaney, Jr.* plays a giant, rotund dude who bounds around the feudal lands surrounding his (inexplicably British) family’s estate. He’s returned to Talbot Castle, the home of his childhood, because his older brother has fortunately been offed in a hunting accident**, making him the heir to the vast Talbot riches. Daddy Talbot (Claude Rains, who is about four feet shorter than his gigantic “son”) is a little bit skeptical that this guy, who uses a telescope to peer in the windows of the humdrum townsfolkwomen, will be able to handle his new position as Talbot heir.

He’s not wrong, of course. Larry (Chaney, Jr.) becomes a werewolf, yikes! He kills people left and right, sporting hairy feet and too much facial hair. There’s more to this, like a gypsy woman and a boring heroine and some hunting dogs, but in the end, Larry finally bites the dust at the hand of his own father, who beats him to death with a silver-headed cane. This scene, which is the most interesting in the entire film, parallels an earlier scene in which Larry beats a wolf to death with the same cane. Little does he know that this wolf is actually the poor lycanthropic-afflicted, gypsy fortune-teller Bela (played by Bela Lugosi), and the bite he suffers in the process launches his own transformation into the humongous, bumbling werewolf that everyone fears.

Something you should know: Bela Lugosi played Dracula (really really well) in the first Universal monster flick.*** It's not too much of a stretch to see that Larry beats the older and more talented Bela (coincidentally (?) playing a character of the same name) to death just as The Wolf Man beats the older and better Universal horror movies to death, ushering moviegoers into an age in which horror becomes parody. His filmic father beating him to death is a punishment for this crime, but it happens too late. Bela is already dead and The Wolf Man has already eaten up 70 minutes of screen time.

Yes, I know, this doesn't help you decide whether or not to go see Superman Returns, but I'm off to see it today, so stay tuned and remove The Wolf Man from your queue in the meantime.

*Son of legendary horror movie star Lon Chaney, who played the phantom in Phantom of the Opera.
**That old chestnut.
***That role was supposed to go to Lon Chaney Sr., but he died before it could all go down.

Sorry, can we just look at this again?