Director: George Waggner
Year:  1941
Rating: 7.5

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Considering how widespread the legend and myth of a man turning into a wolf was all over the world, it is surprising how few films had used that concept by 1941. Universal which produced this film had also come up with Werewolf of London in 1935 but that film had nothing close to the impact that this one did. Written by Curt Siodmak, this was a big box office hit and it was the genesis of many more wolf man films to come. Siodmak who came from Germany, as did his director brother Robert, to get away from a fascist regime was the creative genius behind a bunch of the horror films of this period - The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Woman, Black Friday, the sequel to this film Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, Son of Dracula and I Walked with a Zombie among many others.


The Wolf Man unlike many of the monsters of film legend was a tragic figure - Frankenstein was a freak made by man, The Mummy a revengeful creature from the past, The Invisible Man went crazy from isolation and power, Dracula was just a blood sucking suave serial killer - but the Wolf Man sought neither fame nor revenge and he hated himself for what he had become - none of it through a failure of character but simply by trying to do the right thing. The transformation from a good man to a guilt-ridden killer beyond his control is haunting.


Away from his country for 18 years, Lon Chaney Jr. comes back with a broad American accent to his father (Claude Rains) and a few other British acquaintances also with American accents - Ralph Bellamy and Warren William - and he soon begins to try and woo the lovely Evelyn Ankers. His past fraught relationship with his father is referred to and Ankers is engaged to another man (Patric Knowles). Perhaps this is why he is punished by being bitten by a werewolf (Bela Lugosi). Much of the film plays out in atmospheric fog (to cover the cheapness of the sets according to one person involved in the film) and in its 70 minute running time it began a genre that continues to this day.


The sequel came out two years later with Chaney again playing the Wolf Man and the gypsy woman again being played by Maria Ouspenskaya while Patric Knowles appears as a different character. Evelyn Ankers didn't make it to that sequel but instead was Elsa Frankenstein in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) for which Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man is also a sequel. But though this film also has Elsa back, she is portrayed by Ilona Massey. The horror of sequels!