Review #228: The Wolf Man (1941)

This review was originally written in October 2022.

Gabe's 100 Bucket List Horror Films Review #82: The Wolf Man (1941)

The Wolf Man is a film about a man, Larry Talbot, who comes home to live with his wealthy father after going off to work halfway across the world. When he arrives there, after peeping on a neighbor, he learns of a local legend about werewolves. He then goes with the peeped neighbor and her friend to see a fortune teller, and the friend gets killed by a wolf. Larry fights and kills the wolf, getting bitten in the process- but the next morning, the dead "wolf" turns out to be a dead man, and Larry's bite has completely healed, leaving behind a pentagram-shaped scar. As the days go on, he keeps noticing strange blanks of time- and more bodies start piling up. Has he become a werewolf, or is he going crazy?

I've never seen any of the Wolf Man movies, and this first one wasn't bad, exactly. (It wasn't good either, for the record.) It sets up a lot of mythology about werewolves (much of which still persists in the public consciousness today!) and the characters are fine I guess, but I can't help but feel like this movie could have been a lot better if they had played up some of the mystery that they were hinting at. For example, it's a huge part of the plot that even after Larry realizes he's been responsible for all of these murders, he doesn't know whether he's actually become a werewolf or if he's just suffering from schizophrenia or some other mental disorder. And a few of the scenes are shot in a way as to leave it ambiguous whether he's transforming or not, which really plays into this uncertainty. But then by the end it becomes clear that yes, he IS a werewolf, he IS transforming into a hairy beast, and it all becomes a lot less interesting to me. I get that at the time this movie came out it probably wasn't financially feasible to count on a "less is more" approach, but I just really feel like it was a missed opportunity to make this more of a psychological horror instead of just a monster flick.

I do think it's fascinating that (unlike what I expected of Nosferatu and Dracula) this movie actually did create a lot of the lore that everyone knows about werewolves, but keep in mind that it's not 100%. Some of the stuff mentioned in this film already existed (using silver to kill a lycanthrope was already part of the myth of the Beast of Gévaudan, for example) and not all of it maintains throughout the following Wolf Man movies (like werewolves only being active in Autumn), but it's still pretty cool that we are seeing the genesis of some of these story elements!

Like I said, this movie isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. It relies way too much on action sequences that really don't hold up, and could have used a bit more mind games in order to be truly good.

Overall Rating: 5/10 Pentagram Scars Caused By Animals

Missed Potential: Apparently there was supposed to be a scene where the wolf man fights a bear (an actual bear!) and footage of it was shown in trailers; however, during filming, the bear broke loose, almost killed the lead actress, and escaped. Bears gonna bear.