Review(s): DVD The Wolf Man - The Legacy Collection (The Wolf Man / Werewolf of London / Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man / She-Wolf of London)
Horror Classic Still Holds Up
What famous horror classic, panned by reviewers upon its initial release in December of 1941, looks better and better every year? THE WOLF MAN, starring Claude Rains, Ralph Bellamy, Evelyn Ankers, and Lon Chaney Jr. as the hapless Larry Talbot.
The story is a familiar one: Larry, the son of esteemed Sir John (Rains) returns home to Wales after many years in America, is bitten by a werewolf (well played by Bela Lugosi), and becomes a werewolf himself. What's extraordinary is the fact that the film can be so effective today.
The biggest reason for this is the acting. Some classic films, pre-Actor's Studio, look pretty pathetic when it comes to realistic characterization. Not so THE WOLF MAN. Curt Siodmak's excellent screenplay (likened to a Greek Tragedy) provides a vehicle for the stars to be at their best, and, boy, do they shine: Rains a tower of strength as the proud father; Ankers hitting just the right note as the torn female lead; Maria Ouspenskaya as the Old Gypsey Woman whose words prefigure Larry's doom....
But the standout is Lon Chaney Jr. A definite mixed-bag as an actor, he is perfect here--and this is a role calling for the use of all human emotions (unlike later Wolf Man films, where Talbot's head-pounding becomes monotonous). In fact, seeing THE WOLF MAN recently has convinced me that Chaney would have made the ideal screen Phillip Marlow (and I'm not forgetting Bogie)--big, tough, surly, yet charming when need be (a highlight early in WOLF MAN is Larry's attempts at flirting with Ankers; Chaney does the surprisingly playful dialogue with just the right touch). There's no doubt that his performance would merit accolades even today.
This is not to say that there aren't problems in the film. The continuity is off in a number of places (Chany transforms into the Wolf Man at one point wearing a sleeveless undershirt; in the very next scene, he's wearing a neatly buttoned Dickey), and there's a scene or two that's completely inexplicable (e.g., why DOES the Wolf Man pass out when caught in that trap?)....
But overall, the pace, lighting, cinematography, excellent musical score, and strong story propel the film through these rough spots, the 70-minute ride leaving the viewer wanting more. For these reasons, THE WOLF MAN is a classic....and a DVD worth buying (the extra werewolf films, particularly FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN, are entertaining as well).
Pity the Poor Wolf Man
Among Universal’s gallery of “Classic Monsters,” one of the strangest figures is the Wolf Man. Only the Creeper, who might well have been invented by Charles Addams, could rate as a stranger one, but then he only showed up in one film (House of Horrors). The Wolf Man, as horror film buffs know, is the nom de loup of Lawrence Talbot, who in the first movie returns to his ancestral home and soon afterwards contracts what Wilfred Glendon (The Werewolf of London) calls the “medieval unpleasantness” of werewolfery. Moreover, he contracts this affliction almost accidentally, when he tries to save a young woman from the ravages of a gypsy werewolf (Bela Lugosi), a bit like the guy who is supposed to have caught VD from sitting on an infected toilet seat.
The Wolf Man (1941) marks a minor turning point in the history of American horror films. First, its success at the box office convinced Universal to go over to the production of programmers, inexpensively produced movies whose short length—usually not much over an hour—made them ideal for filling out a double bill. Even more importantly, as far as horror connoisseurs go, The Wolf Man’s grosses stimulated RKO to get into the act with a horror unit headed by Val Lewton, who presided over the making of some of the real masterpieces of the genre, like The Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Seventh Victim. But that is another story.
Secondly, The Wolf Man is possibly the first horror film to feature a monster as victim. This innovation appears to have been the brainchild of writer Curt Siodmak, who worked on a number of Universal screenplays in the early 1940s. Although two famous monsters, King Kong and Henry Frankenstein’s creation, can arouse pity in us, they are clearly more terrifying than anything else. But poor Lawrence Talbot who never wanted to be a werewolf was doomed to stagger through a series of movies, seeking a cure for his rare ailment while leaving in his wake a trail of wolfbane and dead bodies. While this was a peculiar fate for a monster, a similar if more mundane scenario—in which the protagonist seems to be losing his or her identity—was quickly going to become a staple feature of the psychological thriller, just beginning to come into vogue when The Wolf Man came out.
Probably it was the interest in psychoanalysis, triggered off by the arrival of a number of prestigious refugee analysts in the United States, as much as anything else that fueled the rise of the psychological thriller in the war years. Dramas of dual identity had played a conspicuous role in German horror pictures like The Student of Prague (1913; 1926) and Orlac’s Hands (1925), but the theme had mainly cropped up in the United States in two versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, both made by Paramount—one in 1920, and the other in 1931. In retrospect, both The Wolf Man and MGM’s tony 1941 remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Spencer Tracy and Ingrid Bergman, can be seen as prelusive to an important body of movies including George Cukor’s Gaslight, Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound, and Robert Siodmak’s Dark Mirror.
Sadly, the Wolf Man role belonged to Lon Chaney Jr., one of the most inept performers in the annals of the horror film. The bearer of one of the great names of the silent era, Chaney inherited little of his father’s estimable talent. As Carlos Clarens pointed out in An Illustrated History of Horror and Science-Fiction Films, it is most often supporting players like Lionel Atwill or George Zucco who stand out in Universal’s 1940s celluloid Grand Guignol. The Wolf Man is no exception to this rule. Maria Ouspenskaya is quite entertaining as Maleva, but Claude Rains insufferably smug as Talbot père, while a memorable fading star of the 1930s, Warren William, makes a marginal contribution to the action, and Bela Lugosi makes an even more marginal one as the cause of all of Talbot’s subsequent lycanthropic travails. Nevertheless, the real stars of such latter day Universal horror productions were the highly talented technicians who collaborated on them like the cinematographers Joseph Valentine and George Robinson, the special effects wizard John Fulton, and makeup artist Jack Pierce.
Among the films in this set, I would single out for attention Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the work of Roy William Neill, who did a more than competent job of directing most of the Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. The movie ultimately degenerates into utter nonsense—Lugosi, outrageously miscast as the Frankenstein monster, is not horrifying, just plain horrible—but it opens with a wonderfully eerie sequence in which two grave robbers unwisely decide to desecrate the Talbot family crypt. For an instant, in an establishing shot of the Llanwelly churchyard, Universal itself returns to life from the schlock Hades into which it had descended—and into which it was about to fall again in the following reels.
Viewers who want to pursue the further vicissitudes of the Wolf Man—in The House of Frankenstein and The House of Dracula—will have to invest in two other sets. Here, he shares the stage with a pair of rival lycanthropes, one real, the other only a ψευδολύκος. These are The Werewolf of London and The She-Wolf of London, for which I have written an Amazon review posted elsewhere. The first of these is a respectable, although by no means great horror film with Henry Hull—whose pained look suggests he needs cascara more than the moonflower that cures werewolfism—in the lead role, abetted by Warner Oland as a rival damned soul from the U of Carpathia. The second is the most negligible of the efforts in this set, scantly saved for indefatigable horror addicts by a couple of effective nocturnal compositions courtesy of Maury Gertsman.
The legacy collection that is a legacy
This DVD set is the ultimate! From the beginning, I have always loved werewolves. And when I finally saw a movie that I had been looking for since I first got interested in werewolf films, I knew this was for me.
As for the movie "She-Wolf of London", I had never heard of it. It is what's related to how Alfred Hitchcock got started--through conspiracy that resulted in horrifying incidents. In the end, though, I didn't like the plot once it was explained. I wanted a classic werewolf. Well, I guess I just didn't get that!
All in all, though, I really enjoyed this collection. I especially appreciated learning about the fact that Larry Talbot went on even after "Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman". I hope you enjoy it, and happy howling!
Related DVD's The Wolf Man - The Legacy Collection (The Wolf Man / Werewolf of London / Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man / She-Wolf of London)
"It's alive! Alive!" shouts Colin Clive's triumphant Dr. Frankenstein as electricity buzzes over the hulking body of a revived corpse. "In the name of God now I know what it's like to be God!" For years unheard, this line has been restored, along with the legendary scene of the childlike monster tossing a little girl into a lake, in James Whale's Frankenstein, one of the most famous and influential horror movies ever made. Coming off the tremendous success of Dracula, Universal assigned sophomore director Whale to helm an adaptation of Mary Shelley's famous novel with Bela Lugosi as the monster. When Lugosi declined the role, Whale cast the largely unknown character actor Boris Karloff and together with makeup designer Jack Pierce they created the most memorable monster in... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Colin Clive - Mae Clarke - Boris Karloff Director(s): James Whale DVD Release Date: Released the 27 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Why would Universal previously distribute a superior DVD and then repackage the same film but decrease the quality???
The Legacy Collection of the original Dracula movie from 1930 is a lesser quality DVD than it's predecessor from the Classic Monsters Collection set. The image quality is blurry and fuzzy - I'll take film grain and hairs over blurred out images anyday. The audio is also muted and soft as compared to the earlier released DVD.
I've compared both DVDs side by side, and the previous "Classic Monsters Collection" DVD won out in DVD quality.
My suggestion to all customers is to avoid these lesser quality (but newer) releases of Dracula and buy the earlier release instead. More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Bela Lugosi - Helen Chandler - David Manners Director(s): Tod Browning DVD Release Date: Released the 27 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Eagarly with anticipation I waited for Halloween night to watch "The Mummy"! To my horror, I must have purchased the one defective copy of the Legacy Collection The Mummy, for it was not on disc one or disc two. It's just non-existant!
After spending $23 for this DVD, I'm sorely disappointed with the set. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Christy Cabanne DVD Release Date: Released the 19 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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For being a film from 1933, The Invisible Man is a very good film. This DVD collection contains four other movies and a documentary.
The Invisible Man itself is not quite as good as its successors, however, it is well written and at times surprisingly original. The drawbacks are the Innkeeper's wife, who was (according to the documentary) hired for the entire reason I did not like her: she overreacts to everything. She's superstitious, overly suspicious of anyone, and screams an annoying scream that drives even the other prople in the inn batty. There is some mild humor and a bit of drama in The Invisible Man and Claude Rains does a passable job, with that voice that just creeps under your skin...
As one of the six "Legacy" collections featuring the popular Universal monsters, the Creature set has some distinctly unique features. In one way, it's the sparsest collection, with only three movies, but it also is the only one with commentaries on all the films. Perhaps more importantly is the nature of the Creature himself. While the other monsters are either purely supernatural (Dracula, the Wolf Man), purely man-made (Frankenstein's monster, the Invisible Man) or a combination of the two (the Mummy), only the Creature is a natural creature.
What also stands out in the Creature movies is that humanity in general comes off as the bad guys and the Creature is the most sympathetic figure. Acting in a generally defensive manner, the Creature is subjected to greater and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Richard Carlson - Julie Adams Director(s): Jack Arnold DVD Release Date: Released the 19 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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