The Wolf Man (1941) by George Waggner

Director: George Waggner

Year: 1941

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Werewolf

Plot:

Returning to his ancestral homeland, a young man becomes increasingly convinced he's become the vicious wolfman running rampant across the countryside and tries to find a way of stopping the deadly curse from forcing him to hurt those around him once he learns the truth about what happened to him.

Review:

For the most part, this here is quite the deserving classic that has a lot to really like here. One of the better elements here is in how well this one lays out his coming to terms with his condition, as there are some great storytelling tactics to buy into what's going on. The constant nagging about the town's legend of the werewolf and its tie-ins to the gypsies starts this off well, then once it brings up the attack on the couple in the woods that causes him to get the curse and all the really fun investigations going over the incident gives this some of the best parts of the film where they start going in on his experience which has no evidence to back it up. These scenes here are all built together with the towns' hysteria and his growing paranoia feeds into this one's storyline about his growing resentment at becoming this creature that it really sells the idea, and it all comes together so well that there's very little about this that doesn't come off as wholly appealing.

To tie that all into the storyline is fun enough while managing to really overwhelm the action scenes which are quite fun overall, from the first attack on the girl in the woods where he gets bitten, his first attack where he goes after the workers along the moors which is quite chilling with the suspenseful amount of fog rolling through the area and his later attacks prowling through the night which makes for some nice action in the later half where we get a lot of great looks at the werewolf makeup in action. As well, the fantastic finale really works quite well in generating the kind of exciting action required to leave on a high note where the stalking of the girl through the swamp is quite a creepy setup leading so well into the scenes of the villagers chasing after him in the darkness with their pitchforks and torches while the big battle here gives this one the kind of rousing high-energy confrontation needed once it got there and ends this on a somewhat somber note. Given that this one really sets the standard for the genre's clichés and patterns in the setup, these are the film's main positives.

While that is the cast, there are really only two things to get on this film about and it’s basically the same thing. Firstly, the reluctant werewolf angle is just not scary. It needs to conjure a sense of dread in the viewer about a vicious creature that wants its "curse," so to speak. If they have the "curse," then it becomes a creature different from man and if they attack a person, then that puts a certain fear needed to get into the story. By then saying that the man who is the creature doesn’t want it, then I don’t feel as afraid of him as I would be if it was just something that was going to tear my throat out and not care about it. Also, a vicious creature that kills his victims by strangling them isn’t all that threatening. When combined with the primitive techniques for the werewolf here being done through memorable if outdated technological means that was the standard for the day, it has a few factors to be labeled against it.

Overview: *****/5

This isn’t called a classic for anything. If you can forgive a few mistakes against the werewolf, this is a pretty enjoyable film. All classic horror fans should look into this immediately, and all werewolf fans should give this a spin, as it practically invented the genre and established many of its rules and traditions.