Interesting precursor to "The Wolf Man"

Teknofobe70

Okay, a quick history lesson -- After the success of Dracula and Frankenstein, Carl Laemmle Jr., who was head of production at Universal Studios in the 1930s, wanted to bring another monster to the big screen. They were planning a movie called "The Wolf Man", which would star Boris Karloff, but that fell through so in 1935 they decided instead to create a Frankenstein sequel ... and this little gem. He called upon makeup legend Jack Pierce, who had already created the Dracula and Frankenstein monsters we know and love, and who would later go on to create Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man. Also involved was special effects guru John P. Fulton, who also worked on most of Universal's monster movies of the 30s and 40s. And so, at least some of the ingredients were here that would later created a classic werewolf that everyone would remember in the years to come.

Henry Hull gives a creditable performance here as a botanist cursed with lycanthropy, but the same cannot be said for the whole cast. I found Warner Oland's acting ability to be particularly suspect, as the villain of the story. The sets are fairly well designed and mostly believable, and the directing is competent enough. The score has it's moments, although it is a little intrusive at times.

On the whole, the movie is well written and well acted, although admittedly there are huge sections which are just plain dull, and the werewolf here isn't particularly horrific. The only truly memorable sequence is the initial transformation. Already interesting interpretations are being made of the Werewolf myth -- here they say that a man will become a wolf "between the hours of nine and ten at the full of the moon", thereby introducing the idea that wolves only change at the full moon.

Although the movie was a fair commercial success, it just didn't scream of a franchise. But six years later, that "Wolf Man" project that Universal had been interested in would eventually come into being, and the rest is history ...

score 7/10

Teknofobe70 6 April 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1055004/