The Wolf Man (1941)<\/p>\n
I figured it was time to review Lon Chaney Jr.’s magnum opus.\u00a0 The first thing that is apparent is that Claude Rains was an order of magnitude above the rest of the actors.\u00a0 Well, Rains was two orders beyond Chaney.\u00a0 But I will say that in the non-monster related earlier part of the movie the scenes with Chaney and his father and with the girl were fun to watch.\u00a0 As Larry Talbot, Chaney was engaging and sympathetic.\u00a0 But once he started killing werewolves and becoming a werewolf he became increasingly annoying and neurotic about telling everyone about how tough it was being a werewolf.\u00a0 Me, me, me.\u00a0 Very needy.<\/p>\n
Incidentally, they killed off Bela Lugosi about ninety seconds into the only screen time he was given.\u00a0 And to add insult to injury, they didn’t even bother to give him an original character name.\u00a0 They called him Bela!\u00a0 I mean, how lousy is that?\u00a0 They probably paid him by the hour and sent him packing after his scene to save money.\u00a0 Very sad.<\/p>\n
And I noticed something very strange about the wolf man character.\u00a0 Right before Larry Talbot\u00a0 goes out on his first killing spree, he notices hair growing on his body.\u00a0 He takes off a white shirt leaving him in a white undershirt (incidentally a wife beater style).\u00a0 Then he takes off his shoes and socks and we watch his feet becoming paws while he is sitting in a chair.\u00a0 Then still focusing on his legs he gets up, apparently heading out the window of his room to go find the grave digger and rip out his throat.\u00a0 But in the next shot we see the wolf man in a dark colored button down shirt.<\/p>\n
Now are we supposed to believe that the Wolf Man went into Larry Talbot’s closet, picked out a matching shirt and using his front paws, buttoned it up and headed out for a bite to eat?\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 I mean it was a nice shirt but just how far is my suspension of disbelief supposed to stretch.\u00a0 I feel like I’m being abused here.<\/p>\n
Well, anyway, after Claude Rains clubs Lon Chaney Jr. to death with his own silver wolf-headed walking stick, the gypsy lady recites that, “The way he walked was thorny” doggerel over poor Larry’s corpse and the music soars and the credits roll.<\/p>\n
But i don’t know.\u00a0 I feel kind of cheated.\u00a0 I feel like Larry’s ghost should have appeared and complained about the bum deal he got.\u00a0 He’s living in California for eighteen years, helping to build the Mt Wilson observatory.\u00a0 Then his elder brother dies so he returns to Talbot Castle to take up the role of heir apparent to his father’s title (baronet?) and after just a couple of days he’s bitten by a werewolf and beaten to death by his own dad.\u00a0 And what fun did he actually have?\u00a0 He only managed to kill one crummy grave digger.\u00a0 It doesn’t seem fair.\u00a0 At least if he’d gotten a chance to sink his teeth into Gwen Conliffe’s throat he’d have a story to tell the other dearly departed monsters like Dracula and the Mummy.\u00a0 But as things stand he seems to have been given short shrift.<\/p>\n
Alright.\u00a0 That’s enough.\u00a0 So all in all the movie starts off well and ends a little flat.\u00a0 Perhaps I’ll consider Larry Talbot’s run in with Abbott and Costello more successful.<\/p>\n