The Wolf Man (approved)
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Caution: spoilers.

This came out in 1941, but I didn't see it until 2025. I really wanted to like it, but while I didn't exactly dislike it, I also definitely can't say I liked it. This really disappoints me. But whatever, I'm still glad I watched it. The film stars Lon Chaney Jr., though he's credited without the "Jr." in his name, which seems odd to me.

Chaney plays Larry Talbot, who returns to the home of his father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains), after the death of Larry's brother. One day, he's fiddling with a telescope, when he happens to spy a woman named Gwen Conliffe in her bedroom. (Luckily, he's not undressing or anything, but I still feel like Larry lingered a bit too long on her.) He then goes to the antique shop where she works, and I was disturbed by his trying to convince her to go out with him. She says "no" several times, but he's undeterred. So to begin with, I couldn't manage to like the guy. When he shows up later to go out with her, despite her disagreement, she invites her friend Jenny to go with the two of them to see a Romani fortune teller. (Though "Romani" is not the word used in the film.) A bit later, Jenny is attacked by a wolf, which Larry kills with a silver-headed walking stick he'd bought at the antique shop earlier. But he's too late, Jenny is dead.

Later, when Jenny's body is discovered, the body of the fortune teller, Bela (Bela Lugosi), is found nearby, along with Larry's walking stick. Larry insists that he had killed a wolf, not a man, but the police take a bit of an interest in the matter, though they don't arrest him. His father is apparently friends with some kind of doctor (maybe a psychiatrist?), who also takes an interest in the case. Then at night, Larry transforms into a werewolf, and apparently loses control of his mind while in that form. He kills a man, then returns home. After this incident, he becomes increasingly concerned about his being a werewolf, though I still got the impression he couldn't remember anything he's done while in that state. Of course, no one believes him, except an old Romani woman. She gives him a pendant of a pentagram, which I can only assume was meant to prevent him from transforming again. But he gives it to Gwen, wanting to keep her safe from himself.

Eventually, Larry decides to run away from home rather than put anyone else at risk, and Gwen wants to go with him. Which is ridiculous, because she barely knew him, but the movie wants us to believe they'd fallen in love after just a couple days or so. This, despite the fact that Gwen was already engaged to another man. She did say at one point that they'd had a quarrel, but there was no indication it was serious enough to break off their engagement. Anyway, Larry doesn't want her to go with him. And his father doesn't want him to go, believing Larry is delusional. He intends to prove Larry isn't a werewolf, but Larry insists his father take his walking stick, for protection. John straps Larry into a chair for the night, but he later breaks free and transforms, then attacks Gwen. His father kills him with the walking stick.

And that's pretty much it. I didn't find the werewolf's appearance particularly frightening, and since I didn't really like Larry, I couldn't care much about his fate. Some people will say the true horror is being cursed to (try to) kill the one you love (which doesn't explain him killing anyone else), but as I indicated before, I don't believe he really loved Gwen. So really, I couldn't manage to truly enjoy the movie on any level. The "Wolf Man" does appear in some later movies in the Universal Monsters franchise, which seems weird to me given that he's supposed to be dead. I'm not sure if I'll ever see any of those movies, but time will tell. There are also a couple of remakes, at least one of which I'd probably like to see someday.