The Wolf Man

Where to watch

Trailer

The Wolf Man

1941

Directed by George Waggner

His hideous howl a dirge of death!

After his brother's death, Larry Talbot returns home to his father and the family estate. Events soon take a turn for the worse when Larry is bitten by a werewolf.

Cast Crew Details Genres Releases

70 mins   More at IMDb TMDB Report this page

Popular reviews

More
SilentDawn
Review by SilentDawn ★★★★ Liked 8

76

Larry Talbot is a weird creep in this, spying on Gwen through a telescope, not listening to her rejection, and being disappointed when she brings a friend along for safety to the date, so the tragedy element doesn't resonate effectively, but the Universal 'forest' set is one of the most iconic classical horror images. Pure id. I could watch the fog flowing over the landscape all fucking day. And Lon Chaney Jr's wolf-man figure, cast as a shadow against the trees and the full moon, chills the bone.

Brian Collins
Review by Brian Collins ★★★★ Liked

Poor Larry. Tries to steal a guy's wife and becomes a werewolf instead. Tale as old as time.

Ian West
Review by Ian West ★★★★★ Liked 8

“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”

I love The Wolf Man. I love its atmosphere (in fact when I think about “the look” of classic Universal horror, it’s generally the fog ridden sets of this and House of Frankenstein that comes to mind), gorgeous set design, legendary music, incomparable makeup, and an embarrassment of riches cast cast wise. Evelyn Ankers is one of my favorite ‘Scream Queens’ of any era and she’s great here, Claude Rains as Larry’s father classes up the joint and anytime I see him in a movie it makes me happy, and certified tree trunk Lon Chaney Jr. goes from “joyful big lug” to “tortured individual” like few can.

Perfect fall viewing and an atmosphere drenched all timer.

Ethan Colburn
Review by Ethan Colburn ★★★½ Liked 9

Bela Legosi could appear in every movie for under a minute and I think the world would be a better place.

Reviving the Universal monster movie, this film captures much of the fear and lore that appeared on the early 30s films.

I found it interesting that Lon Cheney Jr was billed as Lon Cheney, maybe capitalizing on the immense love there was for his late father. This was the first film I’d seen him in and I liked him but I was hoping the movie would center around Claud Rains. I needed MORE CLAUD RAINS! He’s so professorial and charismatic I could listen to him talk for hours. 

The special effects weren’t mind blowing but enough to keep me…

Sydney🚀
Review by Sydney🚀 ★★★★½ 11

It is so clear to me that the wolf man is the best universal classic monster, and that werewolves in general are underappreciated. I always felt excluded from vampire fever but as my frontal lobe develops i am slowly freed by the realization that I was a werewolf all along. The werewolf era is coming. Save us Leigh Whannell save us!!!!!

ScreeningNotes
Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★ Liked 4

"I believe a man lost in the mazes of his own mind may imagine that he's anything. Science has found many examples of the mind's power over the body."

The Wolf Man is a psychological thriller about a young man, traumatized by the death of his older brother, who returns home and goes on a killing spree. Enraged by his own affection for a local woman so soon after his brother's passing, he fantasizes his possession at the hands of a local gypsy Bela (Bela Lugosi) and imagines himself transformed into a half-man, half-wolf creature. This evil secondary persona unleashed, he attempts to erase all evidence of his affair by murdering anyone who might have been a witness. Meanwhile, his…

Tasha Robinson
Review by Tasha Robinson ★★★★ Liked 2

There's a tiny element of unintentional camp to the quaint, delightful classic thriller The Wolf Man, in that it's so very sincere about explaining lycanthropy to an audience who presumably has never heard of werewolves and finds them exotic and alien. The film repeatedly lays out two different takes on lycanthropy: one as a scientific syndrome, essentially a form of schizophrenia where someone has delusions that their darker impulses are physically manifesting, and one as a supernatural occurrence, made out of magic. The former side is represented by The Invisible Man's Claude Rains as a Welsh aristocrat ruled by logic and perceived duty; the latter by Lon Chaney Jr. as his son, who was bitten by an actual werewolf, and…

Filipe Furtado
Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★ Liked

Among all variations of the werewolf tale, none has a better grasp of the idea of the monster inside. Also, it has the finest cast of any Universal horror and Chaney performance remains one of the horror cinema most moving.

Related Films

  • Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

Similar Films

All
  • The Wolfman
  • Frankenstein
  • The Gorgon
  • Wolf Man
  • Bride of Frankenstein
  • Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Powered by Nanocrowd

Mentioned by