Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

Wolfman. 
 Larry Talbot's father is played by Claude Rains, and it's not that Claude does a bad job, but it's hard to imagine these two as father and son.  In real life there is about a 16 year age difference between the two men, so it's not like it would be impossible, but it's a a hard nut to swallow. 

There's a brief but powerful and memorable role by Bela Lugosi as a gypsy.   

Chaney does a wonderful job as a likeable romantic lead, but his real strength comes through in the scenes where he has to be sad, pathetic, and afraid.  He knocks that out of the park.  If I have any complaints about this, is that we don't get ENOUGH Wolfman. 

If I have a second complaint, the thing they do with his feet where they try to make it look more wolflike... it just doesn't work.  It just makes him look like he's walking on tiptoes. 

THE WOLF MAN (1941):
Chainsaw got me curious to revisit this (vaguely remembered) one for the first time in 40-45 years...  Alas the result was similar to what happened when I rewatched FRANK and BRIDE OF and DRAC and PHANTOM 15 or so years back - none of 'em work as well in adulthood as they seemed to work when I was a small child.    THE WOLF MAN is literally a man and a wolf struggling for control within a man's body but metatextually it's more about a great film and a terrible film struggling for control of what ultimately is a pretty average film.

I agree w/ Chainsaw that top-billed Rains and Chaney are distractingly miscast as father and son. It isn't just the ages, though, it's that Lon might be nearly a foot taller than Claude (characters even remark on his unusual size, lol) and also of course one is rather British and one is very American. That just contributes to the bizarre Hollywood-brained vaguely-European setting, where some people have British accents and some people have mid-Atlantic accents and also there are Romani wandering through and also the local Constable is a ludicrous Noo-Yawk accented Ralph Bellamy.

I didn't mind the Wolf Man's furry slippers like Chainsaw did but we gotta' talk about two major F-ups that should purchase WOLF MAN a place in the "Bad Movie" section of this site. First, the original werewolf is definitely 100% a wolf when it attacks Chaney early on, Chaney kills it, and then it still has all its clothes on when Constable Bellamy finds its human body.      Harder to ignore, though, is Chaney's first transformation scene, which he plays in a white wife-beater. Cut to the woods and he's inexplicably wearing his standard-issue W.M. dark longsleeved button-up. Oh yeah, Wolf Man stopped to put on something warmer before heading out for an impromptu rampage.     One could point out these problems w/ most werewolf movies, but most werewolf movies aren't classics produced by one of the biggest studios in film history. C'mon.

I also think all the business w/ the pentagram is silly and contrived. I won't attack Chaney's performance but I will take issue w/ Chainsaw calling Larry Talbot a "likeable romantic lead" - he's immediately established as a peeping tom and a sex pest who refuses to take "no" for an answer!  Now that actually could've been good foundation for his transformation into a literal wolf but of course the screenplay tries to convince us that Talbot is "pure of heart".

Although there is some crap writing, there is also some genius dialogue here, and most of it gets delivered by Rains. He gets two one-liners here (one about God and one about cops) that feel almost as iconic as his zingers from CASABLANCA, and he also gets to deliver an Oscar-reel monologue about the duality of man that would do wonders for the film if it was really about psychology and not actually about lycanthropy. Rains is spectacular as always and was worth every penny they paid him, but the film rides away on Maria Ouspenskaya's carriage. It is remarkable how understated (yet intense) her performance is, especially in a genre rife w/  overacting. Bravo, Maria.

And of course there is Bela, who is onscreen approximately 10% as much (or less) as he is in the 1942 Universal horror flick NIGHT MONSTER, in which he does nothing whatsoever. But although he has only a minute or two of screentime in WOLF MAN, it's the most important couple of minutes in Universal Wolf Man lore! Cheers then to a great cameo.

3/5
Okay, now that I've rewatched O.G. WOLF MAN '41 in adulthood, I hate to say it but I think it's true - Naschy is a better Wolfman than Chaney!