Movies
A Look Back at a Hairy Franchise: The Transformation of ‘The Wolf Man’ Films
Contrary to popular belief, The Wolf Man is not the first Universal werewolf movie. That distinction goes to Werewolf of London, released six years earlier. That being said, the reason The Wolf Man is so much better remembered is because it was the first successful Universal werewolf movie, featuring a now-classic performance by Lon Chaney, Jr. as the title character. Sure, London has its charms, but The Wolf Man is really the movie that started it all.
Check out MySpace Horror for a quick run down of the films.
Universal had every reason to think The Wolf Man wouldn’t succeed. For starters, it was released only days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, leaving skittish executives to wonder whether the public would have an appetite for a horror film following such a terrible tragedy. Second, the film wasn’t based on a pre-existing literary property, as their two biggest monster-movie hits from the early ‘30s, Dracula and Frankenstein, had been. And, of course, seeing as Werewolf of London hadn’t been successful, they must have been wondering whether the werewolf mythology was something audiences would ever go for.
They needn’t have worried. The Wolf Man went on to become one of Universal’s top-grossing movies of 1942, reviving the flagging monster-movie sub-genre and making a viable star out of Lon Chaney, Jr. The film spawned four indirect sequels, all of them starring Chaney (a rarity, considering Universal’s other top-tier monsters would go on to be played by different actors throughout their run), and also served as the jumping-off point for a series of “ensemble” monster movies in which Universal would bring their different monster characters together in a single film. Perhaps The Wolf Man’s biggest contribution, though, would be its massive influence on werewolf mythology as we know it today.
As scripted by Curt Siodmak, The Wolf Man was the first film series to introduce two majorly influential folkloric ideas associated with werewolves: their vulnerability to silver and their full-moon triggered transformations (an idea actually not introduced until the first sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man). For the record, some historians credit these ideas to be Siodmak originals, but other literature indicates their presence far previous to the release of the film. In any case, Siodmak was the one that introduced these concepts to film-going audiences, and nearly every werewolf film since has utilized them in some capacity. This fact is a testament to the film’s enduring influence.
Not only was The Wolf Man a boon to the werewolf sub-genre (and horror films in general), it was also a major turning point in Lon Chaney, Jr.’s career. While he had previously received good critical notices in his role as Lennie Small in 1939’s Of Mice and Men, The Wolf Man is what made him a star. Chaney was no stranger to horror films – his father, after all, was the top-tier Universal monster-movie star of the 1920’s, giving iconic performances in both 1923’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and 1925’s The Phantom of the Opera. Indeed, Chaney Jr. himself had acted in horror films before, most notably in 1941’s Man-Made Monster, helmed by Wolf Man director George Waggner. It was his impressive performance in Monster that got him the gig which would not only come to define the rest of his career, but that would allow him to escape (at least temporarily) the long shadow of his famous father.
While much of The Wolf Man’s success has to do with Chaney Jr.’s sympathetic performance, credit must also go makeup effects man Jack Pierce, who created the now-iconic werewolf design used for the film. Interestingly enough, these designs were originally intended for Henry Hull’s lycanthrope character in Werewolf of London, but that actor refused to submit to the hours upon hours in the makeup chair required for the transformation (which resulted in the much subtler makeup used in that film). One can’t help but wonder whether London would have been more successful had its lead actor been willing to undergo the admittedly grueling process, but nevertheless it was Chaney Jr. who originated the look that has even come to be immortalized on a U.S. postage stamp.
All of that said, it was perhaps Curt Siodmak’s psychologically-astute screenplay that was the final deciding factor in The Wolf Man’s huge success, although it must be noted, that Siodmak’s first draft was actually quite a bit different from the finished result. In the early going the writer had envisioned the project as a subtler character study, without even the majority of the werewolf scenes that ended up making it to the screen. Further, the “Larry Talbot” character was originally written as “Larry Gill”, an ordinary American mechanic traveling to a Scottish castle to fix a telescope belonging to nobleman Sir John Talbot (the role eventually played by Claude Rains in the film) before becoming a victim of the werewolf curse. Shockingly, credit must go to Universal executives for recognizing the limited potential of this setup, and favoring the central idea of a strained father-son relationship instead. They also rejected Siodmak’s more subjective original take that would have made the film less a werewolf story than a portrait of insanity, with viewers left to ponder whether the lead character was in fact even transforming into a werewolf at all. Indeed, it was the potent combination of familial pathos and monster-movie theatrics that led to the film working both as a horror film and as a tragic and penetrating character study.
Like most classic films, of course, production on The Wolf Man wasn’t without its problems. For starters, Chaney had become notorious for his alcoholism even before taking on the role. This fact led indirectly to alleged on-set tension between he and his female co-star, Evelyn Ankers (tension that would continue in their numerous subsequent on-screen pairings), which started when Chaney was forced to give up his dressing room to accommodate her (reportedly as punishment for vandalizing studio property during a drinking binge). Chaney’s bitterness over this turn of events led to him constantly harassing the actress on set, which included sneaking up behind her in full makeup between takes and, for lack of a better term, scaring the living shit out of her.
In addition to this contentious on-set relationship, a scene in which the Wolfman was to do battle with a (real-life) bear was cut from the final film when the bear in question (all 600 pounds of it) escaped from its trainer and ran amok during the shoot, even chasing a terrified Ankers up a ladder. As for those famous makeup effects, while Chaney did willingly submit himself to all those hours in the makeup chair, he was also known to have complained bitterly (during and after the shoot) about the discomfort he endured during the process.
Despite all of that, The Wolf Man’s influence on film, and popular culture in general, is truly incalculable. Without it, we may never have had classics like An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, Ginger Snaps, or even Twilight: New Moon (ok, forget about that last one). Indeed, more than a decade following big-budget remakes/re-envisionings of most other pre-1950 top-tier Universal monster movies, the upcoming Wolf Man update, directed by Joe Johnston and starring Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt, feels rather belated. Will it live up to its classic inspiration? Audiences will have to wait until February 12th to find out. Let’s just hope all the negative pre-buzz surrounding it turns out to be illusory under the light of the full moon.
THE WOLFMAN remake arrives in theaters February 12.
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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