Protraph
Lack of good storyline.
Stoutor
It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.
Catangro
After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.
Skyler
Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
azathothpwiggins
Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) arrives at his ancestral castle, falls in love via telescope, and buys a new walking stick. Yep, everything is wonderful! Uh oh! Gypsies roll into town, and the mysterious Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) and her son, Bela (Bela Lugosi) have the inside track on the spirit world! If that's not bad enough, Bela's got a terrible secret that plays right into an old Talbot family curse! Soon enough, someone is killed and Larry starts getting hairy! THE WOLF MAN is, of course, a classic horror / monster film. It's also quite an enjoyable ball of -lupine- yarn. This movie still has that unique Universal look and atmosphere, which started to fade into the realm of "monsters-on-the-loose" cheeeze, as the 1940's wore on. Claude Rains is believable as Sir John Talbot, whose love for his son is tested to the utmost. Ralph Belamy (ROSEMARY'S BABY) and Evelyn Ankers (SON OF DRACULA) are also quite good in their roles. A Halloween staple...
marshrydrob
The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney Junior; is one of my favorite movies. Universal, did a good job gathering talent for all of their horror films; and this film has one of the best gathering of talented actors I have ever seen.The moors, the shape shifting to an uncontrollable supernatural evil, the baying of a wolf; this is what I grew to learn; classic horror is all about.I have even seen the remake of the Wolf Man, and I feel that it never will compare to the original; the remake seemed to a little longer than it needed to be.With the introduction of Frankenstein and the Wolf Man, Universal; gave us all the idea of film crossovers; and this is what makes classic horror so memorable to this day.Good stories, good acting, and shared continuity; this and other classic horror films will appeal to anyone today.
mike48128
It almost plays out as a murder mystery until it becomes obvious to all that he becomes a "werewolf" after being infected by the gypsy woman's cursed son. She tries to help him deal with the problem several times. He wears the sign of the "pentagram" and can also "see" it in the palm of his next victim. A romance with the prettiest girl in town complicates matters, as well as his growing horror that he has become an unholy monster. It's so obvious what is coming after the "Wolfman Rhyme" is repeated at least 3 times. Filmed in the Universal "fog" that allowed most of the film to be shot indoors. Disappointing because it does not contain the facial transformation made famous in the sequels. Instead his legs and feet get real hairy, as does his chest, etc. He was hopelessly typecast, and a player in so many "B" pictures; he was an alcoholic most of his life. He knew he was a better actor than that. I feel his best work was in "Of Mice and Men" and "A&C Meet Frankenstein". He had the distinction of playing all 4 famous Universal Monsters, and reportedly "filled-in" for Glen Strange as "The Monster", in the fire scene of the A&C movie, after Glen broke his foot while filming.
GL84
Returning to his ancestral homeland, a young man becomes increasingly convinced he's become the vicious wolf man running rampant across the countryside and tries to find a way of stopping the deadly curse from forcing him to hurt those around him.For the most part, this here is quite the deserving classic that has a lot to really like here. One of the better elements here is in how well this one lays out his coming to terms with his condition, as there are some great storytelling tactics to buy into what's going on. The constant nagging about the town's legend of the werewolf and it's tie-ins to the gypsies starts this off well, then once it brings up the attack on the couple in the woods that causes him to get the curse and all the really fun investigations going over the incident gives this some of the best parts of the film where they start going in on his experience which has no evidence to back it up. These scenes here are all built together with the towns' hysteria and his growing paranoia feeds into this one's storyline about his growing resentment at becoming this creature that it really sells the idea, and it all comes together so well that there's very little about this that doesn't come off as wholly appealing. To tie that all into the storyline is fun enough while managing to really overwhelm on the action scenes which are quite fun overall, from the first attack on the girl in the woods where he gets bitten, his first attack where he goes after the workers along the moors which is quite chilling with the suspenseful amount of fog rolling through the area and his later attacks prowling through the night which makes for some nice action in the later half where we get a lot of great looks at the werewolf makeup in action. As well, the fantastic finale really works quite well in generating the kind of exciting action required to leave on a high-note where the stalking of the girl through the swamp is quite a creepy setup leading so well into the scenes of the villagers chasing after him in the darkness with their pitchforks and torches while the big battle here gives this one the kind of rousing high-energy confrontation needed once it got there and ends this on a somewhat somber note. Given that this one really sets the standard for the genre's clichés and patterns into the setup, these are the film's main positives while there's a minor flaw here. This is that the amount of time spent here on the werewolf makeup show it off in a rather disheartening light by showing off just mounds of fur and hair glued all over which doesn't look best and really stands out here. Otherwise, there's not much really wrong here.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.