Summary
After an 18-year absence, Lawrence Talbot has returned to his ancestral home to mourn the death of his older brother and attempt to rebuild a relationship with his estranged father, Sir John Talbot. Things appear to be going well until Lawrence escorts Gwen, the daughter of a local antique dealer, and her slightly more matronly friend, Jenny, through a misty sound stage to visit a caravan of gypsies that has just rolled into town. As we all know, any cinematic gypsy camp spells trouble and that goes double for one inhabited by Bela Lugosi. By the end of the night, Jenny and Bela lie dead in the forest and Lawrence is dragged home with a wolf bite on his chest. And the nightmare has just begun . . .
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
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Barbara's Rant
Probably most Americans have derived (as I have) most of their knowledge of werewolves from watching movies. It's therefore easy for me to believe that, prior to the release of this movie, there was a much more general ignorance in the United States on the subject of lycanthropy than there is today. (Actually, a game of Balderdash I once played indicates that ignorance of the actual word "lycanthropy" is still fairly prevalent. I was the only one playing who knew what it meant.) Thus, I can perfectly understand why this movie felt it necessary to commence with a twenty-two second still (I timed it.) of a dictionary definition of lycanthropy. This was even helpful to me, in spite of my already fairly extensive werewolf movie watching experience, as this movie is the only context in which I have encountered the connection between werewolves and pentagrams (or, more precisely, the connection between werewolves and stars which are being referred to as pentagrams.) I think, though, that this extensive introductory paragraph renders most of the expository discussion in the movie superfluous (instead of just boring, as is the case with most exposition.) I wouldn't have even bothered reading the dictionary if I'd known I was just going to have to sit through that scene in the antique store fifteen minutes later! "Werewolf? What's that?"
That scene in the antique story was painful to watch for the bizarre flirtation, as well. Gwen appears vaguely charmed by the fact that Larry is inexplicably familiar with the contents of her bedroom. Most normal women (at least, most normal women today and I don't really believe that it would have been so different sixty years ago) would take this as evidence that he has been spying on her or, worse, has broken into her bedroom and probably rifled through her underwear drawer. Gwen evidently takes it as evidence that Larry has an unusually keen eye for jewelry, which she seems to find attractive.
Larry also seems to have a keen eye for fashion. When we see the beginning of his first werewolf transformation he is clearly dressed in gray slacks and a white tank top. A few moments later we see him, as the wolf man, tiptoeing through the marsh, clad in black slacks and a carefully buttoned black dress shirt. My initial thought was that his clothing had transformed as well his body (A were-suit?) but that can't be the case, as Larry wakes up the next morning, human again, still dressed in his official werewolf business casual. Obviously the first thing Larry did as a wolf man was find the perfect outfit for the occasion. It's a pretty good choice, too. The dark color will not only make him harder to spot at night, it'll make the inevitable dirt and blood stains much less apparent than would lighter-colored apparel.
The order in which Larry's transformation occurs is interesting as well. It seems to begin at the feet and proceed upwards from there. To me, the implication of that is almost staggering - is that why hobbits have such hairy feet!? Are hobbits a sort of missing link between human and wolf man? Were the first hobbits created by accident in an aborted werewolf transformation? Fascinating! Imagine all the things J.R.R. Tolkien and Lon Chaney, Jr. must have to talk about in the afterlife!
Of course any discussion of Larry's transformation is bound to raise the question, "Why did Bela turn completely into a real wolf while Larry turns into a sort of tip-toeing sasquatch?" The obvious hypothesis is that Larry just isn't nearly as good at being a werewolf as Bela. It's only natural. He hasn't had as much practice. Perhaps if Sir John hadn't killed Larry on only his third Werewolf's Night Out, he would have improved over time.
On closer examination, this hypothesis really doesn't hold up. Experienced hunters, who, we can presume, are familiar with the appearance of a wolf and the ways in which that appearance differs from that of a man with a fur glued to his face, perceive Larry, in his wolf man form, as a wolf! That indicates to me that, while Larry may appear to me to look about as much like a wolf as that guy from The Horrors of Spider Island looked like a spider (and they both look at heck of a lot more like each other than either one looks like his respective animal) to everyone else in the movie he actually does look exactly like a regular, every day wolf. Evidently, I am seeing the world through Larry's eyes. He, like everyone, saw Bela as a wolf, but within himself he can still, even in his wolf man state, recognize enough of his own human soul that he sees himself as a sort of confused hybrid.
It is impossible to discuss Larry's perception, as a thing distinct from concrete reality, without bringing to mind Dr. Lloyd's joint contentions that Larry is psychically maladjusted and that it is possible that a man, "lost in the mazes of his mind may imagine that he's anything." Could it be that Dr. Lloyd is right? Is Larry mad? Is he not a werewolf at all, except in his own mind, but merely a crazed killer who has created this nightmare scenario to account for the brutal murders for which he alone is responsible? Perhaps the old gypsy woman is not even real either, but merely a figment of Larry's imagination. Her silent and mysterious vanishing on the night of Larry's wolf bite would seem to support this theory. Another interesting fact which lends credence to this conjecture is that, on the climactic evening of the movie, Larry turns into a werewolf, then back into a human, then back into a werewolf, on the same night! Real werewolves never do that, unless they are of the type so directly influenced by the full moon as to transform back and forth whenever a cloud drifts across that celestial face. The most chilling implication of this is that Sir John knew that he was killing his own son! If Larry appears to be a wolf man only in his own mind, not in reality, Sir John must have recognized him, known him for the uncontrollable murderer that he is, and, in his zealous regard for the safety of his townspeople, sacrificed his own son to the temple of the Greater Good. A brave and selfless act. Or was it? Could it be that Sir John didn't kill his on as unwillingly or with as heavy a heart as we might at first suppose? Sir John's other son died recently, a son that he clearly loved and cherished far more dearly that he did Larry. He has brought Larry back across the ocean to try to fill the void, but perhaps Sir John cannot forgive Larry for failing in that impossible task. Sir John grows resentful that Larry lived while his brother perished. In a cruel twist of mental logic, Sir john blames Larry, on account of his continued existence, for his brother's death! Killing Larry could bring back his brother! At the very least it will assuage the seething fury, the hideous hammering rush of blood in Sir John's brain every time he sets eyes on his second born! With no generous thought for the safety of the villagers, with no family feeling, with no regard for the sanctity of human life, Sir John, deliberately and with malice, strikes down his only remaining child!
That clearly wasn't the intent of the movie. (It would be a good intent for some movie though, don't you think?) It does bring me neatly to the final point of this rant (and then I promise I'll shut up) - the relationship between Sir John and Larry, though not nearly so dramatic as I made it sound in the foregoing paragraph, is the cornerstone of this movie. It elevates this film above a typical werewolf story. It is the reason that the Wolf Man stands next to Dracula and Frankenstein's monster in the pantheon of classic horror movie monsters. Sir John and Larry barely know each other, yet they love each other more deeply than either of them knows. Both want desperately to be loved equally in return. Constrained by age-old rules of decorum, by traditional family relationships, by cultural and societal differences, by ordinary fear of rejection, they are unable to penetrate the walls of reserve that surround them both. They are unable to make the truth and depth of their feelings known, even to each other, their closest kin. It is into this fertile emotional ground that the seed of Larry's lycanthropy is planted. Suddenly fear and shame strive with the love within Sir John's heart! Larry appears to him to be weak, to be suggestible, to be cowardly. As a father, Sir John wants to protect and shelter his son, but as a man who has always been strong and rational, he cannot help but feel contempt for Larry. Larry, in his turn, idolizes his father, yet has always felt himself too stupid and clumsy to be worthy of Sir John's notice. Ashamed and afraid of what he knows himself to have become, Larry wants to confide in Sir John, to seek the comfort and advice that a man should find in his father, but he can't bear to appear pathetic or mad in front of a man he wants so badly to impress! He holds back. In the end it is because they can't communicate, because Larry cannot make Sir John understand his fears, because Sir John cannot bear to allow his son the weakness of needing company as he sits tied to his high-backed chair and cannot bear to allow himself the weakness of caring more for his son as an individual than for the pride of his noble family, that in the ultimate tragedy, Larry dies at the hands of his own unwitting father.
It is this kind of brilliant and moving human tragedy that underlies truly great horror movies. Anyone can write a story about a man who turns into a wolf and kills people. Not just anyone can write the story of a lost man, who, seeking his own soul, looks into his father's eyes and sees a wolf staring back at him.
BARBARA JO
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