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Werewolves in the Movies

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Jean Starling
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« on: October 29, 2007, 11:24:46 pm »



Directed by Stuart Walker
Produced by Stanley Bergerman
Written by Robert Harris (story)
John Cotton
Starring Henry Hull
Warner Oland
Valerie Hobson
Lester Matthews
Spring Byington
Clark Williams
Lawrence Grant
Music by Karl Hajos
Cinematography Charles J. Stumar
Editing by Russell F. Schoengarth
Milton Carruth
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s)  May 13, 1935
Running time 75 minutes
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Jean Starling
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« Reply #1 on: October 29, 2007, 11:26:59 pm »


Werewolf of London was the first Hollywood werewolf movie, filmed in 1935 by Universal Pictures and featuring Henry Hull as Wilfred Glendon, a scientist bitten by a werewolf (played by Warner Oland) in Tibet. Jack Pierce's eerie werewolf make-up was simpler than his version that appeared six years later for The Wolf Man but, according to film historians, remains strikingly effective as worn by Hull.

Even though Werewolf of London was the first mainstream Hollywood werewolf movie, there was a predecessor, now lost; the actual first known werewolf film was a 1913 short called The Werewolf.
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« Reply #2 on: October 29, 2007, 11:28:27 pm »

Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) is a wealthy and world-renowned English botanist who journeys to Tibet in 1935 in search of the elusive mariphasa plant. While there, he is attacked and bitten by a creature later revealed to be a werewolf, although he succeeds in acquiring a specimen of the mariphasa. Once back home in London he is approached by a fellow botanist, Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland), who claims to have met him in Tibet while also seeking the mariphasa. Yogami warns Glendon that the bite of a werewolf would cause him to become a werewolf as well, adding that the mariphasa is a temporary antidote for the disease.

Glendon does not believe the mysterious Yogami. That is, not until he begins to experience the first pangs of lycanthropy, first when his hand grows fur beneath the rays of his moon lamp (which he is using in an effort to entice the mariphasa to bloom), and later that night during the first full moon. The first time, Glendon is able to use a blossom from the mariphasa to stop his transformation. His wife, Lisa (Valerie Hobson), is away at his aunt Ettie's party with her friend Paul Ames (Lester Matthews), allowing the swiftly-transforming Glendon to make his way unhindered to his at-home laboratory, in the hopes of acquiring the mariphasa's flowers in the hopes of quelling his lycanthropy a second time. Unfortunately Dr. Yogami, who is also a werewolf (specifically the one who'd bitten Glendon in Tibet) sneaks into the lab ahead of his rival and steals the only two blossoms. As the third has not bloomed, Glendon is out of luck.

Driven by an instinctive desire to hunt and kill, dons his hat and coat and ventures out into the dark city, killing an innocent girl. Burdened by remorse, Glendon begins neglecting Lisa (more so than usual), and makes numerous futile attempts to lock himself up far and away from home, including renting a room far from home at the inn, or with Mrs. Whack and Mrs. Moncaster. However, whenever he transforms into the werewolf he would escape and kill again. After a time, the third blossum of the mariphasa finally blooms, but much to Glendon's horror, that too is stolen by Yogami. After turning into the werewolf yet again and slaying Yogami, Glendon goes the house in search of Lisa, for the werewolf instinctively seeks to destroy that which it loves the most.

After attacking Paul Ames, but not killing him, Glendon corners Lisa on the staircase and is about to move in for the kill, when Paul's uncle, Col. Sir Thomas Forsythe of Scotland Yard (Lawrence Grant), arrives with several police officers in tow. He shoots Glendon once, killing the werewolf of London. As he lays dying, Glendon apologizes to his wife and thanks Col. Forsythe for the merciful bullet. He then perishes, reverting to his human form in death.
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« Reply #3 on: October 29, 2007, 11:30:36 pm »


Jack Pierce's original werewolf design for Henry Hull was identical to the one used later in The Wolf Man, but it was rejected in favor of a minimalist approach that was less obscuring to facial expressions. The werewolf's howl was an audio blend of Hull and a recording of an actual timber wolf, an approach which was never duplicated in any subsequent werewolf film. Also, at the beginning of the film, the supposed "Tibetan" spoken by villagers in the movie is actually Cantonese Chinese; Henry Hull is otherwise just muttering gibberish in his responses to them.


Reaction

The movie was regarded at the time as too similar to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Fredric March, which had been released only three years before, and flopped at the box-office, but has been regarded by cinema historians as an imaginative classic. One strikingly similarity between the two films is that each time the man becomes a monster, the monster looks markedly more monstrous than the time before, a feature found in Robert Louis Stevenson's novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.


Cast
Henry Hull as Dr. Glendon
Warner Oland as Dr. Yogami
Valerie Hobson as Lisa Glendon
Lester Matthews as Paul Ames
Lawrence Grant as Sir Thomas Forsythe
Spring Byington as Miss Ettie Coombes
Clark Williams as Hugh Renwick
J.M. Kerrigan as Hawkins
Charlotte Granville as Lady Forsythe
Ethel Griffies as Mrs. Whack
Zeffie Tilbury as Mrs. Moncaster
Jeanne Bartlett as Daisy
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Jean Starling
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« Reply #4 on: October 29, 2007, 11:34:52 pm »


Regarding the cast, Bela Lugosi was considered for the role of Dr. Yogami. Spring Byington, the star of the 1950s sitcom December Bride, played the role of Aunt Ettie. Three years earlier she had also portrayed Marmee, the mother in Little Woman with Katharine Hepburn. Some consider Miss Byington's performance to be the best in the film. Her comedic abilities created a more up-beat ambience which led to some reviews describing the movie as "delightful" rather than "horrific". Valerie Hobson, who played Hull's character's wife, also played Dr. Henry Frankenstein's kidnapped wife that same year in The Bride of Frankenstein.


Novelizations

The story has been novelized twice. The first time was in 1977, a paperback novel written by an unknown author under the pseudonym of "Carl Dreadstone," as part of a short-lived series of books based on the classic Universal horror films. The novel is told from the point of view of Wilfred Glendon (whose first name is now inexplicably spelled "Wilfrid") and thus follows an almost entirely different story structure than the film. In particular it has a different ending. Rather than turning into a werewolf, killing Yogami, and then being shot by Sir Thomas, Glendon decides to cooperate with Yogami and they both attempt to control their transformations through hypnotism. However the plan fails, the hypnotist is killed, and Glendon and Yogami both transform and fight to the death. Glendon wins, killing Yogami, and returns to human form afterwards. The novel then ends with Glendon, alive, contemplating using the hypnotist's gun to commit suicide rather than go on living as a werewolf.

The second time was in 1985, as part of Crestwood House's hardcover Movie Monsters series, again based on the old Universal films. This time, the author was Carl Green, and was considerably shorter and followed the plot of the film more closely and was illustrated extensively with still photos of the movie.

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« Reply #5 on: October 29, 2007, 11:37:01 pm »


Directed by George Waggner
Produced by George Waggner
Written by Curt Siodmak
Starring Lon Chaney, Jr.
Claude Rains
Warren William
Ralph Bellamy
Patric Knowles
Bela Lugosi
Maria Ouspenskaya
Evelyn Ankers
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) December 12, 1941
Running time 70 min
Language English
Budget $180,000 (estimated)
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« Reply #6 on: October 29, 2007, 11:40:28 pm »


The Wolf Man is a 1941 horror film written by Curt Siodmak and produced and directed by George Waggner, starring Lon Chaney, Jr., Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, Ralph Bellamy, Patric Knowles, Bela Lugosi, and Maria Ouspenskaya. It introduced a character that stands alongside Frankenstein and Dracula as one of the most recognized of the Universal Monsters and has had a great deal of influence on Hollywood's depictions of the legend of the werewolf. A remake is due in 2009.

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« Reply #7 on: October 29, 2007, 11:42:46 pm »



Lawrence Stewart "Larry" Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) returns to his ancestral home in Llanwelly, Wales to reconcile with his father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains). While there, Larry becomes romantically interested in a local girl named Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), who runs an antique shop. As a pretext, he buys something from her, a silver-headed walking stick decorated with a wolf. Gwen tells him that it represents a werewolf (which she defines as a man who changes into a wolf "at certain times of the year".)

Throughout the film, various villagers recite a poem that all the locals apparently know, whenever the subject of werewolves comes up:

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.
That night, Larry attempts to rescue Gwen's friend Jenny from what he believes to be a sudden attack by a wolf. He kills the beast with his new walking stick, but is bitten in the process. He soon discovers that it was not just a wolf; it was a werewolf, and now Talbot has become one. A gypsy fortuneteller named Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) reveals to Larry that the animal which bit him was actually her son Bela (Bela Lugosi) in the form of a wolf. Bela had been a werewolf for years and now the curse of lycanthropy has been passed to Larry.

Sure enough, Talbot prowls the countryside in the form of a two-legged wolf. Struggling to overcome the curse, he is finally bludgeoned to death by his father with his own walking stick. As he dies, he returns to human form.

The poem, contrary to popular belief, was not an ancient legend, but was in fact an invention of screenwriter Siodmak. The poem is repeated in every subsequent film in which Talbot/The Wolf Man appears, with the exception of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and is also quoted in the later film Van Helsing, although many later films change the last line of the poem to "And the moon is full and bright".

The original Wolf Man film does not make use of the idea that a werewolf is transformed under a full moon. Gwen's description and the poem imply that it happens when the wolfbane blooms in autumn. The first sequel, though, made explicit use of the full moon both visually and in the dialog, and also changed the poem to specify when the moon is full and bright. Presumably this is what popularized the full-moon connection in the 20th century. The sequel visually implies that the transformation occurs as a result of direct exposure to light from the full moon. Other fiction has assumed the transformation is an inescapable monthly occurrence and does not examine whether it is caused by light, tidal effects, or some cycle that happens to coincide with the moon's phases.

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« Reply #8 on: October 29, 2007, 11:44:18 pm »



In the original film, Chaney did not undergo an on-screen transformation from man to wolf, as featured in all sequels. The lap-dissolve progressive make-ups were seen only in the final ten minutes, and then discretely: Talbot removes his shoes and socks, and it is his feet which are seen to grow hairy and transform into huge paws (courtesy of uncomfortable "boots" made of hard rubber, covered in yak hair. In the final scene, the werewolf does gradually become Larry Talbot through the standard technique.

The transformation of Chaney from man into monster was laborious. A plaster mold was made to hold his head absolutely still as his image was photographed and his outline drawn on panes of glass in front of the camera. Chaney then went to makeup man Jack Pierce's office, where Pierce, using grease paint, a rubber snout appliance and a series of wigs, glued layers of yak hair to Chaney's face. Then Chaney would return to the set, line himself up using the panes of glass as reference and several feet of film were shot. Then the make-up was removed and a new layer was applied, showing the transformation further along. This was done about a half-dozen times. Talbot’s lap dissolve transformation on screen only took seconds, while Chaney’s took almost ten hours.

According to ballyhoo from Universal's publicity department, World War II was responsible for the brevity of Chaney's hirsuit appearance in the last serious sequel, House of Dracula (1945). According to a small blurb in that film's press book, a nationwide lack of yak hair from the Orient prevented the character from appearing in more scenes. Given that the script was written with the Talbot character as a hero, this sounds like the work of a publicity flack trying to make an excuse. The Wolf Man does, however, appear with bare, non-hairy hands in one shot of House of Frankenstein, (1944) but this was an on-set gaffe; no "lack of yak hair" publicity accompanied this film.

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« Reply #9 on: October 29, 2007, 11:45:47 pm »


As in most of Universal’s classic monsters, the appeal of the Wolf Man lies in the humanity beneath the horror. Lawrence Talbot was tormented with the knowledge that he became a savage beast with a lust to kill; he is the quintessential reluctant monster. Only death could set him free but, as the sequels proved, death is only temporary in monster movies.

Writer Curt Siodmak has written that he was heavily influenced by Greek Mythology while drafting the script for this film.

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« Reply #10 on: October 29, 2007, 11:47:33 pm »



The Wolf Man proved popular, and so Chaney reprised his signature role in four more Universal films, though unlike his contemporary "monsters," Larry Talbot never enjoyed the chance to have a sequel all to himself. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) had Talbot’s grave opened on a full moon night, causing him to rise again (making him, in the subsequent films, technically one of the undead). He seeks out Dr. Frankenstein for a cure, but finds the monster (Bela Lugosi) instead. The two square off at the climax, but the fight ends in a draw when a dam is exploded and Frankenstein’s castle is flooded. In House of Frankenstein (1944), Talbot is once again resurrected and is promised a cure via a brain transplant, but is shot dead with a silver bullet instead. He returns with no explanation in House of Dracula (1945), and is finally cured of his condition. But he was afflicted once again, in the comedy film Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). This time the Wolf Man was a hero of sorts, saving Wilbur Grey (Lou Costello) from having his brain transplanted by Dracula (Bela Lugosi) into the head of the Monster (Glenn Strange). Grabbing the vampire as he turned into a bat, the Wolf Man dove over a balcony into the sea.

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« Reply #11 on: October 29, 2007, 11:52:43 pm »


In March 2006, Universal Pictures announced the remake of The Wolf Man with actor Benicio del Toro in the lead role. Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker was attached to the screenplay, developing the original film's story to include additional characters as well as plot points that would take advantage of modern visual effects. In February 2007, director Mark Romanek was attached to helm The Wolf Man.[1] An autumn start to filming is planned.[1] Rick Baker also signed on to do the make-up effects of the Wolf Man.[2] In April 2007, Anthony Hopkins entered negotiations with the studio to portray the Wolf Man's father.[3] The film was scheduled for a November 12, 2008, before being pushed back to early 2009 in September 2007.[4] On October 10, 2007, it was announced that the film would be released on February 13, 2009.[5]


[edit] Legacy
It was The Wolf Man that introduced the concepts of werewolves being vulnerable to silver (in traditional folklore, it is more effective against vampires), the werewolf's forced shapeshifting under a full moon, and being marked with a pentagram (a symbol of the occult and of Satanism). These are considered by many as part of the original folklore of the werewolf, even though they were created for the film. Unlike the werewolves of legend, which resemble true wolves, the Universal Wolf Man was an extension of the previous 1935 Werewolf of London in which both primary characters are a hybrid creature unlike the traditional interpretation. The Wolf Man stood erect like a human, but had the fur, teeth and claws and savage impulses of a wolf.

The Wolf Man has the distinction of being the only classic Universal monster to be played by the same actor in all his classic 1940s film appearances. Lon Chaney, Jr. was very proud of this, frequently stating in interviews: "He was my baby." Chaney would go on to play a wolf man (if not the Wolf Man) in very similar makeup in the 1959 Mexican film La Casa del Terror and a famous 1962 episode of TV's Route 66 titled Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing, which also starred Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster. Nearly a decade later, even though he was seriously ill at the time, Chaney managed to conjure up his original energetic gestures while masked in a quasi-wolfish rubber mask for one scene in his last (and most unfortunate) film, 1971's Dracula vs. Frankenstein.

The Wolf Man was not Universal's first werewolf film. It was preceded by Werewolf of London (1935), starring noted character actor Henry Hull in a quite different and more subtle werewolf makeup. Interestingly, the original Jack Pierce make-up for Hull was nearly identical to the later one on Chaney. Hull apparently objected to having his face entired covered in hair, and a less-hirsuit, more devilish version was used in the film. The film was not a huge box office success, probably because audiences of the day thought it too similar in many ways to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for which Fredric March had won an Oscar three years before. Some latter-day critics prefer Jack Pierce's earlier werewolf to Chaney's, which was described in Carlos Clarens's book An Illustrated History of the Horror FIlm' as "... looking like a hirsuit Cossack."

The Wolf Man is one of only three Universal Studios monsters without a novel to accompany its movie appearances, although written long after the fact. The others are The Mummy and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. In the 1970s, novelizations of the original films were issued as paperback originals as part of a series written by "Carl Dreadstone," a "house name" pseudonym for a several writers, including British horror writer Ramsey Campbell).

Other characters referred to as "the Wolf Man" appear in Van Helsing, Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, The Monster Squad, Mad Monster Party, Monster Mash: The Movie and Waxwork.


Cast
Lon Chaney, Jr. ... Larry Talbot/The Wolf Man (billed as Lon Chaney)
Claude Rains ... Sir John Talbot
Warren William ... Dr. Lloyd
Ralph Bellamy ... Colonel Montford
Patric Knowles ... Frank Andrews
Bela Lugosi ... Bela
Maria Ouspenskaya ... Maleva
Evelyn Ankers ... Gwen Conliffe
J.M. Kerrigan ... Charles Conliffe
Fay Helm ... Jenny Williams
Forrester Harvey ... Twiddle


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_Man
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« Reply #12 on: October 29, 2007, 11:54:36 pm »



Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man movie poster
Directed by Roy William Neill
Produced by George Waggner
Written by Curt Siodmak
Starring Lon Chaney, Jr.
Ilona Massey
Patric Knowles
Lionel Atwill
Bela Lugosi
Maria Ouspenskaya
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) March 5, 1943 U.S. release
Language English
Preceded by Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
The Wolf Man (1941)
Followed by House of Frankenstein (1944)
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« Reply #13 on: October 29, 2007, 11:56:31 pm »


Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, released in 1943, is an American horror film produced by Universal Studios. It was the first of a series of "ensemble" monster films combining characters from several film series. This film, therefore, is both the fifth in the series of films based upon Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and a sequel to The Wolf Man.

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« Reply #14 on: October 29, 2007, 11:57:49 pm »


Larry Talbot, the "Wolf Man", is awakened from death by grave robbers. Seeking a cure for the curse that causes him to transform into a werewolf with every full moon, he goes to of Frankenstein's castle, as he hopes to find there the notes of the original Dr. Frankenstein so he might learn how to permanently end his own life through scientific means, knowing now that being struck by silver was not the final cure the legend claims. By chance, he falls into the castle's frozen catacombs and revives Frankenstein's Monster. Finding that the Monster is unable to locate the notes of the long-dead doctor, Talbot seeks out Baroness Elsa Frankenstein, hoping she knows their hiding place. After the Monster's revival becomes known to the villagers, she gives the notes to Talbot and Dr. Mannering, who has tracked Talbot across Europe, so that they may be used in an effort to drain all life from both Talbot and the Monster. Ultimately, however, Dr. Mannering's desire to see the Monster at full strength overwhelms his logic, and to Elsa's horror he decides to fully revive it. (While the explanation of the Monster's degree of incapacity was cut from the film, Lugosi's portrayal clearly shows him to be blinded and stiffened by his ordeal.) As an unfortunate coincidence, the experiment takes place on the night of a full moon, and Talbot is transformed just as the Monster regains his strength. After the Monster lustfully carries off Elsa, the Wolf Man attacks him, she runs out of the castle with the doctor, and the two title characters perish in a flood that results after the local tavern owner blows up the town dam to drown the castle's inhabitants.

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