Werewolf of London review
This cycle’s Full Moon Feature looks back ninety years at Universal’s first attempt at a werewolf story.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Werewolf of London
Directed by Stuart Walker
Written by John Colton
Starring Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson, Lester Matthews, Lawrence Grant, Spring Byington and Clark Williams
Werewolf of London Review
Not to be confused with the popular Warren Zevon song Werewolves of London…or the superior (to pretty much any werewolf movie) An American Werewolf in London…this Full Moon Feature travels back in time nine decades to look at Werewolf of London. That (entirely too long of a) sentence points to a hard truth about Werewolf of London. Despite its key place in the history of werewolf movies…it’s not even the first thing that comes to mind when you hear its own name. This was Universal’s first attempt at adding a werewolf story to their Universal Monsters line. Lon Chaney’s depressed, suicidal Lawrence Talbot (AKA The Wolf Man) would hit the scene six years after this movie arrived. It’s his hairy visage that you’ll find on t-shirts and lunchboxes to this day.
Funny aside about that face…it’s the same one that Universal makeup maestro Jack Pierce designed for this movie. They ended up going with a more subdued, human look instead. History proved Pierce right on that one…although this makeup is still great too. Even when Pierce was annoyed, he still turned in timeless and influential work.
Some people consider Werewolf of London the first feature-length werewolf movie. I have no idea if they’re right. I know that a short silent film called The Werewolf came out in 1913 and was lost in a fire in the mid-20s. A silent movie called Wolf Blood was released in 1925…but it was only 67 minutes long. Werewolf of London is a whopping 8 minutes longer. I’m not sure if 75 minutes constitutes feature length by modern standards…but it certainly did in 1935. It’s longer than Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man and The Mummy. Classics that, depending on where these people are drawing their line…we may have just learned aren’t feature-length. They all hit 70 minutes…so let’s assume the cutoff for the original conversation is that number. I don’t know why I’ve spent so long on something that doesn’t matter.
There’s a misconception that the classic Universal Monster movies were all arriving in the same time frame like a proto-MCU leading to the Avengers-like Monster Rallies. Werewolf of London, despite being largely banished to the forgotten part of horror history came out the same year as Bride of Frankenstein. The Wolf Man wouldn’t pop up until a decade after Dracula and the original Frankenstein. The Creature from the Black Lagoon wouldn’t show up until thirteen years after that! When this swing at adding a werewolf to the catalog happened…we’d already met Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and his Bride, The Mummy and The Invisible Man. It wasn’t some pre-fame monster release. Immediately following Bride of Frankenstein places it directly at the Universal Monsters creative peak. There was also a later film called She-Wolf of London from Universal…but it’s stunningly unrelated to this movie.
So, after that long introduction, what is Werewolf of London? Honestly, it’s a pretty good werewolf movie. Especially given its position…preceding so many movies full of ideas about the werewolf curse. It comes up with some fascinating concepts. For example, when you are infected and the full moon rises…you have to kill someone that night or you won’t return to human form. That’s a wild idea. It’s so good that I’d love to see a modern take pick up on the thread and weave something new out of it. They also say that the werewolf is driven to kill what it loves most. That’s just a lazy convenience for something that doesn’t need to be explained. Proximity to the beast puts their loved ones in danger anyway.
Transformations are done with time-lapse and makeup. It always works and since they cracked this as early as 1935 I remain dumbfounded when anyone goes with sloppy CGI instead. Of course, it helps when you are transitioning into Jack Pierce makeup. As mentioned, this is a subtler take on a wolf man…and it’s very cool to have two versions of his take on it. Since this is a ninety year old movie…werewolf action is played in the shadows with screams and music cues. It’s all fine…but you’ve seen it done better since.
The plot is simple at its core. There’s an entire throughline about a plant that isn’t as interesting as they think it is…but it presents the film’s inciting incident and offers a few other plot conveniences. Wilfred (Henry Hull) becomes cursed and spends a good portion of Werewolf of London learning what that means. Hull is pretty dynamic in the role. He doesn’t have the penetrating grief that Chaney’s character carried with him…but there’s a level of intensity to Hull’s portrayal that really works. He’s only pulling a .6 on the Colin Clive in Frankenstein scale…but that’s more than most of the actors in the 30s were giving you.
What Werewolf of London really gets right comes in the second half of the story. Wilfred becomes increasingly frightened of what he’s become…and what he must do to buy time to find a way to reverse it. The side characters are mostly wooden…as they usually are. Bride of Frankenstein’s Valerie Hobson plays Wilfred’s unfulfilled wife, Lisa. She’s given about as much to do here as she was in that masterpiece. There are a couple of peripheral characters who bring a few unexpected laughs to the proceedings. It feels like someone saw Bride and did a quick script doctoring session to include a bit of pathos. It’s always appreciated.
It’s not all good, of course. The first half of Werewolf of London feels like it’s running at half speed. The dynamism of James Whale’s work didn’t inspire everything here it seems. London was directed by a different Universal contracted filmmaker, Stuart Walker. He does a serviceable job but, coming off back to back Whale Universal Monster pictures, London often feels lifeless by comparison. It’s a film caught by bad timing in every direction. Walker wouldn’t live to see Universal’s second (and more successful) effort bringing werewolves into the Monster crew. He passed away nine months before The Wolf Man was released. Making him one of the few people to have ever existed who thought of Werewolf of London before anything else in the subgenre.
Scare Value
Werewolf of London is forever doomed to be an oddity in the Universal Monsters line. Fated to be included as a bonus feature on collector sets of The Wolf Man. There are worse places to be…not to mention worse werewolf movies. Werewolf of London has some fun ideas…a dash of humorous characters…and a fairly dynamic lead performance. It’s also exactly as slow as you expect. But…hey…they nailed the feel of the curse right out of the gate. It’s not their fault others have done it better since. Including Universal themselves.
2.5/5
Werewolf of London Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from Fandango at Home and Amazon
