Even a man who's pure of heart . . .

And says his prayers by night,

May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms

And the autumn moon is bright.

                  

Another full moon and another werewolf book.

To understand the remake, you have to look a little at the original movie. According to Classic-horror.com (link provided at the end), The Wolfman was made because Universal needed a new monster to promote. Karloff had stopped playing Frankenstein (and the Mummy), and the studio felt Bela Lugosi couldn’t handle a lead role anymore. Lon Chaney Jr was picked to be the werewolf. His make-up was relatively shoddy, because the MPDA (the MPAA of the era) wouldn’t allow him to look too bestial. They also disallowed any man to wolf transformations, though the end sequence was fine because it was wolf to man. Some of the werewolf “lore” that people think of as coming from old legends actually comes from the script of The Wolfman.

In the novel adaptation for the new film, Lawrence Talbot is a famous actor, loved by men and women alike, who goes home after his brother’s death and ends up succumbing to a family curse brought on by his father. I’m wondering if making Lawrence an actor is a nod to Lon Chaney Sr, the Man of a Thousand Faces, who played Eric, the Phantom of the Opera.

There are monsters in the Wolfman, but Lawrence Talbot isn’t one of them. He’s not a Reverend Lowe; he doesn’t like being a beast, and he doesn’t enjoy killing. It’s possible, but seems unlikely, that he would’ve grown to like it later on if he’d lived. Lawrence’s father, Sir John, actually likes being an apex predator and enjoys the hunts, though he’s fine with blaming the murders on Lawrence. India as the origin of Sir John’s curse is interesting; as that’s where it’s believed the Romani (Gypsies) are from in the first place.

Werewolves usually live a double life as man and beast, but there are multiple layers of masks here. Lawrence and his father are estranged, and need to be civil to one another, though I really do believe Sir John when he says he’s glad that Lawrence is home. Of course, as we learn later on, he’s glad because then he can infect him with lycanthropy and either have someone to run the night with or to blame for the attacks. Sir John hides the curse, and the fact that he murdered Lawrence’s mother. He also killed Ben because he was going to leave, but plays the protective father to Lawrence when the villagers come to take him in just so his secret stays intact.

Sir John is one of the real monsters here, hiding behind multiple masks from everyone, playing his son against his enemies and trying to get him to drop his humanity and just enjoy the hunt. The doctors and orderlies of the insane asylum are the others. The orderlies take too much pleasure in the torture to be actually trying to assist Lawrence in becoming well. The doctor, while he may have Lawrence’s best interest in mind, doesn’t acknowledge the possibility that Lawrence might be a real werewolf, as those things aren’t supposed to exist. Interestingly, in the original script, there is room for an interpretation that Larry only strongly believes himself to be a werewolf and doesn’t change at all, he just runs around on all fours and howls at the moon. The doctor, I think, is less of a monster. He’s only using the techniques available to him at the time, and while we’d say he fails to consider the idea that Lawrence could be a werewolf, well, I might not believe someone if they told me that today. I can’t fault him for his disbelief.

Lawrence never revels in being the Wolfman, even when he’s slaughtering the doctors and guards who hurt him so much at the insane asylum both now and when he was there as a boy. He’s kind of like the Alien in that regard, he does things out of instinct instead of pure malice because when changed he’s a beast and not a man. Sir John, on the other hand, understands and accepts his condition without trying to defeat it, which makes him much more like Reverend Lowe.

There’s a sense of decency to Lawrence that you don’t find in Sir John but that is present in Inspector Abberline, even though he’s in an adversarial role, and also in Gwen Conliffe. Lawrence Talbot isn’t a perfect man, but he’s good enough not to deserve the curse of the werewolf. That Abberline ends up with the curse is interesting and would be a good subject for a further book or movie.

The end confrontation between Lawrence and Sir John is really between a man fighting not to be a beast and a beast disguised as a man. (I was going to say wolf in sheep’s clothing but that was too easy.) Lawrence succeeds in defeating the murderer of his mother and Ben, but just like King Kong, its beauty who kills the beast.

Looking into a werewolf’s eyes and calling out the person’s name is an old remedy to turn the beast back into a man. In the stories it works, but not so much in the movies, because defeating the monster that way is just too damn easy. That’s what silver bullets are for.  

There are differences between the book and the final cut of the film. The director’s cut, which I haven’t seen yet, seems to be closer to the novelization, with richer characters and more development of certain elements, such as the love between Gwen and Lawrence. I have issues with Rick Baker’s werewolf designs; they look sort of like gorillas mixed with wolves, though it’s actually a good update of the Wolfman look as done in the original movie.

Find more info on the original film here: www.classic-horror.com/wolf_man_1941