Friday Fright: The Wolf Man (1941)

Written by Curt Siodmak
Directed by George Waggner
Starring Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Patric Knowles, Bela Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya, Evelyn Ankers
Released Dec. 12, 1941
RT 70 min.
Home Video Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
Classic Horrors rating =  7 (out of 10)

Until I recently re-watched The Wolf Man (1941), I would have told you it was the best of the Universal Monsters classics. Now I’m not so sure.  I think I was confusing my memory of a great character with that of a great movie.  Lon Chaney, Jr.’s performance as Larry Talbot gives us the most personal and sympathetic creature in Universal’s history and single-handedly raises the movie itself to something more impactful than it ever should have been.

Chaney is the primary reason this wolf man become a legend when six years earlier, a werewolf of London did not. But there are others.  Remember that earlier…