The Wolf Man DVD, 1941

'Even the man who is pure of heart, and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the moon is full and bright.' The last of Universal Pictures' truly great monster movies, in which Lon Chaney plays the man who returns to Wales, where he is bitten by a werewolf and becomes one himself. Mid-Wales rather resembles Transylvania, but this is bloodcurdling high tragedy. Stock up now on silver bullets.

Universal lavished time and money on this one, and were rewarded with a huge box office hit which really got their second cycle of horror films going. Rightly so, beca... more >

Universal lavished time and money on this one, and were rewarded with a huge box office hit which really got their second cycle of horror films going. Rightly so, because it is a real classic, with Lon Chaney Jnr giving a fine performance as the unfortunate Larry Talbot. His lupine alter-ego may be less than terrifying, but the film otherwise has a nicely spooky atmosphere, with lashings of Hollywood-style English fog. The writer Curt Siodmak, drew on his own experiences as a Jew in Germany persecuted by the Nazis, and (like Chaneys character) doomed through no fault of his own. It is a fatalism which Hollywood only really expressed in horror films like these, and yet they still remain critically undervalued. This one at least deserves more respect. < less

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