THE WOLF MAN has an unfortunate reputation as one of the hoariest and least compelling of the classic Universal horror films that served as a major element of that studio’s production slate throughout the 1930s. Its director George Waggner never found fame in the same way that Tod Browning and James Whale did, living out his career as a slightly capable producer of low-budget programmers with almost parodically generic titles like STATE POLICE and THE SPY RING and PRAIRIE JUSTICE. The film doesn’t, unlike the indisputed twin masterpieces FRANKENSTEIN and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, foreground its horror in an inquiry to relationship between man and God in the modern world.

So why do we remember it? Why does this film endure as one of the major horror films of its era when it is, by so many accounts, entirely unexceptional?

The first element we find in this film is how utterly generic it is - the romantic subplot that feels like deadweight in an already short picture, the wasted character actors (including the indispensible character actress Maria Ouspenskaya as a gypsy), the lazy thematic binaries of rationalism vs. ‘the unknown’ - it all seems so preconceived, and from a modern viewpoint, that makes it a fascinating text. THE WOLF MAN serves as quintessential traditional melodrama, complete with a plot about the failure of the rational (specifically in the form of then-villified psychoanalysis) in the face of time-honored legend and mythos (read: religion). In the end, the film seems to champion classical Renaissance humanism, the de rigeur philosophical view of this era of American genre filmmaking.
But so what? It’s hard to justify appreciation for a work simply by stating that it’s an outmoded cultural relic, so what is there to recommend about it? The film’s strongest element is probably the tortured performance by Lon Cheney, Jr., an actor whose cinematic lineage and boringly unattractive physical apperance make for him an apt everyman, a perfect locus for our concerns about our own personal animality. Cheney’s eyes, even obscured by fur and darkness, pervade our conscious with a deep sadness. THE WOLF MAN is the quintessential reflection of an important element of Universal horror - the power rendered by the tremendously physical performances of the now-legendary actors who played the monsters (Karloff in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN perhaps giving one of the greatest physical performances of all time).

I can’t recommend the film for all - even at 70 minutes, it meanders, and the too-fast climatic sequence is impotent, despite the classic shot of the Wolf Man emerging toward the camera from a darkened wood. If you, however, are interested in this particular era of filmmaking or the way that the physicality of a single performer reshapes and dignifies otherwise unremarkable work, this is a strong reminder of the importance of individual collaborators within the filmmaking process.

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