The Wolf Man
Short description
Larry Talbot returns from America to his father's estate in Wales after the death of his brother. During an evening at a gypsy camp with a local woman, Gwen Conliffe, he rescues her friend from a wolf-like creature and is bitten in the struggle. The bite leaves him fearing he has become connected to the violent deaths troubling the village, while those around him, including his father Sir John Talbot and the local authorities, grow concerned about his behaviour.
The film is a Universal Pictures production directed by George Waggner, who also produced it, from a screenplay by Curt Siodmak. It was released in December 1941 and runs seventy minutes. Waggner's earlier directing credit was Guilty Trail in 1938, and this film sits between that and two further films he directed the same year, Horror Island and Tangier. Lon Chaney Jr. plays Larry Talbot, with Claude Rains as Sir John Talbot, Ralph Bellamy as Colonel Montford, Warren William as Dr. Lloyd, Patric Knowles as Frank Andrews and Bela Lugosi as Bela, among a credited cast of thirty-two.
The film holds a 7.2 rating on IMDb from roughly thirty thousand votes and a 7 on TMDB from a much smaller number of votes. A critics' rating of 7.8 from forty-three reviews places it close to the audience scores, suggesting a broadly similar assessment across viewers and critics.
What's left behind the scenes
- The 'wolf' the werewolf fights is a German Shepherd, and its owner was Chaney Jr., who also played the werewolf.
- According to Kurt Siodmak's original script (1902-2000), it was unclear whether the protagonist actually transformed into a werewolf, or if he only imagined it. The werewolf was not supposed to appear on screen at all. However, the studio decided that audiences would prefer a literal transformation of Talbot, and the script was rewritten accordingly.
- Evelyn Ankers (1918-1985) was terrified when a bear weighing nearly 300 kilograms (scenes with it were later cut from the film) stopped obeying the trainer and chased her up a ladder, where a duty electrician came to the actress's rescue.
- The forest with damp, fog-covered ground, where many key scenes of the film were shot, became one of the largest sets in the history of Universal Pictures at the time. It occupied the entire soundstage.
- Evelyn Ankers later recalled that during the filming of the final confrontation, her character was supposed to faint and lie motionless until the end of the fight between Lon Chaney Jr. (1906-1973) and Claude Rains (1889-1967). According to her, due to the chemicals in the fog, she actually lost consciousness during the shooting of one of the takes. When filming of the scene was finished, the film crew began to pack up the equipment, and the absence of Ankers, who was still lying unconscious, hidden by the fog, was not noticed immediately.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
