REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:         


WEREWOLF OF LONDON

WEREWOLF OF LONDON. Universal Pictures, 1935. Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobson, Lester Matthews, Lawrence Grant, Spring Byington, Clark Williams. Director: Stuart Walker.

   The Wolf Man, one of Universal’s strongest monsters — probably the appeal to teenage boys of a conflicted being who finds his body changing and getting hairy as his emotions run wild — only got one film to himself, The Wolf Man (1941).

   For the rest of the run, he had to share the limelight with Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula and assorted mad doctors and hunchbacks, while second-string ghouls like the Creeper and Paula the Ape Woman got two or three films all to themselves and that lumbering bore Kharis got four. I guess there’s no justice for monsters.

   Actually, Universal kicked off the idea in ’35 with Werewolf of London, a flawed-but-interesting effort laboring under the weight of Henry Hull’s stodgy scientist-turned-boogey-man.

WEREWOLF OF LONDON

   Hull (to the left, on the left) was a dashing leading man on stage and played a fine string of crusty old-timers in the movies, but as a suffering monster he totally fails to grab our sympathy.

   That’s rare in a monster movie, because normally the monster is the most interesting character. Here, Hull is such a constipated dullard, we want something unpleasant to befall him, and lycanthropy seems like just the thing.

   Too bad, because this movie offers an interesting plot, some catchy dialogue, worthy special effects and camera work that lingers in the mind’s eye long after the silly story passes on.

WEREWOLF OF LONDON