With Wolf Man – one of 2025’s most highly anticipated upcoming horror movies – hitting theaters this week, I decided it was finally time for me to check out the original 1941 thriller that inspired it. Just like any other time I watch an older beloved horror movie, I tried to put myself in the shoes of the audience from that era and allow myself to appreciate the film despite its more dated aspects.
Well, while there was plenty about director George Waggner’s Universal Monster Movie classic that I did appreciate, I cannot say that I would call The Wolf Man one of my all-time favorite werewolf movies, personally. In fact, there was one aspect in particular that I immediately hoped would be corrected in Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man reboot. Allow me to explain…
Larry Talbot, The Original Wolf Man, Is A Despicable Creep
The central character of The Wolf Man is Larry Talbot, whom horror movie icon Lon Chaney Jr. would later reprise in other Universal Monster flicks like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Almost right off the bat, the film does not paint its protagonist in the most flattering light.
He first spots his love interest, Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), while staring through his father’s telescope and promptly goes to make a move by alluding to the fact that he was spying on her, which she is clearly not impressed by. Even when she tells him she is engaged to Patric Knowles’ character, Frank Andrews, that does not stop him from pursuing her and even seems to encourage him to step up his game. Thus, I found it difficult to identify with and enjoy this character, which became a problem once the horror began to kick into gear.
I Found It Hard To Sympathize With Larry Talbot
In my favorite werewolf movies (even including 1981’s funny creature feature An American Werewolf in London), the protagonist’s transformation into a vicious, hairy, bloodthirsty beast tends to be a source of distress for me. Unfortunately, I did not feel this way about Larry Talbot by the time things started getting hairy in The Wolf Man because the movie gave me little to no reason to empathize with him.
In fact, I consider Talbot’s contemptible behavior before receiving his wolf bite to be more than just a personal problem but a detriment to the film’s most essential themes. As explored in a Medium post by Gwen C. Katz, stories about lycanthropy are typically an examination of the duality between a person’s human and more animalistic sides. However, when seen through modern eyes, the depiction of Larry as (to be frank) a bit of a loathsome brute when he is still a normal man grossly disrupts the message as far as I am concerned.
My General Feelings About The Wolf Man
While Larry Talbot is not one of my top classic horror movie villains, I believe there is still plenty about The Wolf Man to admire. Most especially, I thought that the makeup effects were timeless and almost better than what I have seen in some more recent werewolf movies.
However, those films did manage to thrill me far more effectively than this, even after trying to adopt a 1940s moviegoer mindset. Still, considering the aforementioned makeup job and the decently creepy atmosphere created by the production design, I'd say it is worth a watch, especially for horror completists.
Thankfully, my lukewarm reaction to The Wolf Man has not acted as Wolf’s bane for my interest in the reboot, especially when you consider the positive critical reactions to Wolf Man so far. I just hope Christopher Abbott’s wolf bite victim in the new 2025 movie is creepy for all the right reasons this time.
