Villain(s)  Werewolf

Actor(s):  Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Ralph Bellamy, Patric Knowles

Brief Description  The Wolf Man (1941) is a classic Universal Gothic horror film directed by George Waggner and starring Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry Talbot. It follows an estranged man who returns to his father's Welsh estate, gets bitten by a werewolf, and becomes cursed to transform and kill under the full moon. A definitive masterpiece of Gothic horror produced by Universal Pictures. It holds a massive legacy for permanently rewriting and modernizing the cinematic mythology of the werewolf.

Plot:
Following the sudden death of his older brother, Larry Talbot returns to his ancestral home in Llanwelly, Wales, after spending 18 years living in the United States. He attempts to reconcile with his estranged father, Sir John Talbot, and quickly grows infatuated with a local woman, Gwen Conliffe. To spark a conversation with her, Larry visits her antique shop and purchases a walking cane decorated with a silver wolf head. Gwen recites a local rhyme to him about lycanthropy: "Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright."

Later that evening, Larry escorts Gwen and her friend Jenny to a local gypsy carnival. Jenny goes into a tent to get her palm read by a mysterious fortune teller named Bela. Bela looks into her palm, sees a pentagram—the sign of the werewolf's next victim—and frantically tells her to run away. As they head into the dense woods, Bela transforms into a wolf and attacks Jenny. Hearing her screams, Larry rushes to save her. Armed only with his new silver-headed walking cane, Larry beats the beast to death but is bitten on the chest in the process. When the police arrive later, they find Jenny dead alongside the human body of Bela—no wolf is anywhere to be found. Because Larry killed Bela with a silver cane, the town looks upon him with extreme suspicion.

Larry's bite wound miraculously heals overnight, leaving a glowing, red pentagram scar on his chest. Bela's grieving mother, Maleva, reveals the horrible truth to Larry: her son was a werewolf, and because Larry survived the beast's bite, he is now cursed to become a werewolf himself. As night falls, Larry undergoes a horrific, agonizing transformation into a furry, half-man, half-wolf beast. Driven by primal, murderous instincts, he stalks the foggy woods and slaughters a local gravedigger. He wakes up the next morning back in his human form with hazy memories of the carnage, deeply burdened by fear and overwhelming guilt.

Desperate, Larry tries to explain the curse to his father, but Sir John—convinced his son is merely suffering from psychological trauma and grief—dismisses it all as mental illness. To prove Larry's fears are in his head, Sir John ties Larry to a chair in the castle for his own safety and joins the townsfolk on a wolf hunt in the woods. Larry transforms once again, breaks free of his restraints, and stalks into the foggy forest. He encounters Gwen and attacks her. Sir John hears her screams and rushes to her aid. Unaware that the beast is actually his cursed son, Sir John brutally bludgeons the creature to death using Larry's own silver-headed cane. As the creature dies, Maleva steps out of the shadows and recites a gypsy prayer over its body. Before Sir John's horrified eyes, the werewolf dissolves back into human form, revealing that he has just killed his own son.

Unlike Dracula or Frankenstein, The Wolf Man was not adapted from a gothic novel. Writer Curt Siodmak invented most of the werewolf lore we take for granted today, including the vulnerability to silver, the infectious bite, and the marking of victims with a pentagram. Larry Talbot is portrayed as an entirely sympathetic victim. He doesn't want to kill; he is a regular man trapped in a biological nightmare, establishing the "tragic monster" trope later echoed in pop culture. Makeup artist Jack Pierce spent hours applying layers of yak hair, spirit gum, and prosthetic appliances to Lon Chaney Jr.'s face.