Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

directed by Roy William Neill

USA

74 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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Some friends took me into Atlanta to catch the afternoon Silver Scream Spookshow presentation of this film last weekend, which was an all-around great time. The danger with seeing a movie in a theater is that I usually don't have my brain powered up enough to review it since I'm more focused on the overall experience of being in a theater; doubly so if I just watched a 30-minute live stage show with puppetry and antics and skits and whatnot. But Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man kind of crept up on me, so I want to get some thoughts about it down in writing.

(Also please note that I basically have never watched a Universal monster movie so I might say some things here that would be "Well, yeah, duh" territory to anyone who has.)

The thing that really struck me about this movie was the incredibly sympathetic portrayal of the Wolf Man. At the beginning of the film he is dug up from his grave by tomb robbers looking for fresh-ish corpses with money on them, and despite having "died" four years ago, the man who in life was known as Larry Talbot somehow remains alive - very much against his will. Talbot is immediately, horrifyingly aware of his situation - of his status of a lycanthrope - but no one around him will take him seriously. There is something so deeply tragic about seeing Talbot plead, essentially, "I have no control over my own actions, when the full moon strikes I am a passenger in my own body, I am committing acts that are reprehensible to me and I desperately need to die because there is no other way for me to stop myself" and having no one listen to him.

The practical effects makeup here is obviously ahead of its time and an enormous amount of effort was put into what amounts to probably about 0.15% of the running time of an already quite short movie - our (g)host Professor Morte mentioned that the initial transformation scene was done over the course of eight hours and that Lon Chaney Jr. had to stay in the same pose on a pillow that was made out of plaster because a real pillow would have shifted around too much and ruined the real-time transformation effect. That is all remarkable, but what I think really cinched this movie was Chaney's performance as Talbot. Not as the Wolf Man - as Talbot. He has this forlorn expression on most of the time, and carries himself with the body language of a man heavily burdened, who knows that he doesn't belong among the vibrant, carefree living humans around him. Although this is a short, simple film, the true horror of being the Wolf Man is conveyed in a way that I found extremely compelling.

I haven't mentioned Bela Lugosi in heavy makeup as Frankenstein's Monster because he was somewhat of a weak point in the film to me, which from what I understand had a lot to do with behind-the-scenes decisions to cut a lot of his lines. I also think that every other character besides the two monsters could basically have been an NPC with the exception of Maleva, whose genuine care and compassion for the Wolf Man and total acceptance of him as a being did move me deeply.

One of the friends I was with pointed out the "economy of storytelling" in this film, which I agree is definitely one of its strong points; the plot moves along very quickly and doesn't get stuck on any one point or another for longer than feels necessary. It is a pleasure to watch a 74-minute film that feels like it got its entire message across and couldn't have been longer if it tried. I'm attempting to muster the effort to say that there's also something about this simplicity that is a detriment to the film, because although any more length would probably have drawn the plot out further than it could handle, in the end, instead of a satisfying conclusion, we basically get... nothing. Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolf Man fight, the dam possibly gets blown up, we see some great practical effects, and then the "The End" card hits and we all left the theater. Just another ten minutes could have made that ending feel like an actual ending.