Rating: 
Summary: Two overlooked but impressive Universal werewolf films
Review: These two films could not be more different, and both are unmistakably distinct from the Universal werewolf films starring Lon Chaney, Jr., as the afflicted Larry Talbot, yet I think they both work marvelously. Many fans don't care for them, especially She-Wolf in London, but I find both films equally compelling. They differ significantly from the storyline running through Chaney's later Wolf Man films, but these two films have a great deal of their own to offer fans. Often overlooked and unduly dismissed by some reviewers and horror fans, these are two classic werewolf films. Werewolf of London (1935) is actually Universal's first werewolf film - The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney, Jr., would come six years later. In Werewolf of London, botanist Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) sees his troubles begin in - of all places - Tibet, where he travels in search of the "Marifasa Lupina," a special flower that blooms only in moonlight. He gets his flower, but he also gets a nasty bite from a werewolf in the process. Back home in London, the flower takes on new meaning when a certain Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland) pays him a visit and expresses his own interest in the plant. Glendon doesn't believe Yogami's wild tales about werewolves - not until, that is, he turns into one that very night. This isn't your ordinary werewolf. After his transformation, Glendon goes looking for a bloom of the flower (which, while not a cure for his affliction, would prevent him from killing those he loves the most) and then, before heading out into the streets, stops to put on his coat, hat, and scarf. The actual transformations, several of which are shown in the film, are rather impressive for such an early film. He's not overly hairy, but there is a definite look of evil intelligence in his eyes. Of course, you have to have a leading lady in this type of film, and that role is filled quite well by the lovely Valerie Hobson. Warner Oland gives a memorable performance as Yogami, but I must lavish special attention on three older ladies. Spring Byington is quite a hoot as Glendon's rich lush of an aunt, but Ethel Griffies and Zeffie Tilbury absolutely steal the show as Mrs. Whack and Mrs. Moncaster. These two ladies deliver a comic tour de force as inebriated best friends who take a great interest in Glendon when he comes asking to rent a room from one of them. Back in the old days, movie studios (or more likely, censors) didn't think audiences could withstand all of the frights and chills of a harmless monster movie like this without a few stiff doses of comedy thrown in to the mix - oftentimes, such comic relief failed miserably, but here it is spot on. Despite the fact that Glendon is as unsympathetic a character as you can find (the antithesis of Lon Chaney, Jr.'s Larry Talbot), I have to give this movie five stars. The plot has a level of complexity to it that adds to its impact, the makeup and special effects are quite impressive, and the film has that unidentifiable something that a good horror movie must have in order to succeed. Werewolf of London isn't as entertaining as Universal's Wolf Man films of the 1940s, but it is definitely worth watching. She-Wolf of London (1946) rekindles the old traditional horror spirit by recasting the werewolf legend in a framework of psychology and suspense. Most of the comments I read about this movie tend to give the whole idea of the film away, and that's a shame. I went into the movie with no preconceptions, and while I was able to figure out what was going on about halfway through, the film kept me guessing until the very end as to the exact details of the story. Phyllis Allenby (June Lockhart) should be a happy young lady; she is well off financially and engaged to be married to the man she loves. Unfortunately, though, the "Allenby curse" casts a shadow on her future and supposedly led to the early deaths of her parents. A series of vicious murders in a nearby park points to a big dog or, as one Scotland Yard detective hypothesizes, a werewolf as the culprit. Phyllis awakens one morning to find her shoes muddied and her hands bloodied; when she then hears, at breakfast, that a child was killed during the night, she is sure that the Allenby curse has finally struck her and made her into a she-wolf. She tries to hide herself away in her house, but her fiancée can only stay away so long before he demands the explanation he deserves. The story does a masterful job of building suspense and keeping the ultimate truth about the chronicled events a mystery. Many fans find this film rather boring, but I thought it was a wonderfully crafted and very enjoyable film. By 1946, audiences had already seen Henry Hull and Lon Chaney, Jr., transform into werewolves on several occasions, and it was nice to break away from that mold momentarily. You don't have to show the audience the actual horrors on the screen in order to make an effective horror movie; without a bunch of special effects to fall back on, such a film requires a tight and efficient script, convincing performances by the players, and the manufacture of an increasingly suspenseful atmosphere. She-Wolf of London fits the bill perfectly.
Rating: 
Summary: Need more special features!
Review: Two of the lesser Universal chillers, that nonetheless look great on DVD. As expected, these Double Features don't have much in the way of extras. All we get are the trailers for the two films. She-Wolf of London is a complete misfire, lacking any real suspense and peopled with unsympathetic characters. Werewolf of London comes out slightly more enjoyable, and [SPOILER ALERT!] at least it actually does have a werewolf in it! The first 8 Universal single-movie releases all had entertaing and thorough documentaries, which included some info on all the sequels coming out now. But I wish they would have tried to get commentary tracks from film historians David Skal or Tom Weaver, as they did with Dracula, The Wolfman, The Creature, etc. If you're a Universal collector, there's no question you'll be adding these to your collection. Just don't expect the quality (in features or the films themselves) of the other "Classic Monster" discs.
Rating:
Summary: Two Wolves for the Price of One
Review: Two Wolves for the Price of One
Universal's packaging for this DVD containing Werewolf of London (1935) and She-Wolf of London (1946) calls it a "Wolf Man Double Feature," but any connection between the two movies is purely factitious. Apart from the London setting and the word "wolf" in the title, the two have little in common. Nor does either have anything to do with the saga of Lawrence Talbot, the manic-depressive lycanthrope played by Lon Chaney Jr. whose adventures, commencing with The Wolfman (1940) occupy a modest place next to those of such big league creatures as Count Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, or the Mummy. More than anything else this program unintentionally documents the studio's decline between 1935 and 1946.
Werewolf of London recounts the misadventures of Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull), a British botanist who while traveling in Tibet in search of a rare plant called the moonflower or Marifasa Lupina Lumina is attacked by a werewolf bent upon obtaining the posy, an antidote to what the dialogue calls "this medieval unpleasantness". Upon his return to England, Glendon begins to exhibit the symptoms of werewolfery, but an unforeseen complication ensues when the other werewolf reappears in the shape of Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland), faculty member of the University of Carpathia, in hot pursuit of the plant the scientist is now attempting to cultivate in his private laboratory.
In the absence of a more suitable model for its debut werewolf epic, Universal seems to have taken inspiration from Rouben Mamoulian's extraordinary-and highly successful-adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, released in 1932, starring Fredric March. Not only does the werewolf Glendon strikingly resemble March as Hyde, but Werewolf of London takes over the motif of a man leading a double life which figures more prominently in the Mamoulian film.
Most importantly, both movies tap into the Faust legend, whose lineaments can be discerned beneath the hirsute façade of Werewolf of London quite readily-but with a significant difference. According to most versions of the story, Faust repents too late and suffers damnation, but the studio improves upon tradition. In what must be a unique example of transfiguration in the history of Christian theology, the closing shots represent Glendon's ascending soul as an airplane flying into the sky which then becomes the Universal logo depicting a plane circling the globe.
Directed by the otherwise undistinguished Stuart Walker, Werewolf of London has a screenplay by John Colton, who made Somerset Maugham's short story "Miss Sadie Thompson" into the hit stage play Rain. But even for a horror film, Werewolf of London contains an unusually high proportion of nonsense, including laborious, misguided attempts to reproduce the niceties of British upper class life, equally labored attempts at humor--such as one character's habit of referring to Dr. Yogami as Dr. Yokohama-the miserable Marifasa, and a collection of dotty dowagers drawn from both ends of the social spectrum. Especially forgettable are Zeffie Tilbury and Ethel Griffies (the lady ornithologist in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds) as a pair of tediously inebriated Cockney landladies.
But the movie's greatest liability is its lead. Glendon is supposed to be a saturnine savant, but as played by Henry Hull, he is stiffly sullen, as if he had mistaken a lead sinker for a suppository. Only Warner Oland, mainly known for portraying Dr. Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan, manages to inject a needed aura of mystery into the proceedings. Nevertheless, Werewolf of London has its moments, among them Glendon's first encounter with Yogami qua werewolf when the former discovers the moonflower, well-staged and well-photographed by Charles Stumar, as well as the subsequent transformation scenes, the true test of any werewolf flick.
In these sequences, Werewolf of London briefly achieves a sense of magic that far outstrips anything in Paul Verhoeven's effects-laden The Hollow Man. In fact, the unsung heroes of Werewolf of London are certainly the special effects wizard John Fulton and the makeup artist Jack Pierce. The first, who also supervised the trick photography of James Whale's The Invisible Man, did a skillful job of handling Glendon's metamorphosis from man into werewolf, while Pierce, the real creator of the Frankenstein monster, gave Glendon an appropriately savage demeanor in his lupine alter ego.
There is far less to say about She-Wolf of London, a psychological thriller impersonating a werewolf picture that might be described as George Cukor's Gaslight with fangs and claws. A tale about a series of mysterious attacks taking place in a London park located next to a mansion belonging to a family named Allenby, She-Wolf of London drags in some hocus-pocus about a hereditary curse-probably borrowed from John Brahm's superior The Undying Monster--to explain these events. But this idea remains so inadequately developed that it makes the Marifasa look like sound dramatic invention.
Perhaps the best thing anyone could argue in favor of She-Wolf of London is that owing to its tight editing-the running time is only 62 minutes-most people would not be likely to notice such gaping holes in the scenario as the heroine's not knowing that the woman she believes to be her aunt is actually her dead father's housekeeper and former inamorata. The rewards to be gleaned here are marginal indeed. She-Wolf of London is not only burdened with a ludicrous story line but a uniformly mediocre cast, although Sara Haden as the malevolent housekeeper does a plausible job of imitating Judith Anderson's bravura performance as Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca.
Still, the film, photographed by Maury Gertsman, boasts some striking shots of an unknown woman in white fleeing the Allenby manor in the middle of the night, and of the park shrouded in fog, for the delectation of anyone who has the patience to wade through the muck that surrounds them. The DVD is bare-bones without notable extras except trailers, but well-designed and user friendly. As with most of Universal's Classic Monster releases, the picture and sound quality of both movies is excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing to howl about
Review: Werewolf of London/She-Wolf of London is a classic black and white duo. I'm a big fan of werewolf films so, it was nice to see where it all started. Werewolf of London was the better film. She-wolf was quite simply: a. too short, and b: not a monster movie. While I liked the feature, (Werewolf of London ), the film doesn't have much re-watch value. I mean, how many times can you watch the transformation scenes? Also, the 'hero' was rather unlikable. This film would be different if he cooperated with the other scientist and searched for a cure, instead of being a so selfishly boneheaded. I recommend these films for old monster movie buffs. But for me, I just forced myself to finish it.
|
