There are loads of reviews here already, both good and bad, some well-informed and others not so. But I wanted to throw in a few good words here for the cast, especially Henry Hull, upon whom many reviewers have descended with just about everything but the proverbial stake. Hull was a major American character actor whose specialty, despite a really quite gorgeous speaking voice, was very feisty and grizzled American characters, such as the newspaper editor in JESSE JAMES and, quite major, the role of Jeeter Lester in the original Broadway production of TOBACCO ROAD. WEREWOLF was his second talking film, but he had been on the Broadway stage since 1911. In any case, assigning him the role of Dr. Glendon in this opus was akin to assigning the role of Henry VIII to Andy Griffith, but dammit, it worked, and he plays it beautifully. If you don't like his character, then he has done his job, because the script is written in such a way that he is supposed to be a standoff-ish, unemotional prig, but not an inherently evil man. Interestingly, for this essentially British horror film, I think he and Spring Byington are the only Americans in the lead cast. Warner Oland is, I think, simply great as Dr. Yogami. He is the more sympathetic of the two werewolves because although it is he who afflicts Hull's character with the curse, he does so under the same compulsion that Dr. Glendon is subject to when he goes out and murders people. The difference is that Yogami is searching for the antidote at all times, does not want to be a killer, tries to inveigle Glendon into something of a partnership in searching out the effects of the marifesa plant (Glendon doesn't even want to know him!), etc. Yogami even goes to the police to warn them of the danger in their midst. Oland, of course, was Swedish, but played almost nothing but Chinese and Japanese characters in his movie career because, even without make-up, he simply looked Oriental (even in 1929's THE STUDIO MURDER MYSTERY, when he plays a Hollywood studio head named Borka, one keeps being surprised that there was a Chinese studio head in Hollywood at that time!). Valerie Hobson, one of the classiest of English actresses, was only 17 when this film was being shot, but, just as in the same year's BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, sounds a dozen years more mature, and properly upper-class and commanding. By the time she did KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS some 14 years later, she was only then arriving at the age of most of the characters she played; she retired from acting at 38, after having done (and recorded) the original London stage production of THE KING AND I (with Herbert Lom), to marry the later-scandal-plagued John Profumo. The three ditzy ladies are rather in the style of James Whale's ditzy ladies; if you don't like them, fine, but if you do like them, they are hilarious. For that matter, was Spring Byington even capable of not turning in a first-rate performance? This film is always being compared with THE WOLF MAN, but nobody points out that the same actor, J. M. Kerrigan, played one of the more important supporting roles in each film - Glendon's assistant in his botany laboratory in this, and Evelyn Ankers' father in THE WOLF MAN. Also, I find the make-up for the lycanthropes here much more realistic than in the Chaney film. You can still see that it is Hull and Oland under the wolf make-up, whereas Chaney is totally unrecognizable. And the characters here remain at least reasonably human, walking on two feet, whereas in the Chaney film, while he does walk on two feet, Talbot is still recognizably human whereas the creature who bit him - Bela the Gypsy - was a pure out-and-out wolf (or maybe a German shepherd masquerading as one!). And these guys wear clothing, and even put on overcoats and hats when they go out to kill; Chaney's Talbot would not appear to, even though the first manifestation of his inner wolf shows him running around the woods in a dark shirt, whereas when he experienced the change, he was wearing a white dress shirt. No such inconsistencies in the 1935 version. Lastly, the musical score is great in THE WOLF MAN, and totally original, but the one for WEREWOLF OF LONDON, is made up of new music and old classical chestnuts, like Brahms' "Sapphische Ode" (also used in THE BLACK CAT). It is effective enough, but not the equal of the Previn-Salter-Skinner score for the Chaney opus. I grew up on, and loved, both of these films in their constant movie revivals throughout the late 1940s and 1950s (until Shock Theater and/or Chiller Theater brought them to TV starting in 1957), so anything I say critical of them is said through affection rather than disappointment or pique, but I think I actually like the Hull film just a little bit more than the Chaney one. Still, there is much to be said for any film that gives us even 7 or 8 minutes worth of Maria Ouspenskaya, so maybe we should just call it a draw.
Review of Werewolf of London
