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Movie Reviews

Does 1941’s ‘The Wolfman’ hold up?

A toothless classic?

Welcome to another installment of 31 Days of Halloween! This is our chance to set the mood for the spookiest and scariest month of the year as we focus our attention on horror and Halloween fun. For the month of October we’ll be sharing various pieces of underappreciated scary books, comics, movies, and television to help keep you terrified and entertained all the way up to Halloween.


It’s Halloween time, folks! One thing I love to do in October is sit back and enjoy classic horror films and having seen the 2010 remake of The Wolfman, I was curious how this black and white 40’s original held up all these many years later. I have never been a fan of that Benicio Del Toro remake due to its flimsy script. After watching this original film it was based upon, I have come to the conclusion that I’m simply not a big fan of either Wolfman films.

There are definitely some positive aspects attached to The Wolfman if you choose to place it on your 31 Days of Halloween marathon. This may sound strange, but to me one of the first things I loved about this was the old school Universal Studios opening. It’s something hardcore film lovers may appreciate like I did. That’s obviously just a minor thing to admire.

The biggest positive The Wolfman boasts is Evelyn Akers’s performance as Gwen, the leading lady and romantic interest of Lon Chaney Jr.’s character. Her performance is so tender and she makes her character extremely likable. She brings a decent amount of heart to the film’s story and is really the only character that is at all warm and personable. The other main positive I took away from this film is it’s old school special effects. The set design and visuals are of course dated but if you appreciate older films, you just may find yourself admiring many of the aesthetics that appear here.

Does 1941's 'The Wolfman' hold up?

Other than those couple bright spots, the other details of the film just don’t exactly excite or generate much interest. A lot of the reasoning for the horror elements being extremely corny and weak is simply because of the film’s age. Huge limitations existed for creating an effective horror film in the early 1940s. This probably was a rather exciting scary film at the time of its release but unfortunately when most of this film is played today, it just comes as dull.

Now I can’t blame the entirety of this on the time period because the 2010 remake is similarly dull in my view. The scripts for both incarnations of this spooky story are fairly toothless and uninteresting.

Another negative here is the film’s runtime. An hour and ten minutes of story really doesn’t do an audience justice. Even an extra twenty minutes, if well spent, could have been a boost. A film this short must make the absolute most out of every moment due to its unusually short length. The Wolfman just doesn’t do that in my opinion.

An additional flaw I found unfortunate was the deflating nature of the film’s climax. A horror film’s climax must be firm and a flat ending is never a good thing in any genre, especially this one. Honestly I would have rather just seen a romance between Akers and Chaney Jr. Their romantic scenes with one another is where the film succeeds and is the most investing and entertaining.

Does 1941's 'The Wolfman' hold up?

I really wanted to like this classic film but unfortunately The Wolfman (1941) just doesn’t have much of a bite. It’s interesting to watch in some parts due to the old school sets and the performance by Evelyn Akers. When all is taken into account, this just isn’t worth filling a slot on your Halloween watchlist.

the wolfman
Does 1941’s ‘The Wolfman’ hold up?
The Wolfman (1941)
The Wolfman (1941) features a great performance by Evelyn Akers but is ultimately pretty dull and toothless.
Reader Rating0 Votes
0
Evelyn Akers
Set designs
Dull script
Deflating climax
Too short
4.5
Meh

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