Werewolf of London
With a full moon gracing us just in time for Halloween 2020, this critic decided to revisit one of the less-loved Universal Classic Monsters, Henry Hull’s titular beast in the flop curio Werewolf of London (1935). We’ll examine what was essentially a werewolf-infused reinterpretation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and how Universal learned from its mistakes to create a trailblazing masterpiece six years later. Werewolf of London, ultimately, stands as an imperfect but intriguing early stab at reinterpreting classic werewolf mythology for a big screen presentation.
As our tale begins, famed obsessive botanist and neglectful husband Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) travels to Tibet to retrieve a rare flower, the “mariphasa lumina lupina,” a “phosphorescent wolf flower” that only blooms under moonlight. Though he succeeds in grabbing the plant he covets, he is also bitten by a wild werewolf in the process. An aside: I’m not sure that this wasn’t a bit of narrative wishful thinking, as when John Travolta’s dogged cop gets put on the cover of Time in Face/Off, but certainly it would be cooler if botanists were more world-famous than, say, Instagram personalities.
Back home in London, while displaying his plants for a botanical society exhibition, fellow plant lover Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland, a Swede who frequently found himself cast as an Asian man in 1930s Hollywood) corners Wilfred, and reveals that they met in Tibet, “in the dark.” We can deduce pretty quickly that Yogami is the werewolf who attacked Wilfred, though it takes him a bit longer (about an hour into the 75-minute movie) to catch on. Yogami informs the skeptical pragmatist Wilfred that the moon flower in Wilfred’s possession is an antidote to lycanthropy, effective only for a few hours, and intimates that they could both use it right about now.
Wilfred, capable of artificially emulating moonlight in his futuristic laboratory, begins to suspect the veracity of Yogami’s claims as he tests out the mariphasa lumina lupina, discovering that, under the light of his faux moon, he himself begins to transform. First his hand grows a patch of fur, then he develops a Mogwai-esque aversion to bright lights. He is able to postpone a full transformation this first night, thanks to a clutch application of the flower.
Meanwhile, Wilfred’s wife Lisa (Valerie Hobson) finds herself being openly courted anew by an old crush, renowned heroic police captain Paul Ames (Lester Matthews), stirring feelings of jealousy in her mostly absentee hubby. When Wilfred strives to restrict Lisa’s movements and impose a curfew, she only leans further into the friendship.
Yogami calls on Wilfred again, trying to impress upon him the importance of the antidote — if unused by the werewolf in question, the werewolf will have to kill at least one person every night of the full moon, or risk permanent werewolfism. The werewolf, Yogami cautions, instinctively wants to slaughter “the thing it loves best.” When Wilfred dismisses Yogami again, Yogami opts to steal samples of the flower to use for himself.
Eventually, with the flower stolen, Wilfred kills a series of victims on successive nights. He takes significant pains to curtail his lupine desires to slaughter his wife by boarding at a distant inn, where two drunken landladies battle for his business.
Where things go from here, I’ll leave you to discover for yourself, dear viewer, but let’s just say that Wilfred in werewolf form takes a uniquely direct approach to his conflict resolution, and some of his potential victims may take exception.
Released to relative audience indifference on May 13, 1935, Werewolf of London was the first Universal attempt at adding the titular critter to its monster roster. The film succeeded a string of smash successes, including Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (released a month prior to London in 1935), Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932), and The Invisible Man (1933). The popular failure of Werewolf informed many of the creative choices that drove The Wolf Man (1941) to become the ultimate werewolf movie blueprint.
Two key elements of the London story were retained in Wolf Man. The score, by Karl Hajos, employs the staccato horn section theme for the werewolf’s attacks on civilized city society in the London fog that would be later employed by musical director Charles Previn in The Wolf Man as its during its own woodland lupine murder sequences. Makeup artist Jack Pierce (uncredited here), who was also responsible for the iconic Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester makeups in the first two Frankenstein movies, attempted to graft a full face of hair and animalistic brow and snout onto Hull, who turned down this initial makeup, according to Pierce biographer Scott Essman. Pierce scaled things back, outfitting Hull with a still-creepy widow’s peak, crazy eyebrows and Honest Abe sideburns, plus a few facial prosthetics.
Pierce and the theme were brought back to excellent effect in The Wolf Man, but that coupled with a heartbreaking finale are the only elements retained from this more genteel werewolf story. The film does, however, sport some impressive flower puppeteering.
Werewolf of London is more of a drawing room drama than its better followup. Our unimposing antihero Wilfred, though obviously more clinical in his approach to his affliction than Lon Chaney Jr.’s tortured, brutish Lawrence Talbot, is deeply unlikable by design. Driven by a singleminded devotion to his work, he practically drives his wife into the hands of another, and is snippily cruel to everyone he encounters in polite society — to say nothing of the way he mistreats them as a werewolf.
Most of the performances are a bit too reserved and flat for this fantastical material, credited to screenwriters John Colton, Harvey Gates, Edmund Pearson, James Mulhauser, and Aben Kandel. The workmanlike direction of Stuart Walker in tandem with the unimaginative cinematography of Charles J. Stumar were swapped out in favor of George Waggner imaginatively imbuing gothic atmosphere to Curt Siodmak’s more streamlined, singleminded Wolf Man script.
Universal understood what held back Werewolf of London, and applied a full-court press in making several crucial adjustments for what became perhaps the ultimate werewolf movie.