"Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms. And the autumn moon is bright."
Classic horror movie, released in 1941. It was directed by
George Waggner and written by
Curt Siodmak. Starred
Lon Chaney, Jr. (as the
werewolf),
Claude Rains,
Evelyn Ankers,
Maria Ouspenskaya, and
Bela Lugosi.
When
Lawrence Talbot returns to his ancestral home in
England after several years in
America, he feels out-of-place and uncomfortable. But when he visits a
gypsy camp and is injured while saving a woman from an attacking
wolf, he starts to
fear that the wolf may not have been a
normal wolf...
It was not the
first werewolf
movie, and it may not be the
best, but this film is, far and away, the most
influential--most of the stuff you think you know about
werewolves was
invented for this movie, and most
modern werewolf flicks
borrow large chunks of their plots from this movie. The
makeup by
Jack Pierce was
stunning when the
film was released and is still considered the classic look for a movie
werewolf. The
story is much
smarter than you'd expect, too, with Chaney giving a great
performance as a poor
schmuck who's terrified that he's either a
monster or a
lunatic.
Maleva: "The way you walked was thorny through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end. Your suffering is over. Now you will find peace for eternity."