Werewolf of London (1935)

When I was a kid, I remember seeing pictures of the werewolf makeup from 1935’s Werewolf of London in books and thinking it looked much better than the Lon Chaney version. That might be the case in still photos, but almost everything else about this precursor to 1941’s The Wolf Man is lacking.

While the story changes minor elements from the familiar tale of the werewolf legend, the core story remains the same. A bite from a werewolf causes a man to become a werewolf. In this case, the man is Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull,) a botanist who travels to Tibet searching for Mariphasa lupina lumina, a flower that only blooms in moonlight. Shortly after finding the flower, he is attacked and bitten by a creature that emerges from the shadows. Nevertheless, Dr. Glendon retrieves the plant and returns to London.

Dr. Glendon is soon approached by a man named Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland,) who also has an interest in the Tibetan flower. Yogami claims he has met Glendon in Tibet, although Glendon doesn’t recall the meeting, and also explains that Mariphasa can be used as an antidote against “werewolfery.” Yogami asserts that he knows of two individuals in London who, having been bitten by a werewolf, are now werewolves themselves.

Dr. Glendon discovers the identity of one of the men during his experiments with the Mariphasa. Using artificial moonlight, he is able to make the flower bloom, but exposure to the light causes his hand to rapidly grow fur. When Glendon cuts the blossom and places a drop of sap on his skin, his hand returns to normal. Yogami visits again to warn Glendon that the men who were bitten will transform into werewolves since the moon will be full that night. Yogami asks Glendon for the recently blossoming flowers from the Mariphasa but is denied. Before leaving, Yogami warns him that a werewolf will always seek to kill those that it loves.

At almost ninety years old, Werewolf of London no longer packs much of a punch in the scare department. The aforementioned werewolf makeup by Jack Pierce still holds up, even if the transformation scenes haven’t aged as well. The frequent and not-so-subtle humor caught me off-guard, but in a good way. However, the main reason I found myself not enjoying Werewolf of London was that I didn’t particularly care for the Wilfred Glendon character. He doesn’t come across as particularly sympathetic or likable. I found his proposed nemesis, Dr. Yogami, a much more sensible and interesting character. Even the man who attempts to rekindle a love affair with Glendon’s wife is more charming.

In The Wolf Man, Larry Talbot stands out as a protagonist because he’s not only likable but also relatable. You feel for him as he grapples with the terror of his own deeds during his transformation into the werewolf beneath the full moon’s glow. In Werewolf of London, it’s difficult to feel much of anything but contempt for Wilfred Glendon. However, none of this is Henry Hull’s fault. He does what he can with the script, but Glendon is just written as a bore.

As a piece of horror history, Werewolf of London is worth seeing to view what is essentially the origin of one of Universal Studio’s classic monsters. But as a standalone film, it’s been eclipsed by better and scarier werewolf movies many times over.