This film is the ideal horror film for me. A lot of modern horror goes for shock value, each film trying to out grim the last, and of what I've seen it neither entertains me or scares me. I like my horror films bright, tongue-in-cheek, clever and fun. Unfamiliar with golden age Hollywood horror movies, I gave The Wolfman a try having heard nothing but praise, particularly for the powerhouse performance of Lon Chaney Jr, and he is great. This film has all the werewolf cliches, probably because it invented them, like death by the silver bullet among others.
The film drips with atmosphere, with misty forest scenes shot in beautiful b/w. The cast is all great, from Chaney to Claude Rains who plays his rational astronomer father and Warren William who plays the psychiatrist. Lon Chaney Jr. certainly shines as the distressed Larry Talbot, returned from California and beset on all sides by paranoia in the sleepy Welsh town populated by psychic gypsies and countryfolk. In a scene that reminded me of Body Double, another great light hearted horror/thriller, Larry spies a pretty girl through a powerful telescope and pursues her, teasing her about jewellery in her room that no one could know about unless they were peaking in her window with a powerful telescope. I guess he picked up some bad habits in America. It's set in a Welsh town that for some reason is populated almost entirely by Americans and gypsies, and I won't question that any further.
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