The Wolf Man

Year of Release:  1941
Director:  George Waggner
Screenplay:  Curt Siodmak
Starring:  Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Warren Williams, Ralph Bellamy, Maria Ouspenskaya, Evelyn Ankers, Patric Knowles, Bela Lugosi
Running Time:  70 minutes
Genre:  Horror

Larry Talbot (Chaney Jr.), the prodigal son of Sir John Talbot (Rains), returns to his ancestral home to reconcile with his estranged father.  He soon befriends Gwen Conliffe (Ankers), the daughter of a local antiques dealer.  One night in the woods, Larry attempts to save Gwen's friend Jenny (Fay Helm) from an attack by a large wolf.  Jenny is killed and Larry is bitten, but he does seemingly succeed in killing the wolf, but the corpse  is not a wolf but a man (Lugosi).  Larry's wounds miraculously heal by the next day, and he becomes increasingly obsessed with the village's local legend of a werewolf (a human who turns into a wolf at "certain times of year").

This is not the first werewolf movie, but it is one of the most influential, and one of the best films in  the "Universal Monster" cycle.  It benefits from a  poetic, literate script from writer Curt Siodmak, and striking photography with evocative, shadowy, mist-shrouded forests and iconic make-up from Jack Pierce (who created the look of Frankenstein's Monster in Frankenstein (1931)).  Lon Chaney Jr. turns in a great performance as the tortured Larry Talbot, both in his guilt-ridden human form and  monster form, he brings a powerful physicality and agility to the role.  He creates a sympathetic, tragic character.  Claude Rains is also a standout as the unbelieving Sir John, who refuses even to entertain the idea that his son might have anything wrong with him, either physical or mental as the bodycount rises.  The film is almost more of a psychological drama at times than a monster movie, Chaney only appears in the full "Wolf Man" makeup fairly late in the film, and only quite briefly.  His doctor, naturally enough, is convinced that Talbot is mentally ill, and there is a lot of discussion about psychology and folklore. 
While the movie has aged a lot better than many of the other films of it's time, it still shows it's age.  Evelyn Ankers has very little to do except be rescued, and a lot of the supposedly Welsh or English  characters are obviously Americans, the transformation sequences (which focus on Talbot's feet) are not particularly impressive  and the famous werewolf poem is recited no less than three times throughout the short film.  By the way, some people believe that it is a traditional old poem, but it was written by Curt Siodmak
However it retains it's power and, despite it's flaws is one of horror cinema's finest moments.  It's been followed by several sequels and was remade in 2010 with Anthony Hopkins and Benecio del Toro.

"Even a man who is pure at heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf
When the wolfsbane blooms
And the Autumn moon is bright."

Things are getting hairy for Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man


      

Dracula

Year of Release:  1931
Director:  Tod Browning and Karl Freund (uncredited)
Screenplay:  Garrett Fort, based on the stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker
Starring:  Bela Lugosi, Helen Chandler, David Manners, Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan
Running Time:  75 minutes
Genre:  Horror

This is one of the most influential horror films ever made.  an English solicitor, Renfield (Frye) arrives in Transylvania to finalise the purchase of an old abbey by mysterious nobleman Count Dracula (Lugosi).  Renfield soon learns that Dracula is, in reality, a vampire.  Driven insane by his experiences and enslaved to Dracula, Renfield helps the Count travel to England.  Once in Britain, Dracula sets his sights on Mina (Chandler), the daughter of Doctor Seward (Herbert Bunston) who runs the lunatic asylum next to his abbey.

There have been many screen adaptations of Dracula, and this is neither the first or the best of them, but it is still the most influential.  The film bears little resemblance to Bram Stoker's original novel of 1897, being largely based on a hugely successful 1924 stage adaptation which turned the novel into effectively a drawing room mystery.  The film has some extremely atmospheric scenes, particularly early on, capturing a real sense of decay and mystery.  As it comes along the film becomes increasingly flat, it's stage-bound origins very much in evidence.  A lot of the important sequences take place off-screen, including the film's climax, which is hugely disappointing.  There are also plot elements and characters that appear and are dropped without explanation, and it doesn't really flow.  However, Bela Lugosi is the definitive Dracula, even though he bears little resemblance to the character as described by Stoker he is still what comes to mind when you think of "Dracula", and to this day his portrayal is parodied, copied and referenced.  With his slow, fractured, heavily accented speech (Lugosi couldn't speak English at the time and learned his lines phonetically), along with his icy hypnotic stare, he has an otherworldly sense about him that dominates the screen.

This is not a good film, and it really hasn't aged well, but there are some great things in here and it is a key film in the canon of American film and the evolution of the horror film, which make it worth watching, and it is a must-see if only for Bela Lugosi's performance.

Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) and Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) in Dracula