The Wolf Man | |
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Original film poster
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Directed by | George Waggner |
Produced by | George Waggner |
Written by | Curt Siodmak |
Starring |
Lon Chaney, Jr. Claude Rains Warren William Ralph Bellamy Patric Knowles Bela Lugosi |
Cinematography | Joseph Valentine, ASC |
Edited by | Ted J. Kent |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
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70 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $180,000 |
The Wolf Man is a 1941 American drama horror film written by Curt Siodmak and produced and directed by George Waggner. The film stars Lon Chaney, Jr. as a werewolf named "The Wolf Man" and features Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, Ralph Bellamy, Patric Knowles, Béla Lugosi, and Maria Ouspenskaya in supporting roles. The title character has had a great deal of influence on Hollywood's depictions of the legend of the werewolf. The film is the second Universal Pictures werewolf film, preceded six years earlier by the less commercially successful Werewolf of London (1935).
Lon Chaney, Jr. would reprise his classic role as "The Wolf Man" in four sequels, beginning with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943.
Sometime in the early twentieth century, after learning of the death of his brother, Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) returns to his ancestral home in Llanwelly, Wales to reconcile with his estranged father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains). While there, Larry becomes romantically interested in a local girl named Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), who runs an antique shop. As a pretext to converse with her, he purchases a silver-headed walking stick decorated with a wolf. Gwen tells him that it represents a werewolf (which she defines as a man who changes into a wolf "at certain times of the year.")