Werewolf Flicks: The WolfMan (2010)

Unlike the past handful of movies we've talked about, I knew of this virtually from its inception. Back when I was in late high school, I began checking IMDB on a daily basis, just to see what was going on in the film world, and one day, I saw that Universal had announced a remake of The Wolf Man, with Benicio del Toro in the title role and Anthony Hopkins as Sir John Talbot. I must say, I was quite pleased by this, being such a huge fan of the original movie, and werewolves in general, and thought it would be really cool to see a modern take on this horror classic. But then, after that, I didn't hear anything else about the movie, at least on IMDB, until early summer of 2008, when I saw some online images of what del Toro looked like in the makeup, which I learned was created by Rick Baker. It looked really good from what I saw: recognizably the classic Jack Pierce design, but updated and given Baker's own personal touch. At that point, the movie was set to be released that November, but, of course, that quickly changed. That fall, I happened to be at Universal Studios in Orlando, and saw a poster for the film, which said it was coming the following April. Well, then it was delayed to November of 2009, and before that date rolled around, I learned it'd been pushed back again, this time to February of 2010. By that point, I basically gave up, thinking this damn thing was never going to come out (I didn't know the first trailer had been shown before Inglorious Basterds that August) but, as February approached and I started seeing trailers and TV spots, I realized it was. I don't remember when I saw it, exactly, but it wasn't too long after it was released, and I do remember that it happened to be on a full moon night. It also happened to be the first R-rated movie I ever saw in the theater (I was 22 at the time), so that alone means it will always be rather close to my heart, regardless of my personal opinion. As for my opinion, when it was over, I was like, "Eh, that was fine." After nearly four years of waiting, I was hoping for something much more awesome; instead, I got a pretty standard werewolf flick that did expand on the original movie in some interesting ways and certainly had high production values, as well as some quite gruesome gore, but was, overall, nothing special. I did like it enough, though, that I bought the Blu-Ray that summer (one of the first Blu-Rays I ever bought, as I'd just gotten my first player).

That said, I can almost count on one hand the number of times I've re-watched it since the theater. I watched it when I first got the Blu-Ray, saw pieces of it on Sci-Fi Channel and elsewhere, and I've now watched the Blu-Ray twce more. I actually considered reviewing the movie as part of Schlocktober back in 2019, but when I re-watched it then, I realized it wasn't nearly bad enough to warrant that. Having watched it once more now, I can say that The WolfMan, unfortunately, is little more than just okay. There are definite moments of awesomeness, specifically whenever the WolfMan himself is onscreen and wreaking gory havoc, and the climax involves two werewolves battling in the middle of a burning mansion, which is pretty freaking sweet. What's more, the makeup for the WolfMan himself is awesome, which is a given when it's Rick Baker, and, like I said, you can't fault the high production values. But, for the most part, it's quite a middling and mediocre movie, with a story that's hard to get invested in and characters who, despite the top notch talent behind them, for the most part, are surprisingly flat, especially in the theatrical version.

(On the subject of the title and the monster's name, while the original movie had "wolf" and "man" as two separate words, and I referred to the monster himself as such, here, it's spelled as one word, so I'm going to follow suit in my writing. Although, while it's typically written as "Wolfman," I personally like "WolfMan" more, so that's how I'm going to do it.)

Blackmoor, England, 1891. On a full moon night, Ben Talbot is attacked in the woods by a monstrous, humanoid, wolf-like creature. A month later, his fiancee, Gwen Conliffe, writes a letter to Ben's brother, Lawrence, a Shakespearean actor who's performing in London, telling him of Ben's disappearance. Despite having been away for many years and estranged from his family, especially his father, Lawrence returns to Talbot Hall. Reuniting with his father, Sir John, he learns that Ben's body was found in a ditch the day before. He goes to see the body, and is aghast at how hideously mutilated it is. At the local pub, Lawrence overhears several theories as to the nature of Ben's killer, including a werewolf, which one man says was behind a similarly grisly murder 25 years earlier. During his time back home, Lawrence is haunted by visions of his childhood, specifically the sight of his father leaning over his mother's body after she'd committed suicide, which led to him being put in an asylum for a year and then sent to America. After Ben's funeral, Lawrence visits a nearby camp of gypsies, as their appearance coincided with the murder, and Ben was a liaison between them and the townspeople. Shortly after he arrives, the werewolf that killed Ben attacks the camp, killing a number of people, and brutally maims Lawrence when he tries to save a young boy. Despite knowing what will happen to him, Maleva, an old gypsy woman, sews up his wounds and has him returned to Talbot Hall. Despite suffering from a number of fever dreams and delusions, Lawrence not only makes a full recovery but his wound heals unnaturally fast. Inspector Francis Aberline from Scotland Yard arrives to investigate the murders and, when he interviews Lawrence, asks that he allow a specialist to examine him inferring that he himself may be responsible, given his mental history. As time passes, Lawrence's natural senses and vitality increase in strength, and he's also confronted by some of the townspeople, including Reverend Fisk, who accuses him of having been cursed from the bite. Though Sir John manages to drive them off, when the full moon rises again, Fisk's warning proves true, as Lawrence transforms into a werewolf and brutally slaughters some hunters in the woods. Now, not only must he contend with his own curse but with the discovery that the one behind all of his torment, including the deaths of his mother and brother, is someone he knows very well.

Mark Romanek

After hiring Andrew Kevin Walker to write the screenplay, which took basically a year in and of itself, Universal's first choice for director was an unconventional one: Mark Romanek. Mainly an award-winning music video director, Romanek had only made two feature films at the time: 1985's Static, and 2002's One Hour Photo, with Robin Williams. When he agreed to do The WolfMan, Romanek did have an idea for how he wanted go about realizing it, later saying in a 2013 interview with Collider, "What I was trying to do and thought I was invited to do... was infuse a balance of cinema in a popcorn movie scenario." But, he goes on to say that, while Benicio del Toro was all for that approach, the studio wasn't. "When there’s a certain amount of money involved, these things make studios and producers a little nervous. They don’t necessarily understand it or they feel that the balance will swing too far to something esoteric, and we could never come to an agreement on the right balance for that type of thing. Ultimately it made more sense for them to find a director that was gonna fulfill their idea of the film that they wanted, and we just sort of parted ways." He left the film at the beginning of 2008. In searching for a replacement, Universal approached a number of directors, from the acclaimed, like Frank Darabont, Bill Condon, and Martin Campbell, to the not so acclaimed, like Brett Ratner. In the end, they proved Romanek right about the type of movie they wanted when they went with Joe Johnston.

Joe Johnston is certainly not a bad director, as he's made a number of popular films, like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji (which I have strong childhood memories of), October Sky, and Jurassic Park III, as well as cult favorites like The Rocketeer. But, while I get that the studio hired him because of his penchant for making profitable popcorn movies, I don't think he was the right choice for The WolfMan, as he'd never done anything that dark and gruesome before, or since. Also, given that he's not exactly the most... provocative or intellectual director, shall we say, I have a feeling he's a major reason why the movie came out so average. It also likely didn't help that he signed on just three weeks before shooting was to begin, and yet, he still brought in another writer, David Self, to rewrite the screenplay. There were also a number of re-shoots done nearly a year after principal photography finished, mainly to spice up some earlier werewolf scenes and to also add in the climactic battle. And the version of the movie that was released in theaters was severely cut down, making it feel all the more shallow, while the director's cut is much better.

In stark contrast to Lon Chaney Jr.'s, initially, happy-go-lucky and gregarious performance in the original film, Benicio del Toro's Lawrence Talbot is a deeply troubled and haunted man. Arriving back at his childhood home of Talbot Hall in Blackmoor, England when he learns of his brother's disappearance, he reunites with his long estranged father and immediately learns that his brother's body had been found in a ditch the day before. Already hit hard by the idea that he hadn't seen Ben since they were kids, when Lawrence goes to see the body, he's absolutely horrified at the sight of the mangled remains. During his stay there, he tries to reconnect with his rather distant and cold father, while also dealing with memories of his childhood, which turned tragic when he wandered outside the house one night and found his father leaning over the body of his mother, who'd killed herself with a razor. Following Ben's funeral, Lawrence tells Ben's fiancee, Gwen Conliffe, that the two of them always had a strained relationship with Sir John, and after their mother's death, he sent Lawrence to a London mental asylum for a year, before sending him to America to live with his aunt. Since then, he's become a Shakespearean stage actor, and happened to be in London when he learned of Ben's disappearance. Determined to learn just who or what killed his brother, and ignoring his father's warning about going out on the night of a full moon, Lawrence heads to a nearby gypsy camp to inquire about a medallion found on Ben's body and his dealings with them. But, before he can get much out of Maleva, the old gypsy woman, the beast that killed Ben attacks the camp, and Lawrence is badly mauled while trying to kill it and save a young boy. Upon being stitched up and sent back to Talbot Hall, Lawrence, after spending a long time in bed, and suffering from fever dreams and strange visions, awakens and is interrogated by Scotland Yard's Inspector Aberline, who insinuates that he is the killer due to his history of being institutionalized. Moreover, he's nearly forcibly removed from his home by a group of townspeople, with Reverend Fisk insisting he's cursed now that he's been bitten. And when the full moon next rises, Lawrence learns that Fisk is very, very right.

From everything I've read, Benicio del Toro himself was the one who initiated this project, which he was also a producer on, due to his lifelong love of classic monster movies, especially the original 1941 film. Rick Baker can definitely attest to his being a "monster kid" just like him, and del Toro stayed with the film all throughout its numerous production issues. Also, what I find uncanny is just how much he looks Lon Chaney Jr. And yet, when you watch the movie, you'd think he

was doing it under protest, as his performance is so lackluster, at least for the first half. Also note that I'm mainly talking about the theatrical version, which removed a number of scenes that gave Lawrence more character and del Toro some better acting moments in order to get to the WolfMan faster. Regardless, his performance is often just so monotone and low energy that it makes it hard to engage with Lawrence. I get that he's playing a character who's been deeply-troubled and tortured 

long before he becomes a werewolf but, still, if you didn't know who he was, you'd likely never suspect he was an Oscar-winner. I'm so grateful for scenes like when he shows Gwen how to flick a stone across the water and, when confronting the townspeople, he puts on a pleasant front, telling Dr. Lloyd, "I thought our appointment wasn't until Friday," because there, del Toro shows off some of the charisma he's known for. But, after Lawrence has first become the WolfMan, his performance starts to pick up. He does a really good job at

portraying the fear Lawrence feels when he awakens the day after his rampage and realizes what's happened, the torment he's put through at the asylum, the rage he feels towards Sir John upon learning he's not only the werewolf who cursed him but also killed both his mother and Ben, and the frustration and mounting panic he feels in the lead-up to the second transformation in a room full of skeptical doctors. But, one thing del Toro can't convince me of, regardless of Lawrence telling her that he envied what she and Ben had, is that he and

Gwen have fallen in love, given how he and Emily Blunt have no chemistry, and the characters' previous interactions were so stilted and not romantic in the slightest. And while you do get the sense that Lawrence is determined to head back to Talbot Hall and put an end to his father and everything he's done, it's still rather hard to care.

Like in the original movie, Lawrence's wound heals unnaturally fast, and in the time between his being bitten and his first transformation, animals are able to sense what he's becoming, with a horse rearing up and neighing in fear when it approaches him, and Sir John's dog, Samson, growling at and avoiding him when he gets close. But, as is often portrayed in werewolf movies, the curse has certain benefits, too, as Lawrence develops heightened senses, such as hearing, and is much stronger than

he was before, able to easily defend himself from being hauled off by three of the townspeople. At the same time, a new, predatory nature begins to emerge, as in one scene, when Gwen is cleaning up some wounds he received in a fight, he focuses on her neck, specifically her jugular vein, and grabs her hand with a clear, monstrous growl. He manages to stop himself from attacking her but, that night, when he sees his wound has now completely disappeared, he makes her return to London, for fear that he might harm her.

While I might be mixed on del Toro's performance as Lawrence, I have no complaints at all with his portrayal of the WolfMan. Unlike most actors, he was excited to get to that part of the role and get into the makeup, and you can tell he's absolutely relishing it. Simply put, his WolfMan is an absolute beast, like the original Lon Chaney Jr. monster after some fitness training and steroids. He moves lightning fast, shrugging off normal bullets, and sometimes gets down on all fours to chase after his victims, whom he absolutely massacres. He doesn't even eat them but, rather, just ferociously mauls and tears them apart, as if he's motivated by blind rage and animalistic fury. Even his howl, which was created by combining sound clips from various human sources, including the voices of Gene Simmons and David Lee Roth, is terrifying; it's so loud, and yet shrill and tortured at the same time. As wild and uncontrollable as he is, though, Lawrence shows that, if nothing else, he is able to aim his beastly self and use it as a way to attack and kill Sir John's werewolf form during the climax. His consciousness within the WolfMan also does recognize certain people. When he transforms in the theater in Lambeth Asylum, there's a moment where he focuses on Dr. Hoenneger, the one who tortured him, and merely knocks and throws other people aside to get at him. And when he chases and corners Gwen during the ending, she's able to appeal to what little of Lawrence is still within the WolfMan, and he clearly recognizes who she is before she shoots him with a silver bullet.

Like I said in the introduction, design-wise, the look of the WolfMan is exactly what I wanted from a modern-day remake: very true to the original Jack Pierce creation, only heightened and updated, with wilder hair, enormous claws, much bigger and sharper teeth, and elongated, dog-like feet, which makes him tower over his victims. The makeup looks great in action, it's always shot very well, and del Toro is really able to work within and sell through it; he's also often covered in blood, making

him look all the more savage. Interestingly, I learned in reading up on the film that the actual clothes he wears as the WolfMan are based on Oliver Reed's costume in Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf, a little tidbit that I liked, since I really enjoy that film... and like in the original movies, he always has those same clothes on whenever he's transformed. Rick Baker won what would turn out to be his final Oscar for his work on this movie, and it brought his career full-circle in a poetic manner, in that his first Oscar was for An American Werewolf in London and his last was a remake of the movie that inspired that one.

Unfortunately, where the movie drops the ball when it comes to the WolfMan himself is in the transformation scenes, which are totally CGI. Joe Johnston claimed he used it so extensively because of how late he came on as director, with little prep time, but Rick Baker had not only been on the movie virtually since it entered pre-production, when Mark Romanek was director, but he's said that he and his team had stuff made for the transformation sequences. He also said that the

concept for the transformations they went with was based on his ideas, and that even the digital effects artists felt he and his team should've been the ones doing those scenes. Had they been done through a combination of practical and digital effects, the transformations could've been something truly special, as the visuals, in and of themselves, are quite nightmarish and wince-inducing: you see Lawrence's hands and fingers twisting and even seeming to break and reorganize themselves, and

his feet elongate and stretch into the WolfMan's more dog-like shape, bursting through his shoes during the transformation in the surgical theater. As for his face, when he changes the second time, you see it distorting, becoming hairier and more animalistic, his eyes bulge to the point of nearly falling out, his ears grow, and his teeth chomp as they become larger and sharper. Knowing what Baker could do with makeup, prosthetics, and animatronics, I think it would've been really cool to see him do all that, in conjunction with some

necessary digital augmenting, but, as it stands, despite some pretty nice-looking moments here and there, the totally CGI transformations just look cartoonish overall. Sadly, though, this isn't the most egregious use of digital effects in the movie, nor was it the only time that Baker was mistreated during production.

As different as Lawrence Talbot is from his 1941 counterpart, Anthony Hopkins' Sir John Talbot is the absolute antithesis of Claude Rains in the original film. Instead of Rains' fairly stern but, ultimately, warm and loving lord, Hopkins is a cold, distant, and rather menacing man from the moment he's introduced when Lawrence first returns home. He's very matter of fact in how he tells Lawrence that his brother's body has been found, asks if he has something to wear for the funeral, and talks about the state of Ben's remains, as well as his dealings with the gypsies, that it's small wonder why he and Lawrence have been estranged for many years. You learn he was cold and distant even when both of his sons were children, and that, after Lawrence found him leaning over the body of his mother when committed suicide, Sir John sent him to the mental asylum and then to America to live with his aunt. Though he warns Lawrence not to go out to the gypsy campsite on the night of the full moon, seems concerned when he's brought back badly mauled the next morning, and is staunchly against Inspector Aberline questioning him, despite Gwen suggesting that Lawrence may want to talk about it at some point, there's still something off about Sir John, especially in his attitude towards Gwen herself. Though he does keep the townspeople and Reverend Fisk from taking Lawrence, first by shooting at them and then lying about his servant, Singh, being on the manor's roof, ready to shoot them where they stand, when the full moon rises, Sir John prepares to lock himself in an eerie room in the family crypt, one filled with candles, a picture of his late wife, and an unsettling chair. Lawrence follows him down there, and Sir John tells him, "It is a shrine to your beloved mother... I know that, uh... losing her wounded you deeply. It is monstrous: a young boy seeing his mother like that. And I would have given my life, Lawrence, that you hadn't... found us that night. You must believe me when I tell you this, Lawrence. You do believe me, don't you? I loved your mother with a passion like the burning of the sun. Her death finished me, I was devastated. But I still prowl the house at night, searching for her. But I'm dead all the same." He then holds a candle up to his eyes and tells Lawrence, "You see that I am quite... dead." He shows Lawrence out of the room, telling him, "My dear fellow, I wish I could tell you that the tragedy that has beset your life was over. But, I'm afraid the darkest hours of hell lie before." He locks himself inside, telling him, "I don't think they'll kill you, Lawrence. But they will blame you. The beast will have its day. The beast will out."

The next morning, after Lawrence's first bloody rampage, Sir John finds and wakes him up beside a tree. He tells him, "Terrible things, Lawrence. You've done terrible things," in a gleefully menacing manner. As the shot of him disappearing into the crypt, his eyes glowing in the dark, the night before proved, Sir John knows all too well what Lawrence has become, as he's the one who cursed him, as well as killed both his mother and Ben. While visiting Lawrence while he's in the

asylum, Sir John tells him the story: "Lycanthropy... I contracted the disease, if that's what it is, in India, in the Hindu Kush. The natives directed me to a cave high up in the mountains where, according to legend, lived a strange creature. A very strange creature. And after a great many days of climbing and... searching, finally, I came upon it. I found it. I found the cave... and the strange creature that lived there. It was a little boy. A little wild feral boy. Powerfully strong. He

suddenly attacked me and bit me. So, I returned to my hunting companions in the valley below, thinking I'd been made the butt of a joke. I soon discovered otherwise." Upon that moment, when Lawrence realizes that, instead of her having committed suicide, he saw his mother after his father had killed her as a werewolf, he tells Sir John that he should kill himself. Sir John says, "Oh, I cannot tell you how often I've considered that. But life is far too glorious, Lawrence, especially to the cursed and the damned, like

myself. Every night of the full moon, for many years, I've been locked away in that crypt... by Singh, my faithful servant. 25 years. Then, she came, didn't she? Hot and burning, like the face of the moon... Yeah, she would've taken your brother away from me. They would've both vanished into the night, forever. And though I was resigned to it, the beast in me was not and, uh, Ben, you understand it, come to tell me that he was quite resolute in his decision to leave Talbot Hall for good and to take Gwen away from me. I became

drunk and violent and, uh... extremely violent. And I, uh, struck out at Singh." He goes on to describe how, because he knocked Singh unconscious and he wasn't able to lock him up, he attacked and killed Ben, adding, "I know now it was a mistake to lock up the beast... I should've let it run free. Kill or be killed." With Lawrence furiously attempting to get at him, and threatening to kill him, Sir John leaves him with a razor to kill himself, "In the event you don't find life as glorious as I find it to be... or not to be," in a glib mocking of his being a Shakespearean actor.

If played by most other actors, Sir John would've possibly come off as either a completely despicable or a somewhat tragic but still fairly one-note, villain; with Anthony Hopkins in the role, though, he makes Sir John far more memorable, and the type of villain you love to hate. Even though he claims his killing his wife devastated him, Sir John is very loathsome in how he selfishly decides to stay alive and enjoy the freedom that comes with being a werewolf, regardless of the danger it puts

others in, not to mention how he upended his son's life by having him institutionalized, where he was forced to believe his mother committed suicide, and sent to America, and lusted over Gwen enough to kill his other son. Then, of course, there's the fact that he flat-out lies to Lawrence about Ben's death, acting as dumbfounded as anyone about what could've done it. And when he talks about how he knocked out Singh, he tells Lawrence that he was once a bare-knuckled boxer, "Back in the

good old days, you were born," insinuating that he always saw his family as a burden. Though he did try to keep Lawrence from going to the gypsy camp when it was the full moon, the fact that he went straight there when he transformed and, later, locked himself in the crypt the next time the moon was full, so Lawrence would transform, kill people, and take the fall for those killings and the previous ones, shows much evil intent on his part. And yet, Hopkins has so much charisma and panache about him, delivering his lines with such zeal and even

a twinkle in his eye, that it's hard to really hate him. It's only during the climax that he becomes truly monstrous, both figuratively and literally, and yet, when we first see him, he's combed his hair, trimmed his beard, is dressed nicely, and playing the piano, before enthusiastically meeting his son. Despite the fact that his son is pointing a rifle loaded with silver bullets at him, Sir John tells him, "It makes me happy... Seeing you here like this. My son returned. It is glorious, isn't it?" Lawrence says it's hell, and Sir John responds, "Hell? No.

The beast is the beast. Let it run free," clearly wanting his son to be his heir in more ways than one. Before they both transform and fight, Sir John cruelly beats Lawrence with his own cane, telling him that he's become the man he always wished him to be, after having been a fragile child.

In the theatrical cut, we don't get a clear look at Sir John's werewolf form until the climactic battle between him and Lawrence. Despite his age, his werewolf is bigger and burlier than the WolfMan himself, and he's quite strong and agile, as he proves both during the battle and earlier in the movie, in the attack on the gypsy camp. It helps that, even though he was 70 at the time, Anthony Hopkins looks and comes off as fit enough to where you can buy his werewolf as a real threat,

both when it's a stuntman and when it actually is him in makeup. Speaking of which, even though the attacks and the fight were mostly done with stuntmen or CGI, I like that there are moments where you can tell it really is Hopkins, with those distinctive, piercing blue eyes of his, underneath all of that hair. Symbolically, while the WolfMan keeps his clothes intact, Sir John rips his shirt off before the fight begins, exposing his big, hairy, barrel-like chest, and showing just how he's embraced his animalistic side and is letting it loose.

And from everything we've learned about him, you get the sense that his malicious nature is guiding his werewolf, rather than his just being a raging, mindless monster. The design of the werewolf is another inspired creature, itself looking like Oliver Reed in The Curse of the Werewolf, but his transformation, while still CGI, is not as elaborate as Lawrence, as it's just digital hair growing. 

As Gwen Conliffe, Emily Blunt has a pretty thankless role, especially in the theatrical version, as she gets to be little more than the grieving fiancee of Ben Talbot and Lawrence's very unconvincing love interest. I said it before but, I just don't buy how she and Lawrence become close enough to where, according to Maleva, she's the only one who can free him. Even in the unrated director's cut, they have only three scenes together before Lawrence is attacked and bitten, and the first one is rather contemptuous, while in the third, after Ben's funeral, they talk about the boys' childhood and what happened to Lawrence after his mother died. After Lawrence is attacked, Gwen returns to Talbot Hall and looks after him during his healing process, and later says she feels responsible for what's happened to him, since she contacted him, but I still don't buy their closeness, despite the nice little scene when he teaches her how to skip stones across the water. Again, Blunt and Benicio del Toro just don't have any chemistry to make this work, especially when, after Lawrence suddenly sends Gwen back to London when he realizes something's wrong with him, the next time she sees him, he's hiding in her antique shop, bloody and ragged. That's another thing: she's awfully accepting when he tells her both he and Sir John are werewolves, despite having no physical proof, and she's also sure that she can help him, saying that, if such evil things exist, there must be forces for good as well. She even researches werewolf and gypsy lore, and talks with Maleva, hoping to find a way, but learns that the only release from the curse is through death. They also try to make Gwen a significant character by having Sir John lust for her, leading him to kill Ben and set the story in motion, but I just couldn't care less. And I especially don't care, when the WolfMan has her cornered at the end, whether or not he does rip her throat out, nor do I buy her having enough of a connection with him to be able to soothe the beast and stop him from doing it.

Hugo Weaving doesn't fare much better as Inspector Aberline, as he doesn't have much else to do besides poke around, interrogate Lawrence during the second act, and hunt down the WolfMan during the third. They also give him a bit of backstory of having been the one in charge of the Jack the Ripper case, as that man's name was actually "Frederick Abberline," but it amounts to nothing. When he arrives in Blackmoor after the slaughter of the gypsy camp, he immediately talks with Lawrence, believing the killer is a madman and insinuates that it's him, due to his having been institutionalized, and asks to allow a specialist of his to examine him at some point. After that, he has little more to do than wait around until more killings occur. On the night of the full moon, he's at the local tavern, doing just that, rather than out with some of the locals, who are setting a trap. When Mrs. Kirk, the late proprietor's wife, suggests he stake out Talbot Hall, saying, "They're cursed. All of them," Aberline replies, "Unfortunately, 'cursed' does not give me a warrant to wander about Sir John's estate at night. Rules, Mrs. Kirk. They're all that keep us from a dog-eat-dog world, you know." When Lawrence transforms, Aberline is among those who hear his howl, but he arrives on the scene only after the WolfMan has slaughtered the hunters. He has Lawrence arrested the next morning and taken to Lambeth where, during the next full moon, he's among those who witness him transform in the operating theater. Now knowing what he's dealing with, he trails the WolfMan all throughout London, and the next day, he goes to Gwen's antique shop, has her taken into protective custody, and searches the shop for Lawrence. When they don't find him, Aberline returns to Blackmoor with a squad armed with silver bullets. During the climax, he's attacked and mauled by the WolfMan, and at the end of the movie, after Lawrence has been killed, Aberline seems to realize the implication that he will now become a werewolf at the next full moon.

There are a handful of characters who share the same names as characters from the original film, but their roles are greatly reduced. For instance, Maleva (Geraldine Chaplin), the old gypsy woman who was such an iconic and significant part of the original? She has such a minute role here that, after the first viewing, I forget she was even in the movie. Moreover, some of her actions make her plain unlikable. She recites that very familiar poem during the movie's opening, and Lawrence is sent to speak with her when he goes to the gypsy camp, inquiring about the medallion found with Ben's body. Maleva only gives him some cryptic speech about how there's no such thing as coincidence, only fate, and is then interrupted when the first werewolf attacks the camp. After Lawrence is mauled, a gypsy woman tells Maleva they should let him bleed out, given that he'll become a werewolf as well, but Maleva cleans and sutures the wound anyway. The woman tells her, "There is no sin in killing a beast," and Maleva, briefly switching to Romanian, asks, "What of killing a man? Where does one begin and the other end?" And when the woman says, "Many will suffer if we let him live," Maleva says, "Sometimes the way of fate is a cruel one." In the original movie, Maleva did nothing to kill Larry, despite knowing what was to befall him, and left him to his fate after helping Gwen take him home, but here, she actively allows the curse to take hold of him and her rationale is basically, "Well, life sucks sometimes." She mentions that Lawrence can only be released by someone who loves him, but that comes off as a very weak excuse for letting him become a werewolf. Not to mention that she says she would be a sinner if she let Lawrence die, insinuating she's more afraid for her own soul. Before the climax, when Gwen returns to Blackmoor, she meets with Maleva and, besides telling Gwen that there's no cure, she asks, "Will you condemn him, or will you... set him free?" You mean like how you condemned him? Regardless, she merely tells Gwen that she's brave and gives her a blessing, before completely leaving the movie afterward.

Colonel Montford (Nicholas Day), named after the Ralph Bellamy character in the original, has only a couple of notable scenes: when he's in the pub, talking with some other men about who or what could've killed Ben, suggesting it's a maniac and scoffing at the idea that it's the gypsies' dancing bear, and when he and the others come to take Lawrence from Talbot Hall, only to be chased off by Sir John (I didn't even know until just know that this minor character's name was Montford). Dr. Lloyd (Michael Cronin), played by Warren William originally, has even less to do, except examine Lawrence when he awakens after being injured and is among the townspeople who come to take him by force. Both he and Montford, along with some others, die when the WolfMan attacks them following the first transformation, with Montford's death being both horrifying and darkly funny.

But, in an interesting twist, the character of Reverend Fisk (Roger Frost) is like an inversion of the reverend who appeared in one scene in the original. Rather than chastise Maleva for her gypsy customs and superstitions, as in the original, Fisk believes from the get-go that there is something unnatural about the killings, describing the wounds on both Ben and two other bodies as, "Unnatural wounds. Most unnatural. Made by a fell creature, I'd say." After Lawrence is attacked, Fisk joins some of the townspeople in trying to take him, trying to warn the others of what he will become, asking if they will allow him to kill their families. And as the next full moon approaches, Fisk, in a sermon he gives to those in his church, adds some real weight to the montage we see of people preparing for the horror to come that night: "There are those who doubt the power of Satan. The power of Satan to change men into beasts. But the ancient Pagans did not doubt, nor did the prophets. Did not Daniel warn Nebakanezer? But the proud king did not heed Daniel. And so, as the Bible says, 'He was made as unto a wolf and cast down from man.' A beast has come among us! But God will defend His faithful. With His right hand, He will smite the foul demon. I say to you, the enemy's ploy is a devious one. Twisting the accursed into beasts, he seeks to bring us low, and make us as animals. Teach us self-loathing so that we forget that we are made in the image of almighty God Himself. Why does our Lord tolerate this mockery? Pride goeth before destruction? A faulty spirit before the fall? I say it is because we have sinned against Him. Because our crimes reek to Heaven, and they demand vengeance."

Singh (Art Malik), Sir John's faithful, longtime manservant, is asked by Lawrence early on if he believes in curses and he answers, "This house has seen it's fair share of tragedy. Your mother. Your brother. Yes, I believe in curses." It's also made clear he knows something about the horrible truth when Lawrence finds he has silver bullets; eventually, Sir John reveals that Singh has known of his curse for about as long as he's had it and has been the one locking him in the crypt every full moon for the past 25 years. Sir John also tells Lawrence that Singh was unable to restrain him the night he got drunkenly jealous about Ben's plan to leave with Gwen, and was out in the struggle, leading to Ben's death. By the time Lawrence returns to Talbot Hall for the climax, he finds that Sir John has killed Singh. He tries to use Singh's silver bullets against his father, but learns too late that Sir John removed the powder from them years ago.

Dr. Hoenneger (Antony Sher), the director of Lambeth Asylum, is shown to be rather sadistic in his methods of "treating" Lawrence for his supposed delusions, having been the one in charge when Lawrence was first sent there as a child. He watches the various horrific procedures Lawrence is put through with malicious delight, but when he has him wheeled into an operating theater on the night of a full moon, both as the subject of a lecture and to prove that he's not a werewolf, you know Hoenneger is going to get what he has coming to him. Ignoring Lawrence's warnings, Hoenneger, his back to him, rambles on and on and on about his delusion and the nature of lycanthropy, unaware that he's transforming. Everyone else, though, sees this, and they finally manage to get Hoenneger's attention just as Lawrence reaches full-blown WolfMan status. While everyone else scrambles to escape, Hoenneger runs to the top of the theater, screaming like a coward, but is unable to unlock the door. While he's not mauled to death like an orderly who attempts to sedate the WolfMan, he still gets thrown out the window and impaled on the spikes of a fence down below.

One of the more memorable townspeople, despite a very small amount of screentime, is MacQueen (Clive Russell), who tells the others at the tavern that the recent killings are akin to something that happened years before and is the first one to suggest it's a werewolf: "25 years ago now, me Pa found him: Quinn Noddy and all his flock. Brains and guts and God knows what lying all over the moor for a quarter mile. And Quinn, the look on his face. Like he'd been eaten alive. Whatever did it was big, had claws, and didn't mind a load of buckshot. After that, me Pa went home and melted down me Ma's wedding spoons and cast silver bullets on 'em. Wouldn't leave the house on a full moon from then on." Naturally, MacQueen's story is initially scoffed at, but later, after more killings, he's among those who set a trap for the werewolf, only to be gruesomely killed by the WolfMan.

David Schofield, who played the dart player at the Slaughtered Lamb in An American Werewolf in London, has a small role as Blackmoor's Constable Nye, who's initially skeptical of both the idea of the killings being the work of a lunatic and it being the gypsies' performing bear. When some of the townspeople arrive at the camp to kill the bear, Nye arrives soon afterward to make them go back home, when the werewolf attacks. Nye is among those who gets slaughtered, with the werewolf

giving him an especially memorable and gruesome death. And, speaking of An American Werewolf in London, Rick Baker himself has a cameo as this long-haired gypsy who warns the camp of the oncoming townspeople by whistling, right before the werewolf kills him. Even though he personally pursued the movie, and won his seventh and final Oscar for it, working on it wasn't the best experience for him, as he found himself constantly frustrated and undermined throughout. He was frustrated by original director Mark Romanek's indecision about the WolfMan's design over the course of a year and almost quit because of it (his wife encouraged him to stay on it), had to talk with a producer who asked him why he was buying so much hair (Baker said he asked him that while a banner for the movie was behind him on the wall), wasn't even permitted to be on the set when they filmed the big transformation scene in the asylum, and has said in both his massive book, Metamorphosis (which may be very expensive but, trust me, is worth... every... penny), and when he was on Joe Rogan's podcast that he and his crew felt unwanted. As Rogan himself said, you'd think that, with all of his accomplishments, Baker would've been considered Hollywood royalty and allowed to do what he needed without interference, when, in fact, he had to deal with this all throughout his career, and it was one of the reasons why he retired not too long after The WolfMan.

On a technical-level, The WolfMan is positively brilliant, with an aesthetic steeped in the story's Gothic roots. It has a muted, monochromatic look, as if the original black-and-white movies suddenly got a bit of an infusion of color, and there's little to no sunlight in the daytime scenes, as they're either gray and overcast or raining, such as in London the morning after the WolfMan's rampage, and they always give off the feeling of it being bitterly cold. Even some of the interior scenes have this same gray, downcast look to them, like the inside of

Talbot Hall when Lawrence first arrives home and in his cell at Lambeth Hospital, with pale, rays of light coming through the lone window, while the hospital's corridors have a sickly green look to them. There are some comfortably warm interior scenes, like some of those between Lawrence and Gwen at Talbot Hall, and inside Maleva's wagon, but they're few and far between. Naturally, where the movie's cinematography excels at is the darkness, both in the interiors, but especially in the 

many nighttime exteriors, which are often set in the foggy, moonlit woods of Blackmoor, i.e. exactly the classic Wolf Man aesthetic you want to see. The streets of London during the WolfMan's second rampage may be more brightly lit but the filmmakers compensate by having the chase between him and Inspector Aberline take place mostly through the dark back-alleys and across the rooftops, and when the WolfMan does find himself in the midst of a bunch of people in the brightly lit streets, it makes the sight of him feel all the more alien, out of place, and unsettling. 

Direction-wise, Joe Johnston shoots the WolfMan's attacks very well, keeping them both exciting and horrific, but also coherent. That's especially true of the first one, which he manages to keep in enough darkness so as not to dilute the mood, occasionally cutting to brief, sudden close-ups of his face, illuminated by flashes of his victims' guns, but always making sure you know what's going on. Speaking of the WolfMan himself, while I wish he hadn't used so much CGI for the transformations, Johnston nicely withholds the full reveal of him for

just a little bit after the first one, obscuring Lawrence's face as he changes, except when he's reflected in a rippling pool of water, and giving us a POV shot as he first runs through the woods. The staging of the climactic battle between the two werewolves amid the burning house during the climax is also done very well, albeit with a little more CGI than I would've liked. Unlike the original movie, Johnston manages to get plenty of shots of the full moon, sometimes in close-up,

sometimes from a POV, and other times with it looming over the village and London, and he also gets a fine number of beauty shots of the English countryside as well. But my absolute favorite visual in the entire film is when, after escaping from Lambeth, the WolfMan runs across the London rooftops, climbs up onto a statue atop one of them, and, with the full moon above him, howls up into the sky. That's nothing short of classic, and even iconic.

Even though I described him as a fairly safe director, rather than a more provocative or thoughtful one, I will say that Johnston does get surprisingly surreal and abstract during some of the montages here. During Lawrence's first night at Talbot Hall, his childhood memories are initially portrayed as him wandering about the house at night, seemingly hearing the sounds of a couple of kids talking behind a door, and opening the door to find only an empty room, namely his and Ben's old bedroom. But then, the shot transitions to a

brightly-lit, cheerful sight of him and Ben as kids, playing with their mother out in the yard, which looks much lovelier than it does in the present. It briefly cuts back to the present, as Lawrence sits down on one of the beds in the dark, and then, we see another memory, this one of the boys waking up in the middle of the night from the sound of someone screaming. Initially, the memory is shot in a rippling, wavy manner, with outlines of the boys briefly remaining onscreen when they move, and when we see young Lawrence make his way

downstairs and outside, there are bright flashes onscreen, accompanied by the sounds of animals when he passes by one of his father's hunting trophies or the topiary animals outside. From Lawrence's POV, spots of blood pool across the concrete side of a pond as he walks across it, and that out-of-focus, rippling effect is reused in the wide shot of him, before ending on the shot of a younger Sir John leaning over his wife's body, after she's seemingly slashed her throat. It then cuts back to the present, as young Lawrence's cries for his mother echo. 

These montages become more surreal the further the movie goes on. After Lawrence is brought home following his being attacked, you get one of high-speed, time-lapse-like shots of the moon passing through its various phases and the clouds passing by during the day, shots of Gwen reading and Lawrence sleeping while illuminated by a rapidly sparkling and flashing beam of moonlight, and Lawrence seeing a vision of a bizarre, man-like creature climbing up the foot of his bed, followed by a sudden, split-second appearance of a full-

blown werewolf swiping at him. But the craziest montage comes as he's being tormented at Lambeth. You see nightmarish images of him going through electroshock therapy; being wheeled down the hallway on a gurney, while a disembodied voice speaks virtual nonsense; an out-focus shot of a shirtless, old patient watching him as he's wheeled by; a shot of Inspector Aberline repeating a line he said earlier, while standing in front of a backdrop consisting of trees, a rotating kaleidoscope of stars, and the moon passing from

left to right; Lawrence onstage, performing the "Alas, poor Yorick" scene from Hamlet, when it's revealed he's holding his brother's severed head, which then speaks in his child voice; it switches to Ben, as a child, in bed, saying, "I heard something," but when the camera pans over to young Lawrence, we instead see the creature from earlier, in his pajamas; shots of the aftermath of the WolfMan's attack; a shot of Gwen as she sits with her back to the camera, nude from the waist up, as

Sir John's voice tells Lawrence he's done terrible things; a disturbing shot of young Lawrence being tormented in the hospital by his father; and a very surreal image of the statue of his mother down in the crypt turning to look at the camera and saying, "Look into my eyes, Lawrence. You see I'm quite dead," before panning down to a pool of blood, which reflects the full moon passing by. It ends on a delusion Lawrence has of Gwen coming to him, promising to take him home, and he embraces her,

only to look in the mirror behind her and see the WolfMan with his arms around her, tearing into her back with his claws, and snarling. He's startled by this, but Gwen comforts and embraces him once more, telling him it's not real. He cautiously looks at his reflection and this time, sees himself... when another werewolf leaps out of the shadows behind him.

The film was shot entirely in England, with lots of location work, while many of the interiors were done at Pinewood Studios. Notably, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire was used for the exteriors of Talbot Hall, and they dressed it to seem more overgrown and as though it had seen better days, while the place was used as it normally looks for the flashbacks to Lawrence's childhood. The actual village of Blackmoor was Lacock in Wiltshire, and the filmmakers were able to film inside its tithe barn for the scene where Lawrence goes to see

Ben's body, donating 5,000 pounds to the village in exchange. Ben's funeral was shot at the Temple of Ancient Virtue near Stowe House in Buckinghamshire, with the temple, acting as the Talbot family crypt, being dressed, like Chatsworth house, to look neglected and overgrown. And I'm sure the forests where the WolfMan prowls and kills, and the gorge which Lawrence says was a refuge for him and Ben when they were kids, were shot at Black Park, a location used in many Hammer films. Despite the period setting, there were some scenes actually shot in London, like the exteriors of Old Royal Navy College (likely for those of Lambeth Asylum), and various streets during the WolfMan's rampage.

Some of the interiors of Talbot Hall reflect the decay of the place's outside, especially the foyer, which looks as though it's in complete shambles when Lawrence first arrives, and his and Ben's childhood bedroom, which has been left untouched to the point where there are thick layers of dust on the furniture. The large sitting room to the right of the foyer's large staircase, which serves as the setting for the climactic battle between the werewolves, looks better, with its many lanterns, posh sofas, big chandeliers, and the grand piano, as

well as a telescope at the window. The upstairs area, the boys' old room notwithstanding, looks similarly nice, both in the corridors with the many lanterns, on tables against the walls and in the chandeliers, and the bedrooms, especially Lawrence's. Even Singh's room looks a lot better than you would expect, given that he's just a servant, with nice furniture and a bed, and even a fireplace all his own, as Lawrence has in his. The interiors of the Talbot crypt are, suitably, dark,

dank, and eerie, with the immediate interior housing a stone coffin for Lawrence's mother, complete with a statue of her carved into the lid. Behind a door that leads downstairs, deeper into the crypt, Lawrence follows the corridors down to a room full of candles, with a chair fashioned with a sort of head restraint and leather straps, and a spot where a picture of Lawrence's mother sits above a number of candles and a vase full of roses, which Sir John says is a shrine to her. This room is revealed to be where Sir John imprisons himself on full moon nights.

The cozy interiors of the Blackmoor Tavern make for a set that evokes numerous classic Gothic horrors, both those produced by Universal and Hammer, as do the interiors of the church, which we see when Revered Fisk delivers his sermon before Lawrence's first transformation. The setting of the gypsy camp out in the foggy woods, with some significant moments set inside their wagons, is a similarly classic one, though not quite as lavish as what was seen in the original Wolf Man. Also out in the woods is a Stonehenge-like monument,

where Lawrence is attacked and bitten, and the smashed remains of another stone structure, where several men set up a trap for the WolfMan. After Talbot Hall, the most noteworthy interiors are those of Lambeth Asylum, which are mostly as unpleasant as possible, with dimly-lit, oppressive, arched hallways, the dungeon-like cells where the patients are kept, with Lawrence being chained to the wall in his, and rooms where the sadistic "therapies" are performed. Besides the expected,

like electroshock therapy, which uses gurneys and control panels with large switches, like in the old Frankenstein movies, there's a room where Lawrence is strapped to a chair and slowly lowered backwards into a vat of ice-water, and held there for several seconds before he's lifted out. The one room in the hospital which doesn't look so horrific is the operating theater, where Lawrence transforms for the second time before escaping out into London. While much of his rampage and

chase with Inspector Aberline happens on the city streets, there's one moment where Aberline tries to head him off by rushing through a recital inside a building. And before Lawrence heads back home to confront his father, he hides out in Gwen's antique store, which is a very lovely establishment, even though the weather outside is nasty during those scenes.

As I've said, while it may be a remake of a Universal movie, the film, with its setting in Victorian era England, has a very strong feel of the many Gothic horrors produced by Hammer. It has it all, from the costumes, various settings, and architecture, to the stagecoaches, the lanterns and candlelight, and the gaslighted streets of 1891 London, with some interesting touches like early, steam-powered vehicles, including a primitive example of a double-decker bus. That's also to say nothing of how the movie was shot in England, at

Pinewood Studios, where various Hammer films were made, and the references to The Curse of the Werewolf when it comes to the werewolves themselves, as well as the idea that the power of love may save Lawrence. Naturally, there are also many references to the original Wolf Man, besides the general story, the characters' names, and the look of the WolfMan himself, such as the gypsy poem, right down to the original "autumn moon" line, which the movie opens on (as the epitaph on a headstone, possibly Lawrence's following the

movie's events); the death of Lawrence's brother being what brings him home after having been away for many years; Lawrence's silver, wolf-headed cane; Sir John having a telescope; the fact that the WolfMan is always wearing the same clothes, no matter what; and the presence of a little gypsy girl named Maria, a shout-out to Maria Ouspenskaya. The gypsies having a trained bear could be seen as an allusion to a deleted scene from the original involving one, while Sir John

contracting lycanthropy after being bitten by a feral child in Asia is one to the original treatment of The Wolf Man by Robert Florey, as well as to Werewolf of London, with Sir John having been bitten in a mountain range near the Himalayas. Of course, the WolfMan's rampage in London is a reference to both that film and An American Werewolf in London, as is the moment where he wreaks havoc by causing the double-decker bus to crash, and the aforementioned presence of David Schofield.

Much of the expected werewolf tropes are here, like the transference of the curse from a bite, silver bullets being the only thing that can kill them, animals being able to sense the beast within those who are cursed (Sir John's dog, Samson, seems to only sense it on full moon nights and avoids both him and Lawrence then), and the full moon causing the transformation, although there's one caveat to the latter, as here, it seems like the change only occurs on the night when the moon is at its absolute fullest, rather than during the entire cycle,

as is often the case. Also, like Werewolf of London, there's an implication, through Sir John having been cursed in Asia, that werewolves are not restricted solely to one area or culture, but can be found in various places around the world. And while it doesn't add to this notion in the same way as Paul Ames' story in that film about helping the authorities in Yucatan deal with a suspected werewolf, MacQueen's story about his father finding Quinn Noddy and his entire flock of sheep completely savaged years before does create some idea of backstory and world-building.

But despite the movie's high levels of technical achievement and production values, it doesn't change the fact that the characters and story aren't that engaging, especially in the theatrical version, and it's a bit of a slog to get to what you really want to see. And yet, at the same time in the theatrical version, it feels like they're rushing to get to Lawrence's first transformation. The movie also tries to be philosophical at points, posing the question of where does the man leave off from the wolf, and vice versa, but it amounts to nothing in

the long run. What's more, all those nods to past movies can make you wish you were watching one of those instead, while the digital transformations making me wish I was watching An American Werewolf in London. Speaking of which, not only do Lawrence's surreal dreams make me think of those David Kessler has after being attacked, with a couple even having the same sort of double-whammy jump scares, but the way in which they have the feral boy that attacked Sir John into them makes no sense, as one, Lawrence was unaware of

him at that point in the story, and two, he never saw him to begin with. Finally, while I love the way it practically bathes in that classic style of Gothic horror, I can't say I find the movie to ever be scary or even that atmospheric, despite how well-shot it is and how cool Danny Elfman's score can be. Even worse, it relies far too much on jump scares, and always with the cliched really loud music sting or sound effect. There's one right at the beginning

of the movie, before Ben is attacked, and sometimes, the movie will go for two in a row, which only gets annoying. I can remember how, when I saw it in the theater, where the volume was really loud, I would be dreading those long moments of absolute quiet, not because I was genuinely scared but because I just knew my ears were about to be assaulted.

One thing's for sure: if you like your werewolf movies with a lot of gore, The WolfMan will not disappoint you. The theatrical version holds off on it for a bit, with just a few hints of Ben's grisly death, and a look at his hideous corpse when Lawrence sees it in the ice-house, as well as a glimpse of their mother's body in a flashback, but things really ramp up when the werewolf attacks the gypsy camp. People are gutted and horribly maimed, arms and legs are ripped off, Constable Nye gets three fingers on his right hand ripped off,

followed by the werewolf putting his claws up through his neck and out his mouth, and Lawrence is bitten and sliced up badly on his left shoulder. When he first becomes the WolfMan, he absolutely massacres the townspeople who laid a trap for him: disemboweling them, ripping off arms, and slicing off heads. When he transforms again in Lambeth Asylum, he rips out one man's innards with his teeth, throws Dr. Hoenneger out the window and impales him on the fence spikes down below, and slaughters a number of people in the double-decker

bus he causes to overturn. And there's a lot of brutality during the werewolf battle at the end. Even though Rick Baker didn't care for gore, despite often creating it, he certainly proves that he was adept at here, with his crew even making some edible guts and bones that Benicio del Toro could really chow down on for added savagery. The only makeup creation that Baker wasn't involved with was that of the feral boy who bit Sir John, as he didn't think it was right to show him off in the

manner that he is. Thus, Roz Abery did this particular creature, and even though you only see him in brief glimpses and visions, he is still unsettling in how he's badly malnourished and pale, with small bits of stringy hair, dark, wild-looking eyes, a mouth of nasty teeth, and an aggressive attitude.

Like in the last few movies we've talked about, when the CGI is utilized wisely, such as in creating the skyline of Victorian-era London, the many shots of the full moon, or when the werewolves run on all fours, during which they're kept mostly obscured, it's effective. But those are the exceptions, as the CGI is often used very egregiously, not just in the transformation effects but also in some digital animals, like the gypsies' performing bear (a recycled effect from The Golden Compass, changed from a polar bear to a

grizzly) and the elk the hunters use as bait for the WolfMan. I get that animals like that are hard to deal with, but I would think Rick Baker and company could've come up with some more convincing animatronics and whatnot. The CGI effect used during the climactic werewolf battle is also pretty miserable, namely when Sir John gets set on fire and the WolfMan slices his head off, and you can tell they augmented both werewolves' faces at various points throughout the movie, which I don't think was necessary.

The movie's opening is very promising: after the camera pans down the gypsy poem, written on a tombstone, and stops on a figure of the moon below it, it dissolves to a shot of the real moon and pans down through tree branches, revealing a dark, gloomy forest. Carrying a lantern, Ben Talbot walks through the woods, yelling, "Show yourself! I know you're out there!" He stops and scans the woods with his lantern, and is startled when a bunch of birds suddenly fly upwards nearby. He

composes himself, when a werewolf suddenly lunges from the darkness, slashing at him. At first, it doesn't seem like he made contact with Ben, until Ben looks down to see blood oozing from a massive wound in his midsection. He drops his lantern, when the werewolf slashes him across the face, knocking him to the ground. Ben runs back through the woods, yelling for help, and leaving a trail of blood for the werewolf to follow. He runs for the Talbot family crypt, as the werewolf watches, which is where the theatrical version cuts

to the title. After that, things slow down for a while. When Lawrence Talbot returns home to Talbot Hall, he walks into the seemingly deserted manor, only to be startled when his father's dog, Samson, lunges at him from nearby. Sir John appears at the top of the stairs and manages to call the dog off, though he remains hostile towards Lawrence. Following that, when he learns that Ben's body was found, Lawrence heads into town to see the body, and is horrified at its condition. And that night, as he roams the house, he has flashbacks to his childhood, culminating in the sight of his father leaning over his wife's body in a pool of blood, a razor in her hand.

The first major scene comes when Lawrence goes to visit the gypsy camp on the night of the full moon. While he speaks with Maleva in her wagon, some men from the village, led by Kirk, who runs the tavern, head to the camp to confront them about their dancing bear, which Kirk believes is the killer. After a gypsy in the woods warns the camp of their arrival by whistling, he's suddenly attacked from the side. Arriving in the camp and getting off his horse, Kirk marches up to the bear's handler and

demands he give him up. Constable Nye also shows up and tells Kirk that the bear is harmless. The bear appears to prove Nye wrong when he rears up on his hind legs and snarls, but unbeknownst to the others, it's because he caught a glimpse of the werewolf running behind those who've gathered around. Suddenly, a man lets out a scream and collapses to the ground, his back completely brutalized. Panic breaks out, with Kirk running and hiding in a small tent, while Lawrence

steps out of Maleva's wagon and a man missing his left arm runs past him. He asks one of the gypsies what's going on and the man yells, "It's the devil! The devil!" He then runs past a man who's writhing on the ground, missing a leg, while the werewolf stalks the campsite. Seeing a threatening shadow outside the tent where he's hiding, Kirk shoots his rifle, only to hit a man outside. Immediately, the werewolf rips through the tent behind him and drags him away. While Nye spies a commotion

happening in a nearby wagon, Lawrence rushes to a tied up horse and takes a rifle from the saddle. Spying inside the wagon, Nye finds a badly mangled corpse, and when he reaches in to touch it, a clawed paw swipes at him, slicing off three fingers on his right hand. Just as he comprehends what happened, the werewolf puts his claws up through his throat, out his mouth, and yanks him into the wagon. In the midst of the chaos, a young girl named Maria tries to find her mother, who's looking for her at the same time. After finishing off

Nye, the werewolf spots Maria's mother, climbs out of the wagon and runs behind the other wagons in order to get at her faster. Armed with a rifle, Lawrence, spotting the monster, chases and fires at him as he runs behind the wagons, and then runs and dives to the ground with Maria's mother, saving her from being mauled. Missing her, the werewolf runs off the campground. Maria comes running to her mother and Lawrence tells them to stay in the camp, when he sees the boy who took care of his horse when he arrived run off into the

foggy woods; he also sees that the werewolf is running through the woods after him. Taking another rifle and some shells from a dead man, Lawrence loads up and fires, but misses the monster, hitting a tree instead. He then chases after boy, who runs to a nearby stone structure.

The boy stops in the middle of the structure, only to become frightened and run further when Lawrence appears, calling to him. Lawrence cautiously makes his way through the fog, pointing his rifle at the sound of some birds squeaking nearby. He hears the werewolf snarling and hides up against one of the stone pillars, scanning the foggy surroundings. Seeing nothing, he slowly makes his way to the largest pillar at the center of the structure, looking behind him and pointing his

rifle, then peering around the pillar's corner. He looks around but, again, doesn't see anything, and makes his way further into the fog. Again, he's startled by the sudden sound of birds and points his rifle, then hears a rocky clinking up above him. Just as soon as he looks up, the werewolf leaps down at him, knocking the rifle out his hand and causing it to fire up into the air. The two of them roll along the ground, until the werewolf pins Lawrence and ferociously bites into his shoulder and claws at him. The men who came with Kirk

and some gypsies show up and fire on the werewolf, sending him into retreat and leaving Lawrence with a nasty wound. While some of the men look after him, another is sent back into the camp to get help. Lawrence is then seen inside a tent, where Maleva sutures his wound, despite the younger gypsy woman telling her of what will happen if he lives. Lawrence is taken home the next day, beginning the montage of the fevered dreams and delusions he has while he's looked after by Sir John and Gwen Conliffe. 

Following his recovery, and interrogation by Inspector Aberline, Lawrence spends some time with Gwen down by the lake, when he hears the sounds of horses approaching. He heads back up to the house, where he's confronted by a number of townspeople, among them Reverend Fisk, who accuses him of bearing the beast's mark, and Colonel Montford, who demands he show them his wound. But when he approaches Lawrence on horseback, his horse becomes frightened and rears

back, neighing. Several men come in and grab Lawrence, trying to take him by force, when a gunshot shatters the head of a statue next to Montford, causing him to fall off his mount. Sir John approaches with a rifle, telling Montford, as he curses at him, "I'm sorry, Colonel. I meant to shoot you. Sadly, I'm not quite the marksman I used to be. I must be getting old." Lawrence is now free from those who tried to take him and Sir John, ignoring what they say about his son being cursed, warns them that Singh is on the roof and he's such

crackshot that he could kill them all before they knew what happened. This has everyone looking up nervously at the manor's roof, as Sir John tells them to leave and that he won't be so civil if they trespass on his property again. Once they're back inside, Sir John reveals he was bluffing about Singh, who's actually in town. Later, in the dining room, Gwen is cleaning a cut on Lawrence's lip, when he finds himself fixated on her jugular vein, and grabs her hand, making low, growling sounds.

After a few seconds, he comes to his senses and leaves the room. That night, when he looks at himself in the mirror and sees no scars at all, he realizes something is wrong and sends Gwen back to London, fearing for her safety.

The lead-up to Lawrence's first transformation features a montage of several men securing a deer with a rope and a metal spike in the ground, a man boarding up his windows, another creating silver bullets, Lawrence coming up to Samson, only for the dog to growl at and avoid him, and Singh apprehensively watching the full moon appear in the sky through his window, all while Reverend Fisk delivers his sermon at the church. That night, with the full moon high in the sky, Lawrence sees his father heading out into the night with a lantern.

Armed with a rifle, he follows him off the main estate's grounds and to the family crypt, deep into the catacombs below it. There, he discovers the room with the shrine to his mother, filled with a number of candles that Sir John continues lighting. When he finishes, he shows Lawrence out of the room and locks himself inside. He gives Lawrence his cryptic warning, before backing away from the door and into the darkness, his eyes suddenly glowing. Spooked, Lawrence turns but gets snagged when he tries to walk while holding his

rifle perpendicular to the hall... and that's when his right hand begins to twist and contort, and his ring falls off. His other hand does the same and, starting to feel pain from the transformation, he grabs onto a shelf housing a candle and pulls himself up, only to burn his face from the flame. He stumbles down the corridor, falls, and then crawls along the floor, as his feet begin to distort and his eyes turn an unnatural yellow. He lets out an inhuman roar, then crawls up the stairs and continues changing, before

getting to his feet and, as he walks up, letting out a howl so loud that it can be heard all the way down into the village. Singh locks himself in his room when he hears it, while down in the village, the sound of it terrifies everyone in the tavern. Even the skeptical Inspector Aberline is startled, and quickly runs outside, mounts his horse, and rides off into the woods.

Meanwhile, the newly transformed WolfMan runs through the woods, while those waiting to trap him see the deer suddenly become anxious and they ready themselves. When he reaches the spot, he falls through the ground and into a fairly deep pit hidden by some leaves and shrubbery. Though the men grow excited when they realize they caught him, one man, Johnny, falls down into the pit as well. As the men yell for him to get out, Johnny, having hit his head, gets up, then hears some ferocious snarling. The WolfMan comes charging

out of the darkness at him, corners him against the wall, and slashes his neck open. He then picks him up, slams him against the wall, and jams his claws into his gut, snarling at him as blood spurts from his mouth before he dies. Up above, MacQueen, armed with a revolver, looks over the edge of the pit, when the WolfMan grabs him and pulls him in. Hitting the ground, MacQueen sees the WolfMan standing over him, rolls onto his back, and fires, only for the WolfMan to grab his hand, rip it off, and throw out of the pit, with it still gripping the

trigger strong enough to fire it again. Seeing that, the others fire down into the pit, but they end up hitting MacQueen himself before the WolfMan can kill him. The WolfMan leaps out of the pit, causing one of the men to shoot another accidentally, and flings another man against the stone wall. The frightened deer manages to break its rope and run off, but the WolfMan instead focuses on Colonel Montford, who runs off into the woods, futilely turning and firing back at him, as he chases him on

all fours. Montford bungles into a thick pool of mud in a bog and, panicking, fires again at the WolfMan, only for it to do nothing. He then puts the gun to his right temple and pulls the trigger... only for it to click empty. The WolfMan slices his head off with one swipe of his claws. As Aberline finds the spot where the trap was set and discovers the men's grisly remains, Dr. Lloyd runs through the woods, still armed with his rifle. He stops to catch his breath, when he hears a twig snap. In a panic, he fires, illuminating the WolfMan, who was standing up against the tree right beside him. Aberline hears Lloyd scream and the WolfMan snarling in the distance, followed by the sound of him howling.

The next morning, Lawrence awakens next to a tree by the sound of his father softly saying his name. He gets up, then sees how disheveled and ragged his clothes are, and that he's covered in blood. His father tells him he's done terrible things, and Lawrence, horrified and confused, stumbles across the field, towards the manor. But he doesn't get far before a posse on horseback, led by Aberline, come running in, surround him, and force him to his knees, with one man knocking him unconscious with the butt of his rifle. Sir John tells

Aberline, "Ah, it is as you said, Inspector. It is as you said," then softly adds, "Be strong, Lawrence. Be strong." With that, Lawrence finds himself back at Lambeth Asylum in London, where Dr. Hoenneger puts him through his torturous methods of "treatment," and when he visits him in his cell, Sir John reveals that he's the one responsible for his curse, as well as the deaths of his mother and brother. Enraged by this, Lawrence lunges at his father, but is unable to reach him due to being chained to the wall by the neck. Sir John also tells

him that the moon will be full that night, and leaves him a razor in case he doesn't want to live through another transformation, before heading out, ignoring his son yelling that he'll kill him. That night, Lawrence is wheeled into the operating theater, strapped to a wheelchair and his mouth gagged, as Dr. Hoenneger declares to those in attendance, including Aberline, "We are here tonight to illustrate conclusively that Mr. Talbot's fears are quite irrational. So, we will remain in this

room together, and once Mr. Talbot has witnessed that the full moon holds no sway over him, that he remains a perfectly ordinary human being, he will have taken his first small step down the long road to mental recovery. Now, we are all aware that Mr. Talbot has suffered quite traumatic personal experiences. He witnessed his mother's self mutilations. His young mind, unable to accept it, created a fantastical truth, that his father is to blame. That his father is, literally, a monster. But,

your father is not a werewolf. You were not bitten by a werewolf. You will not become a werewolf, any more than I will sprout wings and fly out of that window." After Hoenneger stops talking, Lawrence pleads to him, and Hoenneger has the guard remove the gag from his mouth. Growing angry and frustrated, Lawrence tells him and everyone else that he will kill them all, only for them to laugh at him. Hoenneger turns his back to him and starts going on about lycanthropy, as Lawrence, seeing the full moon emerge from behind a cloud outside, shakes anxiously and begs to be killed.

Hoenneger keeps rambling on and on, unaware of the horrific change that begins to occur behind him. Lawrence's arms and hands begin to stretch and twist, his feet burst through his shoes, and he throws his head back, growling, as his teeth sharpen. Everyone else in the room, including Aberline, notices this, and one of the doctors tries to warn Hoenneger, as Lawrence snarls, his eyes bulge, his arms become darkly hairy, claws sprout from his fingers, and his sharp teeth chomp loudly. By the time Hoenneger finally turns around, he

sees Lawrence fully become the WolfMan, with his face becoming hairy and his ears growing to a tip. He lets out a vicious snarl, and everyone panics, scrambling to escape the room, but they end up crowding and unintentionally closing the door on the ground level, while Hoenneger climbs over the seats, heading for the door up there. The WolfMan breaks loose of the straps, then picks up the chair and throws it, hitting one man straight on. The guard who wheeled Lawrence in tries to sedate him, but he's grabbed and thrown, then pinned to

the floor and viciously mauled, horrifying the doctors who are trying to escape. Meanwhile, Hoenneger reaches the upper door but finds his keys don't work. He smacks on it, drawing the attention of a janitor on the other side who, oblivious to the carnage happening inside, indifferently walks up to the door and tells him that it's locked. After ripping the guard's guts out with his teeth, the WolfMan spots Hoenneger, as he bangs on the door, yelling at the janitor.

Recognizing him, he snarls and makes his way up towards him, as he grabs a chair and smashes the door's small window. Before he can escape, the WolfMan grabs him and tosses him out the window, where he lands atop the sharp spikes on a fence down below. The doctors break through the lower door and escape into the hallway, while the WolfMan escapes through the smashed window and runs and climbs along the rooftops. In the yard below, Aberline finds Hoenneger's impaled body, then spots the WolfMan and gives chase. The WolfMan runs and jumps across several rooftops, then climbs atop a statue on one, looks down at the city below, and howls up at the full moon. He jumps down and continues across the roofs.

On the street, Aberline borrows a constable's revolver and runs after the WolfMan, firing at him. The shots prompt him to go from a sprint to galloping on all fours, allowing him to run and jump across the roofs, and dodge the shots, faster and with more agility. Spotting the building he's on, Aberline cuts through the place's interior, interrupting a private reception and recital, but when he gets to the street on the other side, he finds he's lost sight of the WolfMan. While the werewolf continues running along the roofs,

Aberline has another detective, Carter, join him, and tells a constable to contact Scotland Yard and issue out weapons; as the man is currently writing up a couple of women, Aberline has to yell at him to get him moving. As he and Carter run, Aberline asks, "I don't suppose we have any silver bullets?", much to his confusion. The WolfMan sprints across the rooftops and does a flying leap, landing right on top of a constable and finding himself in the heart of London. The sight of him immediately causes panic and he runs into the midst of the

fleeing people, right in the path of a steam-powered, double-decker bus. Seeing him, the driver swerves, crushing a man who falls in its path, and tipping the entire thing over. The WolfMan jumps up and lands on its side after the crash, when the authorities arrive. Seeing the passengers trapped inside, the WolfMan ignores the shots fired at him and smashes through a window and jumps down into the bus. He brutally slaughters several people, then climbs out of the

vehicle to see that he's being fired upon again. He runs for it and they give chase, with Aberline having two men come with him. Avoiding more shots, the WolfMan bounds down a dark alleyway, at the end of which gather Aberline and much of the rest of the police force, creating a makeshift blockade with their vehicles. As he comes at them, they fire upon him, but he doesn't even slow down. Some of the men run for it, and when he reaches them, he leaps straight over them and runs off into the night, avoiding the men's attempts to fire upon him. They hear him howl in the distance, to which Aberline remarks, "God help us."

Later that night, the WolfMan makes his way through a tunnel and comes out near London Bridge. He laps up some water and, come the next morning, Lawrence awakens there. Washing his face, and seeing in the water's reflection that he's covered with blood, he hears the sound of the police searching for him up above. Later, when Gwen arrives at her antique store, she finds him hiding out there. After telling her that he's a werewolf, as is Sir John, and that he killed Ben, he cleans up and prepares to journey back to Talbot

Hall. Before he can leave, there's a knock at the main door and Gwen answers it to see Aberline and much of Scotland Yard waiting for her. She allows Aberline in, but when she denies having seen Lawrence, he's sure that she's lying, and has her restrained outside, while he and his en search the store. Coming to a mirror, Aberline sees a pair of feet behind it and points his revolver. He orders Lawrence to surrender, but when the figure makes no movement at all, he shoots right through the glass. It turns out that what was standing behind

the mirror was nothing more than a devilish statue; seeing what just happened, Carter comments, "Now, there's some bad luck for ya." Meanwhile, Lawrence manages to slip out of London, while elsewhere, Gwen does some research on lycanthropy and werewolf lore. Then, while Lawrence makes his way back to Blackmoor and Talbot Hall on foot, so does Gwen, first on the train and then on horseback, seeking out Maleva. Aberline and his men come as well, armed with

silver bullets, and by the time of the next full moon, all parties have arrived. Aberline and his men converge at the tavern, and the Inspector has them set up at different spots throughout town, telling Carter to inform Sir John and to stay close to Talbot Hall. Aberline also instructs them to shoot Lawrence on sight. By nightfall, Lawrence has reached the estate, which appears completely dark, save for one light on inside.

Like at the beginning of the movie, Lawrence enters the dark and seemingly deserted manor, this time trying to be as quiet as possible. Looking around, he lights up a lantern, and jumps when he sees Singh's body pinned against a wall. Once he calms down, he removes a key hanging from around Singh's neck, then takes a rifle from the wall and makes his way upstairs. Down in the village, Aberline is told that Carter is missing from his post at Talbot Hall. He then spots Gwen on her horse, and she promptly rides off towards the

manor. Aberline tells his man to warn the others and follows after her on his own horse. Back at Talbot Hall, Lawrence walks down the dark hallway at the top of the stairs, and passes by a seemingly empty room, unaware that his father is watching him from within. He goes to Singh's room, uses the key to open up a chest, and loads his rifle with the silver bullets he knew Singh had in his possession. While both Gwen and Aberline race through the woods towards the manor, Lawrence heads back downstairs, to a lower floor,

and quietly makes his way down a dark corridor. Hearing some creaking up ahead, he points his rifle and uses his foot to open a door that's slightly ajar. He walks in and looks around the corner of a chest sitting in the middle of the room, seeing a dark shape on the floor. But after several seconds, it turns out to be Samson, who snarls at him and runs out of the room. Lawrence heads down to the first floor and, seeing Samson pawing at the front door, lets him out. He then hears the sound of the piano

in the sitting room playing and cautiously makes his way there. Spying the chair to the left of the fireplace, he sees a hand on the right arm and slowly makes his way around to the front, only to find Carter, dead from a head wound. The piano starts playing again and Lawrence turns to see his father sitting there, tapping the keys. He says, "I will arise and go to my father and I will say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee. I am no more worthy to be called thy son.'" He stops playing, looks up at Lawrence, as he approaches, and comments, "Lo and behold there he stands, the prodigal son, for he is returned."

Getting up, and walking with Lawrence's own cane, he approaches him, asking, "Shall I have my own robe brought to be placed upon your shoulders? Rings for your fingers? Shoes for your feet?" Lawrence says, "What you should do is pray. But we both know it wouldn't do any good." The two of them exchange their own viewpoints on being werewolves, when Lawrence pulls the trigger on the rifle, only for nothing to happen. He backs away, attempts to shoot again, only for it to again click empty, and Sir John smacks him with

the cane. Lawrence blocks another swipe, smashing his gun across some lanterns to his left, starting a fire. Sir John hits him in the head, knocking him back and to the floor, and admits that he long ago removed the powder from Singh's silver bullets. He hits and kicks Lawrence several more times, but at one point, Lawrence deploys a sword from the cane's head and manages to disarm him, only for Sir John to shove him back, against a desk behind him. He then grabs him, drags him over to the window where the telescope is, and,

looking up at the full moon, says, "See her, Lawrence? Feel her presence? Her power? It'll be here soon, coming from darkness into light." Lawrence grabs Sir John around the waist, and is shoved into the telescope, only to lunge at him and then get flung against the wall. Regardless, he manages to pin Sir John down on a table and chokes him. As Sir John begins to transform, he says, "You're heir to my kingdom, Lawrence. You've always been heir to my kingdom."

Lawrence begins to transform as well, letting go of his father and backing away. Standing up, Sir John, now a werewolf, runs at and sends Lawrence flying through the air, slamming against and falling on the floor behind the piano. Then, as Sir John watches, a hairy, clawed hand comes up and grabs a table, and the fully transformed WolfMan rises up behind it. Sir John rips off his shirt and, as the fire spreads throughout the room, the two werewolves roar and charge at each other. They jump and collide in

midair, knocking over another table with a lantern when they fall to the floor. Sir John quickly pins down his son and bites into him, only for the WolfMan to slice his back open. He screams in pain, but then jumps up and hits the WolfMan hard enough to fling him through the air and against another wall. When he hits the floor, the impact knocks over another lantern. 

The WolfMan looks up to see Sir John side-stepping in front of him, and after he lets out a pained growl, Sir John leaps at him. However, the WolfMan leaps up, grabs onto the wall behind him with his sharp claws and toenails, and jumps down at Sir John. He pins him, grabs his head, and bashes it against the floor, when Sir John knocks him away. The WolfMan slides across the floor, when Sir John charges at and tackles him. The two of them flop over a sofa and some other furniture behind them, and Sir John ravages his son's

midsection with his teeth. He picks him up and backhands him, then bounds at and jumps onto him, bites into his shoulder, yanks him up, and slams him down. He stands over the WolfMan, who growls in pain as he lies on the floor, then picks him up, and throws him across from him. The WolfMan rolls over onto his back, as Sir John jumps at him again, but this time, he catches him in midair with his feet and thrusts him back, right into the fireplace. The WolfMan looks and then approaches the fireplace, as Sir John flails around

in the flames. Despite being completely immolated, Sir John emerges and swipes wildly at the WolfMan. Dodging the burning swipes, the WolfMan slashes Sir John across the gut, then comes back with another, cutting his head clean off and sending it sliding across the floor, as it stops burning and returns to normal, the mouth chomping in reflex. After the headless body collapses, the WolfMan lets out a triumphant howl, as the flames around him continue consuming

every part of the Talbot family legacy. Outside, Gwen reaches the manor and rushes inside the open door, yelling for Lawrence. She enters the burning sitting room, only to be faced with the WolfMan, who snarls at her. Aberline enters behind her and, as the WolfMan roars, stands in front of Gwen and goes to shoot him. Gwen stops him, knocking his arm and causing him to misfire, when the WolfMan rushes at them and knocks them both to the floor. Gwen manages to escape his grasp but

he bites into Aberline, who yells at her to run. She grabs Aberline's discarded gun, as the WolfMan throws the Inspector across the floor. He turns his attention to Gwen, who runs out of the house, only for Aberline to grab a spear and throw it at him, stabbing him in the midsection. The WolfMan angrily removes the spear and faces him, as Aberline wields another bladed weapon. He swings but only manages to smash another lantern and add more to the fire. The WolfMan looks out the window to see Gwen running off into the woods and smashes his through, giving chase. Aberline, despite his weakened condition, spots the sword from the cane, takes it, and stumbles out of the burning house.

Gwen races through the woods, with the WolfMan sprinting after her, and as Talbot Hall completely goes up in flames, a hunting party heads through the woods as well. Despite being badly mauled and bleeding, Aberline meets up with them and continues the pursuit. At one point, Gwen hides behind a tree, when the WolfMan stops and sniffs the air for her scent. However, she steps on a twig as she slips away, the sound of it catching his attention and he runs after her again. Gwen comes to the edge of the large gorge in the forest that was

once Lawrence and Ben's favorite playground, and realizes she's trapped. She turns around and scans the dark woods, not seeing anything at first. But then, she hears a snarl and spots the WolfMan. She points her gun but hesitates to kill Lawrence, even as he menacingly approaches her, snarling ferociously. As she backs away to the edge of the gorge, she tries to reach what little of Lawrence is still inside the monster. She stumbles, dropping the gun, and falls to the ground. The WolfMan is on her immediately and hovers over her, as she

continues trying to appeal to his humanity, saying that he knows who she is. Slowly but surely, his growling grows quieter and he starts to relax. It's clear by the look in his eyes that Lawrence's subconscious has recognized her, when he hears the sound of the approaching hunting party. He turns his head and lets out some defiant howls, when Gwen takes the opportunity to reach for and grab the gun. When he turns back to her, she has it pointed at him. He lunges down at her, when she

shoots him, the silver bullet going completely through him. He rears up and collapses to the ground next to her, as she slowly sits up. Suddenly, he grabs her hand and, in fear, she tries to free herself, when he growls quietly and she sees his hand and then his face changing back. Once he's become Lawrence again, she cradles his head in her arms. He regains consciousness momentarily and takes her hand, saying this is how it had to be and thanks her for freeing him, before dying. The

others arrive onto this scene, and she looks at the badly injured Aberline, who feels his wound and then looks up at the full moon, appearing to realize the implications. The film cuts back to Talbot Hall as it burns, and finally to a distant shot of the smoke as the sun rises, with Gwen intoning, "It is said there is no sin in killing a beast, only in killing a man. But where does one begin and the other end?" The movie ends with the sound of a howl, possibly that of Aberline, himself now a werewolf.

Even when it came to the score, there was drama. The filmmakers initially hired Danny Elfman, then after a lot of cutting to make the movie shorter, decided that there was too much constant music and thus, hired a new composer to create an all new score (they couldn't just bring Elfman back to reshape what he'd done, as he was busy working on Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland). That composer, Paul Haslinger, who did the music for Underworld and a couple of its sequels, did a fast-paced, electronic score for The WolfMan, which Universal realized didn't fit with the period setting and Gothic tone. Thus, they rejected his score and reinstated Elfman's original one, hiring some other composers to shape it around the theatrical version of the movie, as well as create some new material here and there. Despite all of these problems, the music would turn out to be one of the movie's high points. While definitely not among Elfman's best work, it wonderfully captures the movie's Gothic tone, with a beautifully menacing and ethereal, yet at the same time, tragic main theme, a lot of melancholic pieces of music regarding Lawrence Talbot's inner turmoil and his sad past, lighter music for the scenes between him and Gwen, a fiddle piece that evokes the gypsies, and a truly horrific and frightening piece for whenever the WolfMan is attacking. There are also some very eerie, otherworldly cues, often accompanied by singing voices, such as during Ben's funeral, and if you've seen or heard the score to Bram Stoker's Dracula, you can hear the influence that Wojciech Kilar's work there had on Elfman at various points in this score. Again, not great, but well-done and fitting music, just as you'd expect from Elfman.

While the movie is not that great either way, if you're going to watch The WolfMan, I would suggest watching the unrated director's cut, which is over fifteen minutes longer. Besides adding interesting flourishes, like the studio logo being done in the style of the original movie, and some more gore, this version is richer and feels a little more complete. Ben's death at the beginning is a little longer, with him crawling up the steps to the family tomb and getting cornered there, with the

werewolf coming right at the camera when he goes in for the kill (that might've been cut because it gave away the look of Sir John's werewolf). The first significant addition is immediately after the opening, as Lawrence is introduced while performing Hamlet on the London stage; while the theatrical cut only mentions his career as an actor in passing, we see here that he's actually not very good, at least when it comes to Shakespeare. After the play, Gwen comes to see him at a private party

in a dressing room, whereas in the theatrical version, she merely writes him a letter (although, there's an error, in that the letter is still mentioned in later scenes in this version) and they later meet at Talbot Hall. When everyone else heads to the tavern, they talk privately about Ben's disappearance, with Gwen also mentioning that two other villagers were killed that same night. Lawrence initially refuses to come, saying he's under contract for another thirty performances and that his acting troupe is returning to America the

next day. Before she leaves, Gwen tells him, "It must be a wonderful luxury, doing battle with imaginary demons, Mr. Talbot. Mine, right now, are very real." It makes for a much better introduction to both characters, and it also establishes Lawrence's estrangement from his father, as Gwen says she understands how she feels about him. You see Lawrence contemplating going after Gwen leaves, and in the next scene, he's on a train. Here, he meets an older man played by Max von Sydow, who gives him the walking stick,

which he says he acquired in Gevaudan, a French province well-known in werewolf lore for having been terrorized in the 18th Century by an animal sometimes said to have been one. Though Lawrence politely refuses the man when he offers to let him have the cane, when he awakens after the train arrives at the Blackmoor station, he finds it was left behind for him and he takes it. This scene also establishes that Lawrence's mother is long dead, as well as that the cane is also a sword.

In the first scene at the tavern, after MacQueen tells the story about a supposed werewolf attack 25 years earlier, he's more openly mocked, particularly by Colonel Montford, who flat-out says MacQueen's father thought it was a werewolf. The Talbot family's troubles are then blamed on their dealings with the gypsies, and Montford goes on to say that Lawrence's mother was a, "Gypo whore queen," as well as that she went crazy and killed herself. Overhearing this, a drunken

Lawrence confronts the men, saying, "Yes, she was crazy... for coming to this shithole you call a town." He throws a drink in Montford's face and Kirk has Lawrence removed from the tavern; as Constable Nye drags him out, Lawrence threatens to be waiting for Montford outside, adding, "My mother wasn't a whore." Once he's gone, the men realize who he was. A dinner scene with Lawrence, Sir John, and Gwen is much longer, with Lawrence talking about how the villagers still have the wild

ideas they always did, and Sir John sees that as Lawrence writing them off as savages. Lawrence says his father is strangely insecure, and Gwen, feeling like she started a fight, leaves the table. The scene between Lawrence and Sir John in the sitting room is longer, with Sir John questioning his son's profession, and Lawrence asking him why his mother killed herself. Sir John's answer, "She struggled with life, as we all do. She lost," makes the ultimate revelation more powerful and makes him even more of a villain. Speaking of Sir John,

his lusting for Gwen is more pronounced here, as there's a moment between them on the staircase where he simply stares at her in an uncomfortable manner, eating an apple and ignoring her asking him why he's looking at her in that way. From there on out, the movie plays like in the theatrical version, save for a moment in the third act where, before he leaves London, Lawrence takes all the copies of the newspaper, with a bulletin about his escape and an image of him, from a newspaper boy, while still paying for it. Both the boy and a

woman seem to realize who he is. While still far from perfect, as Lawrence and Gwen's relationship isn't much better, and many of the other previously mentioned issues remain, this version is a better one, and Benicio del Toro's performance doesn't feel as one-note.

It really pains me to say that The WolfMan is, at its best, a merely passable movie, I was hoping for it to be so much more. It certainly benefits from high production values, a well-realized Gothic look and feel, great location work and production design, some memorably surreal montages, Anthony Hopkins making for a brilliant antagonist, a good music score, and just about everything involving the title monster, from his look and performance to the gory mayhem he wreaks, being absolutely awesome. Unfortunately, despite the very capable actors, many of the characters aren't that engaging, including Benicio del Toro as Lawrence Talbot; Lawrence and Gwen Conliffe's relationship doesn't work at all; there's far more CGI than was necessary; the movie is never that atmospheric and relies too much on jump scares; and, worst of all, the story just isn't that interesting or remarkable, and there are a number of elements taken from past werewolf movies that will make you wish you were watching one of those instead. While the director's cut is certainly the version to watch, as it fixes some problems, it never reaches its potential, and will never be remembered in the same way as the 1941 original. If you're a fan of that movie, or of werewolves and Gothic horror in general, give it a watch, but don't expect anything amazing.