 |
| Claude
Rains, Lon Chaney, Jr., Ralph Bellamy, Bela Lugosi |
|
 |
Anamorphic
widescreen |
|
Dolby Digital
5.1 |
|
DTS |
|
 |
Trailer(s) |
|
Featurette(s) |
|
Documentary |
|
Audio commentary
|
|
Deleted scenes
|
|
Concept art
/ storyboards |
|
Multi-angle
feature |
|
|
|
|
Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya):
Whoever is bitten by a werewolf and lives becomes a werewolf himself.
Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr): Ah, quit handing me that.
You're just wasting your time.
Maleva: The wolf bit you, didn't it?
Larry Talbot: Yeah. Yeah it did!
When a man is attacked by a werewolf,
he finds to his horror that he now becomes one himself under a full
moon.
 The
Wolf Man wasn't the first horror movie about lycanthropy, but
its huge success, coming at the very end of Universal's ten-year
reign of the horror movie genre, made sure that it would firmly
establish the template for werewolf movies indefinitely. Lon Chaney
Jr., son of the legendary master of disguise who created such unsettling
disfigurements for his appearances in silent horro films, is remarkable
more for his fragile, sensitive performance than for the also impressive
transformations he endures. The intended metphor survives to this
very day, with the werewolf's behavior symbolic for the soft-spoken
protagonist's repressed id. The narrative is a little schematic
but still serviceable, including the required colorful gypsy characters
and fog-shrouded forest sets. It remains an endeavor lacking in
the poetry that charactersized the Universal horror movies of the
early 1930s, but it's still an enduring classic of its own kind. |
|
 |
 |
|
|
The eight movies that were selected
as Universal's 'Classic Monster Collection' were released on Region
1 DVD some years ago, but have since gone out of print and have
been put on moratorium by Universal, awaiting a re-release.
These same eight titles were recently released on DVD for Region
2 and 4, available both separately and as part of an eight-disc
box set. The R2/4 release of Dracula doesn't include the
Spanish version of the film, but otherwise there are no major differences
with the original Region 1 versions.
The fullscreen image is framed
at its original aspect ratio of approx. 1.33:1. The transfer itself
is good enough, with sufficient detail and good contrast. But the
source print itself is full of minor damage, yielding an image that
is not only distractingly filled with white specks and minute video
noise, but that also tends to be soft.
The mono sound mix is about as good as it can be expected, without
too much distortion and with fully intelligible dialogues.
The extras in this release are up
to the high standards set by the other releases in the Classic Monster
Collection. The 50-minute documentary Monster By Moonlight
is more about the werewolf movie genre and its history in general
than it is about the specific production history of The Wolf
Man itself. It's hosted by John Landis, who was clearly chosen
due to the renown of his own An American Werewolf in London,
but whose presence adds little to the feature. More specific details
about the movie itself can be gleaned from the excellent audio
commentary track by film historian Tom Weaving. His comments
are rarely screen-specific, but they cover a wide range of topics
related to the film's production history. A six-minute animated
gallery houses poster designs and publicity stills, accompanied
by a selection of cues from the score. The theatrical trailer
rounds out these solid extras.Static menu screens are accompanied
by cues from the orchestral score.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
December 22, 2002
Click
here for IMDB info on The
Wolf Man.
Click here
to return to the front page.
|
|
| |
