“For some people, life is very simple,” Claude Rains tells his werewolf-bitten son Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man. “Others of us find that good, bad, right, wrong are many-sided, complex things. We try to see every side. But the more we see, the less sure we are.” Released in 1941, less than a week after the Pearl Harbor attack, the Curt Siodmak-penned, George Waggner-directed film uses werewolf legends as an excuse to put modern minds comfortable living with moral ambiguity into conflict with undeniable evil. It finds modern sophistication and cultured intellects unprepared to deal with a threat that’s already at hand, maybe even under our own skin.
Widely respected scientist Rains resides in a castle overlooking a Welsh town steeped in werewolf lore. Having just lost his eldest son, he’s decided to reunite with his estranged second-born (Chaney), who returns from exile in America. Almost immediately, Chaney strikes up a friendship with a local antique dealer’s daughter (horror fixture Evelyn Ankers) that leaves him behaving halfway between a smitten romantic and a persistent stalker. Accompanying Ankers to a gypsy-led traveling carnival, Chaney fights off and kills a wolf. Or was it a wolf? Further investigation unearths a human corpse at the scene of the attack, and Chaney soon winds up in the grips of uncontrollable urges.” –Keith Phipps, The AV Club
