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Part 3 – The film begins with someone opening an important-looking medical book and looking at the definition of “lycanthropy”, which is described as a mental illness in which a person believes him or herself to be a wolf. This is the first time in a Universal horror film that a psychological explanation for monstrosity is used. Dracula was a purely supernatural monster and the Frankenstein monster was created by scientific means. But Siodmak introduces the idea that “the monster” might just be someone believing they are a monster.

Lawrence (Larry) Talbot is the second son of Sir John Talbot of Talbot Castle. Siodmak introduces another psychological element to the story by letting us know that Larry and Sir John have had problems in their relationship in the past. Larry has only returned because now that his older brother is dead he is the heir to the castle and the title when his father dies.

Sir John is an astronomer and his son an engineer so they share an interest in the new telescope Sir John has just had delivered. In the next excerpt, we see that while testing the refractor of the telescope Larry accidentally looks into the bedroom of a local woman from the village.

Part 4 – Recall that in Dracula, Dracula enters the bedrooms of women he is going to attack at night while they are asleep, and also that in Frankenstein the monster attacks Elizabeth on the day of her wedding in a bedroom where she is getting dressed. Larry has “invaded” Gwen’s bedroom with his telescope. Accident it may be, but it is actually a crime in many countries to do this. It is called being a “peeping Tom” and the maximum penalty for committing this act in the United States is six months in jail. More obviously, Larry should simply not be doing this because it is wrong, yet he seems to feel entitled to invade her privacy…perhaps because he is the son of the local nobleman? He learns that she lives above her father’s antique shop and goes there the next day.

He isn’t interested in antiques or werewolves, just this attractive young woman. However, he chooses a walking stick to purchase just to make her happy. It happens to be a wolf’s head walking stick with a pentagram. More importantly, it is made of silver (which we learn later in the film is the only thing that can kill a werewolf). I myself have a wolf’s head walking stick (see my video lecture) because…well… you never know.

Larry listens to Gwen recite the poem :

Part 5 – Gwendolyn uses a trick many intelligent women have used when they go out with a man they do not know well for the first time. She invites her friend, Jenny, to join them. This isn’t what Larry hoped for, but he takes both women to the gypsy camp to have their fortunes read. Once there they meet the gypsy, Bela, who is played by none other than the great Bela Lugosi (who has sadly been reduced from playing star roles to playing second-tier characters).

As Jenny goes into Bela’s trailer, Larry suggests that Gwendolyn take a walk with him. I believe the look she gives him is something we have never really seen before in a horror film. Gwendolyn was played by Evelyn Ankers who was a considerably more talented actress than any who played female leads in any of the Dracula or Frankenstein films (except for the wonderful Gloria Holden who played Dracula’s daughter). 

Part 6 – For Gwendolyn, the consequences of her actions are that she blames herself for Jenny’s death and so do some of the villagers, including Jenny’s mother. Larry’s entrance and angry demand to hear what more the women have to say obviously frightens them, but the fear is not just because Larry is a big angry man with a heavy walking stick. It is one thing to make remarks about an antique dealer’s daughter, it is quite another to make those same remarks about the son of the local nobleman. Just as no one in the village where his father was the Baron dared to directly accuse Dr. Frankenstein of wrongdoing, neither can anyone really accuse Larry in the village where Sir John is obviously the richest and most powerful man in the village. But Siodmak would seem to be suggesting that the reason Jenny died was because Larry failed to carry out his duties as her protector. Having taken both the young women into the forest, Larry was also supposed to protect both of them. Instead, because he was off with Gwendolyn trying to develop a forbidden romance, Jenny was left alone and unprotected with Bela.

Part 7 – Sir John is obviously increasingly worried about his son, but is also unwilling to believe any “nonsense about werewolves”. There is in Sir John a streak of that particularly English cruelty fathers have towards their sons that makes them judge their offspring’s troubles as arising from a lack of “character”. Sons should “man up” to their problems and not be indulged. This is especially cruel because Sir John truly does believe his son is suffering from mental illness but is completely unwilling to take the doctor’s advice about how to treat the problem. Sir John believes if Larry is confronted with clear evidence that there is a real wolf stalking the village, he will understand that he has just imagined that he is a werewolf. But if the mentally ill were so easily cured we would not have hospitals full of them. Besides, we know that Larry is perfectly sane. He is a real werewolf, not an imaginary one.

Part 8 – What makes The Wolf Man special is that it emphasizes character development and psychology in a way horror films had not done previously. Unlike Frankenstein, which was about the great mysteries of life and death, man and God, The Wolf Man, as I said at the beginning of the lecture, is about a rather ordinary man trapped in an extraordinary tragedy. A son tried to please his father, but when he genuinely needs his father’s understanding he finds that his father strangely cold (the same problem they have had all along). His father is disappointed in him and considers his problem to be a failure of character. In other words, the story is much closer to being like those of our own troubled ordinary family lives than any other horror film Universal had yet made. The story is also about a love affair that never really happens and should not happen in any case. Gwen is already engaged to be married and so even her feelings for Larry are “illicit” (forbidden by law, rules, or custom). Illicit or not, Gwen’s feelings for Larry, a combination of love, but also sympathy and even pity, are strong enough to make her go searching for him in the woods at night. Exactly as Maleva warned, Gwen does not find Larry, the werewolf he has become finds her! Whatever feelings he may have had for Gwen are meaningless because no trace of the man “Larry” remains in control to stop him from killing her. He is as helpless to stop himself from killing as Bela was.