Homework Movie - The Wolf Man (1940)

The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney, Jr. is one of the Universal Pictures legendary monster movies from the 1940's. As a morality tale of promiscuity, this movie begins with a young man returning home to live and then he takes notice of a woman that is already betrothed to another. After finding this out, Larry still continues to pursue her even after being attacked by a wolf, stirring up panic in the gypsy camp that foretold of danger.

I enjoy the classic horror films when they began to use special FX makeup because they were so primitive and yet they still horrified people of the day because it was something they had never seen before, and only read about. Noticing the different camera setups for the transformation is something that nowadays we see because we are so tech savvy that it's obvious. Although there are only a handful of scenes with the monster makeup, they really used them the their advantage and were careful to only have one or maybe two others in the scene with the Wolf Man.

Of the early morality tales, The Wolf Man was the least upfront about the sexuality that is the nature of the beast. With Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Spencer Tracey was overly devious when it came to women. In the movie Cat People, Irene Reed was afraid of stories from her home culture about turning into a cat person once intimate with a man. These were warnings to young people to keep from being promiscuous out of marriage.

Homework Movie - Bride of Frankeistein - James Whale

Continuing on the Universal franchise, Bride of Frankenstein follows the monster back into the village to find Doctor Frankenstein in order to create a companion for his original creation so they can live together outside of the regular world's way. Boris Karloff in this movie plays the Monster for his second time of three movies, with only the House of Frankenstein made in 1944 being his only in the series where he's not the monster. I was impressed to see that he was taught to speak in the role this go around, since the first Frankenstein all he did was grunt for the most part.

With only four years separating releases of these titles, the advances in makeup FX was noticeable to me as that's something I look at when watching a horror movie now. The Bride had smaller but still noticeable scarring on her neck where the good doctor operated on her that didn't look fake, but like someone skilled made careful cuts to keep the skin in tact and easily reapplied.

Something that is fascinating to me is that this was a pre-code horror movie, as were much of Universal's films at the time. Horror movies didn't get much Code attention until sound was added because the terrified screams and the chilling soundtrack made the audiences squeamish. The other movies out during this time that showed graphic violence and sexual undertones got more attention up to that point.

Comparing this movie to the clips from class, I reviewed The Island of Lost Souls again at home to get a full feeling of Dr. Moreau's, played extraordinarily creepy by Charles Laughton. Of the two doctors, there was a lot more remorse for his wrongdoings out of Frankenstein in Bride than Moreau had up to his demise. It was only through The Monster's urging did Dr. Frankenstein agree to create another so hideous to keep him company.

I did enjoy both as I could watch them more than once and still find new things in each movie. There wasn't an over stylized or graphic violence to either movie and what violence there was is now considered tame in comparison to today's gore for the sake of gore films. Back in the days of the first screenings of these films, however, the story might have been different.