Monster by Moonlight! The Immortal Saga of 'The Wolf Man' (1999) - full transcript

There have been many werewolves
in literature and film,

but the defining popular image
of the classic werewolf

comes from Universal's The Wolf Man,
starring Lon Chaney.

This is a replica of the wolf's-head cane
that's featured prominently in the film.

Unlike the original prop,
this one's made of genuine silver,

so you could actually kill a real werewolf.

The rules and regulations surrounding
werewolves and the wolf man

owe less to folklore
than to the fertile imagination

of screenwriter Curt Siodmak,
who took over an abandoned project

once intended for Boris Karloff
and made it his own.

Lon Chaney also put his uniquely
personal imprint on the character.



The wolf man is the only
classic Universal monster

played by one actor alone
over a series of five films.

lnterested in learning more? Then grab
your wolfbane, your silver-tipped cane,

and come along with me
into the Universal vaults,

where we'll uncover the secrets
of a monster by moonlight.

There's an old poem:
''Even a man who is pure in heart

And says his prayers by night,

May become a wolf
when the wolfbane blooms

And the autumn moon is bright.''

- So you know that one, too, huh?
- Of course.

Everyone knows about werewolves.

Legends about people
who cross the boundary

between the human and the animal
are as old as recorded history.

Primitive cultures often projected human
characteristics onto the animal world,



resulting in a rich folklore
of shape-shifting tricksters,

monstrous changelings and even
the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

ln Victorian times, real human oddities
displaying unusual body hair

were frequently presented to the public
as sideshow attractions,

missing links between modern civilisation
and its shadowy animalistic past.

Wolf people, dog boys
and other fantastic beings

became objects of dark fascination
for a public both disturbed and attracted

by the theories of Charles Darwin.

ln European folklore,

the idea of the werewolf was intimately
linked with the legend of the vampire.

The Victorian novelist Bram Stoker,

a contemporary of both
Charles Darwin and P T Barnum,

combined both legends in the title
character of his classic novel Dracula.

Listen to them.

Children of the night.

What music they make.

Dracula's affinity for wolves went
far beyond mere musical appreciation.

Did you see the look on his face?
Like a wild animal!

Wild animal? Like a madman!

What's that, running across the lawn?
Looks like a huge dog!

Or a wolf?

ln Dracula, the studio
was extremely reticent

in depicting human
animal transformations,

which occurred only
in discreet cutaways, if shown at all.

But following the success
of Universal's Frankenstein,

Hollywood woke up to the commercial
potential of spectacular horror make-ups,

the more beastly the better.

lsland of Lost Souls featured a whole
stampeding herd of animal people,

including Bela Lugosi
as the Sayer of the Law.

You made us in the house of pain.

You made us ''thing''.

Not man.

Not beast.

Part-man, part-beast.

- Thing.
- Thing. Thing.

- Part-man.
- Part-beast.

Eager to develop a new project
for its horror superstar, Boris Karloff,

Universal toyed with a screen story
called ''The Wolf Man'' by Robert Florey,

a French émigré director

deeply committed to the principles
of European expressionism.

ln Florey's striking treatment,
set in the Bavarian Alps,

Christoph, a boy kidnapped and raised by
wolves who had slaughtered his family,

becomes a werewolf upon his rescue.

But the ensuing story, including his
animal transformation in a confessional,

was considered too extreme
by Universal executives,

who worried about the reaction
of the Catholic Church.

Werewolf of London,
produced by Universal in 1935,

originally began as a variation
of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,

but soon began sprouting aspects
of Florey's ''Wolf Man''.

lt also took liberal inspiration from
James Whale's The lnvisible Man,

especially in the person
of a busybody landlady

who lets rooms to a scientific monster.

What would you say if l were
to tell you that it was possible

for a man to turn into a werewolf?

l'd say l was Little Red Riding Hood.

The noted stage actor Henry Hull
played Dr Wilfred Glendon,

an English botanist who becomes
infected with the curse of the full moon

during a research expedition to Tibet.

The original werewolf, Dr Yogami,
played by Warner Oland,

follows Glendon to London
in pursuit of the rare plant

that can provide
a temporary antidote for lycanthropy.

Yogami, you brought this on me.

That night in Tibet.

Sorry l can't share this with you.

Remember this, Dr Glendon:

the werewolf instinctively
seeks to kill the thing it loves best.

Once more concerned about the censors,
the studio took pains to make sure

that the werewolf transformations
weren't too horrifying or too hairy.

A very different make-up.
A much more subtle make-up.

l've heard people describe it
as the Elvis werewolf,

because he had this little widow's peak
and these sideburn things.

l did see a picture once
that was supposed to have been

a make-up test for
the werewolf of London.

lt looked much more like the wolf man,
the Lon Chaney Junior make-up.

lt was a much hairier face
and a kind of a dog snout.

And l don't know why they changed it.
lt was probably some executive.

Or maybe they were afraid.
Maybe they thought it was too much.

You gotta pull back.
That happens to me sometimes.

The make-up artist who created
the werewolf of London was Jack Pierce,

the man responsible for all
of Universal's classic monsters.

He got his start at Universal
when silent superstar Lon Chaney,

the legendary ''man of a thousand faces''
who created all of his own make-ups,

walked off the set of the lavish
costume drama The Man Who Laughs.

The task of creating a masklike grin
for actor Conrad Veidt fell to Pierce,

who quickly became Universal's
official sculptor of living gargoyles.

Chaney had a son named Creighton
who also wanted to act,

but his father strenuously
opposed the idea.

After the older Chaney's untimely death,

Creighton began acting under his own
name and later, under studio pressure,

as Lon Chaney Junior.

Chaney scored an acting triumph

in the film version
of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

But the role of
the simple-minded, hulking Lennie

typecast him in other hulking roles.

At Universal, ''hulking'' meant
one thing and one thing only:

monsters.

ln Ghost of Frankenstein, Chaney proved
he could fill Boris Karloff's shoes -

at least in the wardrobe sense.

But the following year, Universal
gave Chaney his own signature role

that would complete the studio's stable
of classic horror characters:

Larry Talbot, aka the wolf man.

The title's called The Wolf Man. But that's
not our title - it belongs to Boris Karloff.

But he cannot play in it
because he has another assignment.

But we have Lon Chaney.

Chaney was backed up
by a distinguished cast,

including Claude Rains, Ralph Bellamy,

Evelyn Ankers, Patric Knowles,

Bela Lugosi and, in a part that would
become her own signature screen role,

Maria Ouspenskaya
as Maleva, the Gypsy crone.

Chaney's most dramatic support
didn't come from another actor,

but rather from
make-up artist Jack Pierce,

who contributed one of
his most inspired creations.

Again, Lon Chaney Junior
had that thankless job

of sitting in the make-up chair and having
all these torturous things put on him.

lt's funny, the things l read about Pierce.

He would say he didn't like
using rubber pieces.

He would fabricate things out of his kit,
and that was how the make-up was done.

But the wolf man has a rubber nose.

l think it was made by Ellis Burman Sr,
who made rubber props at the time.

So the wolf man's snout
was a nose piece that came like this.

And you can very clearly see
the edges of it through most of the film.

Because he used materials
much less flexible

than those make-up artists employ today,

Pierce didn't try to create
realistic wolf features,

which would have been stiff
and unconvincing.

Rather, he used small appliances which
only suggested a wolf's face and snout,

while allowing Chaney to retain
facial mobility and expression.

The result was uniquely frightening.

The hair was yak hair, l believe,
which is hair that we still use today.

lt's a nice coarse hair,
which was laid onto his face.

You would paint spirit gum onto the face,
with hunks of this hair -

lay it on, cut if off, keep laboriously
building up layers of hair,

as they would do beards
in those days as well.

Then he would singe the hair with a hot
curling iron - he would dress it first,

and then heat up the iron too much and
singe it to give it more of an animal look.

He had rubber gloves that had hair on,
and the rubber feet that he wore as well.

And the teeth, of course, the lower teeth.

lt had to be
an uncomfortable make-up to wear.

The spirit gum and the coarse hair glued
to your face is not a comfortable thing.

l know. l've made myself up
like that many times.

And l know that Pierce and Chaney
would butt heads somewhat.

Lon Chaney Junior was
a much bigger man than Jack Pierce,

and l'm sure he didn't like
sitting in the chair.

ln fact, l've seen a photo of him making
a fist like he was gonna punch Jack.

And l'm sure he really felt
like that many times.

l went to the commissary
and poor Lon Chaney was down there.

Took him six hours to put on the make-up
and three hours to take it off.

He was sitting at a little table by himself.

And he glowered at me
and wanted to kill me.

l said ''Don't kill a poor rat
who just does his job.''

''Why don't you kill Jack Pierce who made
you into a wolf man? Leave me alone.''

Something that fascinated me
about werewolf movies,

or even ''Jekyll and Hyde'' films,
was the transformation.

And many times what they did in
those days was a series of lap dissolves.

Chaney Junior would have to sit
in the same place -

he was fortunately in a chair
when you saw the big transformation -

you would put a little bit of make-up on,
photograph a little bit of the scene,

add a bit more make-up,
photograph a bit more,

and overlap the two pieces of film.
They'd fade out one and fade in the other.

So he would always move a little bit.

They perfected it later on
in some of the later movies.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
had a nice one.

He's in the hospital bed
and his head is on a pillow.

l'm sure it was a plaster pillow
that he could fit perfectly in

like a mould of the back of his head.

And l understand they actually used

a big-format still camera,
and they had a front view and a side view,

and they actually traced a profile
to try to make sure he lined up better.

l think Pierce's downfall -
and l think this is such a sad story,

and it's something that
l learned from Jack's mistakes -

was that he didn't progress
with the times.

He was continuing to do
these out-of-the-kit make-ups

when at other studios people
were doing make-ups with new materials.

They were making
foam-rubber appliances.

The Wizard of Oz was one of the first
foam-rubber-appliance films.

lt sped up the process
and it kept the continuity better.

lt was more comfortable for the actors
and took a lot less time to make them up.

Pierce would continue to use the same
cotton and collodion techniques.

He eventually was booted out,
like Dr Pretorius, out of the studio.

After he created these films
that helped save that studio,

he was very unceremoniously fired.

And then they brought in Bud Westmore
to be the department head

who, in Abbott & Costello
Meet Frankenstein, used foam rubber.

They used a foam-rubber nose
for Chaney Junior,

they used a foam-rubber forehead, from
under the brow to the top of the head,

for Glenn Strange, the monster,

and greatly sped up
the whole make-up process.

And l always felt that Jack
was unrecognised for most of his life.

Even though he got that credit on the film,
l felt he didn't get the credit he deserved,

in the public's eyes.

But he kept this amazing scrapbook
that had every letter ever sent to him,

and all these articles
that were done on him.

And it gave me a different impression.
He was recognised in his time.

There were articles about him
calling him this make-up genius.

But unfortunately he had
that sad departure from the studio

and that must have been
a very difficult time for Jack,

to have been the head of that department
and the make-up god at that studio

and all of a sudden
to be looking for work.

Screenwriter Curt Siodmak
used only the title

of Robert Florey's original
''Wolf Man'' treatment,

and created his own werewolf mythology,

very little of which
was based on actual folklore.

Basically, all of my pictures have
some scientific background, somewhere,

which makes them authentic.
That's why they are still alive today.

Siodmak, who had fled Hitler's Germany,
knew full well the real-world significance

of people marked for death
with the sign of a star.

What's the matter?

l can't tell you anything tonight.

Come back tomorrow.

What did you see? Something evil?

No, no. Now go away.

Go quickly!

- Go!
- Yes!

Yes, l'm going!

Siodmak was a German Jew
who had had a very successful career,

both as a science-fiction author
and as a scriptwriter,

in Germany up until 1933,

and, of course, with the advent
of Hitler, had to leave.

He spent several years literally on the run.

This gave him an appreciation of the fact
that the world is a very unsettling place,

a place where a very stable existence
can suddenly turn into total chaos,

which is exactly what happened to him.

l'm sick of the whole thing.
l'm getting outta here!

Whoever is bitten by a werewolf and lives

becomes a werewolf himself.

This was my wolf-man fate.

Wolf-man fate... You might go out of your
house and somebody hits you with a car.

lf you go out one minute later,
nothing happens to you.

Qué será, será. We don't know
what is going to happen to us.

l think this very much influenced his work
then when he came to the United States

and began working in Hollywood,
and specifically for Universal,

and specialised then
in science fiction and horror films.

And when he was given the assignment
to write The Wolf Man,

l think he really felt
that this was his material.

When the moon comes up, Larry Talbot -
the name l gave the wolf man -

knows he has to become a murderer.

ln the Greek tragedies
the gods tell a man his fate.

So it is constructed, by chance -
l didn't know it - like a Greek tragedy.

His autobiography is...

the German title is called
''Under Wolf People''.

And that refers to the Germans -

not all Germans,
but the Germans who then became Nazis,

who turned from
very likable people into monsters.

ln Siodmak's original script,
the transformations were kept ambiguous

and it was never clear whether
Larry Talbot really turned into a wolf

or just imagined he did.

Now, you asked me if l believe
a man can become a wolf.

lf you mean ''Can he take on the physical
traits of an animal?'', no, it's fantastic.

However, l do believe that most anything
can happen to a man in his own mind.

Fortunately for monster fans,

the studio ultimately decided
to give the public what it wanted.

lt's a horror film, so he doesn't wanna
beat you over the head with the message.

lndeed, the film takes place in,
really, a never-never land.

There's English gentry
and there's Maria Ouspenskaya,

who is a Gypsy straight out
of Romania somewhere,

and people drive around
in cars that are modern,

and then there's covered wagons...

lt is very much a mixture,
so that it is a never-never land.

Actually, in my original script,
Larry Talbot was an American mechanic

who went to Scotland
to install a telescope.

And they made him the son of a lord.

l couldn't even imagine any worse casting

than casting Lon Chaney Junior

as the son of an English lord,
with his accent.

But they did it, and what can l do?

All of these films were shot on the
Universal back lot in the European village,

which one day would have to
double as a Spanish town,

the next day as a German
and the next day as an English village,

and they'd change it a bit here and there.
So this amorphous quality

definitely has to do with the fact
that it is the Universal back lot.

But l think beyond that, the horror films
were supposed to be very unspecific

in terms of the time in which they played.

lt helped to reinforce the fact that
this world of horror is not of this world.

lt is recognisable as a real place,

and yet things happen there
that are very unreal.

And that's part of the pleasure
in watching these films.

The Wolf Man's impact was
greatly enhanced by topnotch music,

the combined effort of Frank Skinner,
Hans Salter and Charles Previn.

Film-music historian John Morgan
and conductor William Stromberg

recently undertook an ambitious
reconstruction of the original score.

One thing that makes the music
to these horror films stand out

compared to a lot of today's that
you would put in the same kind of budget,

the B-horror film, is it's real music.

They had real composers
that may have not worked on A-budgets,

but they were A-composers
working on B-music budgets.

And because you have a small orchestra
doesn't mean that you stop thinking

or creating or finding ways
of making wonderful music.

Today's music - you find a lot of it
is just a long drone,

or they have clichés
that they rip off from Psycho,

or the same things over and over again.

They don't get into characters,
they don't get into drama or atmosphere.

lt's just a wallpaper put on with a trowel.

But this music for films like
The Wolf Man and all the Universal...

Bride of Frankenstein, of Franz Waxman...
it's real music.

When l'm preparing these scores for our
new recordings, my kids now just love it.

They can sing all the main themes
from all these classic films.

- Tell them how old they are.
- They're just two and four.

And they can sing the intervals
to The Wolf Man.

You could be out there
and they'd go ''Da da daa... wolf man!''

- Don't they?
- That's right.

The Wolf Man theme itself,
the famous three-note motif,

is outlining the tritone.

And in medieval music
it was always the forbidden interval,

and it has a connotation
of the devil's interval,

and composers throughout time
would use it to represent something evil.

Bela's funeral is a great example
of music written for the film,

a very long sequence originally.

Portions of the sequence were cut out.

Apparently there was
a very eerie sequence

with Bela actually watching
the funeral procession.

So the cue is this eight-minute wonderful,
atmospheric piece of music like a dirge.

The music is basically a cantus firmus, a
pedal tone, going through the whole cue,

where he plays with the motifs
on top of this pedal point.

Realising it had killed off
a potentially lucrative new monster,

Universal once more called
on screenwriter Curt Siodmak

to come to the rescue.

Fortunately, being dead
in a Universal horror movie

did not necessarily create story problems.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
was the studio's first pairing

of two classic monster characters
in the same film.

The opening scene,
in which grave robbers

inadvertently raise
Larry Talbot from the dead,

remains one of the most atmospheric
moments in any Universal horror film.

lt looks like he's asleep.

He's alive.

Help! Help!

Not at all happy about
being restored to life,

Larry spends most of the film
desperately seeking assisted suicide.

He wants to die. But he cannot die,
he knows he cannot die,

so he's looking for the man
who knows the secret of life and death.

Well, now l want to die too.
Won't you show me the way?

l can't.

Even Maria Ouspenskaya admits
that Gypsy magic has its limitations,

and recommends that Larry consult
a scientific specialist.

We might be able to cure you.

l only wanna die. That's why l'm here.

lf l ever find peace, l'll find it here.

Now you understand.
Why don't you help me?

Energy which cannot be destroyed
can be transmitted.

Well, if that's the case, then the energies
from my body can be drained off also.

But the plan to siphon off
the wolf man's life energy

undergoes a last-minute change,

and both monsters are restored to their
full power for a titanic wrestling match.

ln the next film, House of Frankenstein,

a frozen wolf man
and Frankenstein monster

are thawed out
by mad scientist Boris Karloff,

who recommends a novel cure
for Larry's curse: a brain transplant.

l want to die.

Only death can bring me release.

You don't have to die, my boy.
You're wrong. l can help you.

Don't kill me. Don't kill me. Don't...

Kill my trusted old assistant?

Why, no. l'm going to repay you
for betraying me.

l'm going to give
that brain of yours a new home.

ln the skull of the Frankenstein monster.

As for you, Strauss, l'm going to
give you the brain of the wolf man.

While waiting for his new body, Larry
is smitten with a beautiful young Gypsy,

who discovers his secret
and takes his cure into her own hands.

Larry's death seemed pretty final,

so when he turned up again in Universal's
follow-up monsterfest, House of Dracula,

no attempt was made
to explain his curious resilience.

But some other things were explained.

Dracula, we learned,
suffered from a rare blood disease.

And the wolf man's problem
wasn't so much the full moon

as pressure on the brain.

This condition, coupled with your belief
that the moon can bring about a change,

accomplishes exactly that.

During the period when your reasoning
processes give way to self-hypnosis,

the glands which govern
your metabolism get out of control.

When this happens, the glands generate
an abnormal supply of certain hormones,

in your case, those which bring about
the physical transformation.

And this time a surgical procedure -

much less invasive
than the one Boris Karloff had in mind -

actually did the trick, and Larry Talbot
was finally relieved of his curse.

Of course, a recovered werewolf
isn't worth very much to a film studio,

so when the time came for
Abbott and Costello to meet the monsters,

Larry's prior rehabilitation
went discreetly unmentioned.

ln half an hour the moon'll rise
and l'll turn into a wolf.

- You and 20 million other guys.
- Listen! l might tear you limb from limb.

- ls that serious?
- He'll murder you.

That's serious.

This time the wolf man
was something of a Good Samaritan.

Having put up with several
nutty brain doctors in the past,

he draws the line at the most dubious
practitioner of them all, Count Dracula.

Played by Bela Lugosi
in his last role for a major studio,

Dracula ends up assisting
in Larry Talbot's long-sought suicide -

though he's not exactly
a willing participant.

ln the half-century since
the wolf man's last screen appearance,

he has inspired countless imitations.

More recent films
have benefited from larger budgets,

wide-screen colour, and highly advanced
make-up and special effects.

But no matter how accomplished
these films are,

there is still only one Larry Talbot.

The way you walked was thorny,

through no fault of your own.

But as the rain enters the soil,

the river enters the sea,

so tears run to a predestinate end.

Your suffering is over.

Now you will find peace for eternity.

The Wolf Man saga was the final addition
to Universal's golden age

of classic horror,
a tradition still revered and celebrated

by generations of film fans
and film professionals.

Especially people of my generation
that grew up with those films on TV,

there's a special place
in their heart for them.

They may not be the best films in
the world, but they're pretty damn good.

And they definitely have inspired
a lot of filmmakers

and a lot of make-up effects people,

and just a lot of strange people
around the world.

As the wolf man,
Larry Talbot only wanted to die,

but somehow the public
just wouldn't allow it.

He came back again and again,
in movie after movie,

was resurrected on television,
in monster magazines, in model kits,

on video cassette and laser disc,
and now on DVD.

lt just goes to prove
you can't keep a good monster down.

But why would you ever want to?

l'm John Landis.