Werewolf of London: Why Did Wolf Man Overshadow This Classic Monster?

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The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of Shape-Shifting Beings: https://amzn.to/3GlUhPi

My Uncle Carl Laemmle started Universal Studios, and many of my relatives worked there making movies. We’ve talked about Universal werewolves before, and we’ve talked about Jack Pierce before, but we have not yet talked about Jack Pierce’s first werewolf movie at Universal. This movie often gets overlooked in the Universal monster canon, but it’s important. It’s the first ever mainstream, Hollywood werewolf movie.

Werewolf of London was a 1935 horror film with screenplay by John Colton and directed by Stuart Walker. The film stars Henry Hull, Warner Oland, and Valerie Hobson. Werewolf of London follows a botanist named Wilfred Glendon who is bitten by a werewolf while on an excursion in Tibet, although he doesn’t know it’s a werewolf that did it at first. He’s warned about the dangers of being bitten by a werewolf, but doesn’t believe it’s a problem for him because why would it be?

Henry Hull almost wasn't the lead in this film - the two leads almost went to Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi first! Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out with their schedules, but if it had worked out with Boris and Bela, I have no doubt we’d talk about this movie as the core werewolf in the Universal Monster canon.

There are many reasons this movie gets looked over in favor of 1941's Wolf Man, but that doesn’t mean this movie isn’t worth watching. It totally is. It established pretty much all the core werewolf rules that Universal followed in later movies, and set the scene for every other werewolf movie as well.

This week, my Universally Mini on Patreon has more that didn’t make this video including some connections to Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde and the modern day item this movie may have invented?! And after that, you should go watch my Wolf Man video where I told some pretty solid behind-the-scenes stories … like how Evelyn Ankers almost died a few times.

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Antonia Carlotta
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