Sightlines · reception

How The Wolf Man was received

1941 · George Waggner · The Wolf Man on Sightlines

The arc

A solid hit for Universal in 1941 that spawned a Wolf Man series. Over the decades it has been reappraised as the definitive werewolf picture, and Lon Chaney Jr.'s sad, sympathetic Larry Talbot is now seen as its heart.

What’s debated

Is it the definitive werewolf movie, or is Universal's own The Werewolf of London (1935) the weirder, better one? And does the film's portrayal of its Romani characters as the source of the curse hold up?

Its footprint

'Even a man who is pure in heart...' gets quoted everywhere as if it were folklore, and Jack Pierce's hairy, wolf-faced look became the default werewolf image. The silver-and-full-moon rules it set down still turn up in werewolf fiction.

Where it stands

A Universal Monsters cornerstone and a 'you must have seen this' for horror fans.

Did you know? The rhyme everyone quotes ('Even a man who is pure in heart...') isn't old folklore. Screenwriter Curt Siodmak wrote it for the film.