As Ryan Gosling preps for 'Wolfman', here's remembering Lon Chaney Jr's 1941 cult horror film 'The Wolf Man'
A few hours ago, news broke that Ryan Gosling would be starring in the 'Wolfman' reboot. Penned by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo, the film sees Universal dig deeper into the horror genre by reviving another monster content after 'The Invisible Man'. According to THR, the in-development flick follows the legacy of the iconic 1941 film, 'The Wolf Man' starring Lon Chaney Jr. A reboot of the film was in the works for quite some time now at Universal.
'The Wolf Man' was considered one of those films which had a major impact on Hollywood's depictions of the monster and a classic. It follows Lon as Lawrence 'Larry Talbot', who returns home to Wales to reconcile with his estranged father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains), following the death of his brother. He gets romantically involved with Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), who runs an antique store. Here, Larry purchases a silver-headed walking stick decorated with a wolf.
Over the course of the film, gruesome events follow. Larry gets bitten on the chest by a wolf and this transforms him into a werewolf as he hunts the people around him before being killed by his own father. While the movie ended on a tragic note, it left an impression and the success paved the way for multiple films with the character. Chaney Jr went on to reprise his classic role in four sequels starting off with 'Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man' (1943). Over the years, critics claimed that Chaney Jr's best work was playing Larry Talbot. Dany Roth in a column for SYFY sums up his role accurately: "I've always thought that Lawrence Talbot is the best thing Chaney ever did. I've watched him play the Wolf Man over the course of many movies and his ability to portray the sadness and the defeat of being cursed by the wolf has always impressed me. Monsters are always at their best when there's a bit of sympathy for them, and certainly, that is Chaney's strength."
Directed by George Waggner with the script by Curt Siodmak who also worked on another horror, 'Donovan's Brain', the film boasts of a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with the critic consensus reading: "A handsomely told tale with an affecting performance from Lon Chaney Jr, The Wolf Man remains one of the classics of the Universal horror stable." The 2010 reboot that followed had starred big names in Emily Blunt and Anthony Hopkins but was considered a box office failure and was a huge let-down. Right now, the biggest challenge for Gosling and Universal would be to see if this reboot does justice to the cult classic. Only time will tell. As far as the developments go, the studio is yet to zero in on a director. The site's sources say Gosling essays an anchorman who gets infected and the script felt similar to the tones employed by Jake Gyllenhaal's 'Nightcrawler' and Academy Award-winning film 'Network' (1976) starring Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch.