Director: Joe Johnston
Writers: Andrew Kevin Walker, David Self
Stars: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt
Get it from Amazon: https://amzn.to/2JTTA3y
We start out with the classic Universal Studios logo from the 1940’s just modernized a bit. We get the famous poem again before anything else:
Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the moon is pure and bright.
This takes place in 1891. A man is hunting in the woods and is viciously attacked by a werewolf. Credits roll.
Gwen shows up at Lawrence’s theater, and she explains that Larry’s brother Ben has disappeared and he needs to come home. Larry is a world-famous Shakespearean actor (who gives a very lackluster performance in the scene we get to see), and doesn’t want to be bothered with his brother’s disappearance. Still, Larry gives in and takes the train back home. A stranger on the train (Max Von Sydow) gives him a silver-tipped sword cane with a wolf’s head for a handle.
He goes to his father’s house in Blackmoor, a huge but messy old place that isn’t well maintained. His father explains that Ben’s body had been found the previous day. The men in the village tell a story from twenty-five years ago that involved similar deaths. They beat that creature with silver bullets. Larry makes a few enemies at the local bar when he overhears them talking about his family in a negative light.
That evening, Larry and his father (Anthony Hopkins) talk about family history, and it’s clear that the two of them have had disagreements in the past. Sir John is weird to say the least, and gives the impression of the onset of some kind of mild mental illness. Larry takes a medallion from his brother’s body and tracks it to the local gypsy camp. While there, the camp is attacked by a werewolf. Lots of people die violently and very quickly. Larry is bitten, but the townspeople drive off the monster before it kills him.
Larry recovers fairly quickly. He talks to Singh, the family servant, and learned that he has silver bullets in his room… just in case.
The detective from Scotland Yard shows up to interview Larry. The inspector is not convinced that it was an animal; he suspects the work of a lunatic. The local villagers come to arrest Larry; they think he’s a werewolf. Of course, Larry and Sir John deny this. This is odd, as there were survivors who literally watched the werewolf attack Larry; it should be obvious that they aren’t the same person. Still, Larry’s senses are getting more acute.
That night, Larry notices that his wound is completely gone and he starts to feel funny. He tells Gwen to leave town right away as it’s not safe here. He seems to sense what’s going to happen. The next day, the townspeople start arming themselves with silver. Samson the dog suddenly acts afraid of Larry.
Sir John sneaks out in the dark, and Larry follows him to his mother’s crypt. He finds a chair with metal restraints in the basement of the crypt. They both start the change, but Sir John locks himself inside the crypt, leaving Larry to massacre the villagers. The howling fills the village, and everyone hears it.
The villagers catch up to him quickly, but things don’t go as they expect. He kills them all. The inspector shows up and finds nothing but bodies. Larry wakes up in the morning as his father tells him he’s done terrible things. The villagers chase him down and take him prisoner with Air John’s help. Sir John is using Larry to throw the police off his own trail. Larry is sent to the sanitarium, where he’s tortured and tormented severely.
Sir John visits Lawrence in his cell and explains how he contracted the disease. He explains everything. He explains why he killed Larry’s mother and his brother, Ben, too. Sir John is starting to really embrace what he is.
The doctor at the asylum ties Larry to a chair in the surgical theater in front of dozens of medical students. They want to see what happens when this “mentally unstable man” sees the full moon rise. The doctor thinks nothing will happen. The doctor is in for a surprise, as Talbot changes for real. He kills a bunch of doctors and then escapes into downtown London. The inspector chases the werewolf across the rooftops but finally loses him in the city.
He wakes up in Gwen’s shop and tells her everything. She wants him to stay there in London with her, but he insists on going back to Talbot Hall. The police show up and take Gwen away for her own protection. As Larry roams the streets of London, Gwen starts researching Lycanthropism.
Larry eventually makes his way back home; he walks for about a month. In the meantime, Gwen meets up with Maleva the gypsy, who says Gwen must “set him free.” Father and son confront each other. They both start to change at the same time. They fight epically, but the young wolf wins just as Gwen and the inspector shows up. Gwen runs off with the werewolf hot on her heels, and the inspector limps behind them, wounded. After much angst, she finally shoots Lawrence in the heart with a silver bullet.
The inspector catches up, holding his still-bleeding chest wound and sees what has occurred.
Commentary
This movie looks great. The scenery, sets, and costumes are perfect at setting the mood.
In the original movie, Larry Talbot seemed like a normal guy thrown into a bad situation. This Larry is just creepy, weird, and moody right from the beginning. In the original, Sir John Talbot was respectable, intelligent, reasonable, and very helpful. In this one, Anthony Hopkins is weird and malevolent, even before we find out he’s the werewolf. Both characters were over-the-top weird from the get-go, and I think that hurts the movie, since you can’t really relate to either of them.
I find it hard to believe that of the hundred or so people the werewolf kills in this movie, that they all died. No one was simply wounded to carry on the legacy? Obviously, the inspector is going to be having an interesting time next month, but can he be the only one?
This kind of flopped at the box office, and Universal’s return to the classic monsters failed on this first attempt. I suspect a lot of that falls on Benicio Del Toro, whom I totally thought was miscast. It looked great, but most of the parts were too eccentric and too overacted. The effects were great, the scenery was great, the acting was not.