Directed by: Stuart Walker
Written by: John Colton and Robert Harris
Starring: Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Valerie Hobsin
1 hour, 15 min.
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Botanist Wilfred Glendon and his assistant are in Tibet looking for a strange flower that only grows in Tibet and only blooms under the full moon. They meet a priest coming back down from the mountain. This priest warns them not to look for the flower, as they may regret it. They disregard the warning, and proceed. They hear a howling in the distance, and they both have trouble walking, as if some invisible force were holding them back. Glendon spots the elusive flower and heads straight for it. As Glendon gets ready to make a clipping, he’s attacked and bitten by a werewolf, which he stabs. The wolf runs off.
We cut away to his lab in London, where his bite has healed over and left a scar. He’s trying to develop a process for creating artificial moonlight for his plants. His wife is at the door; they have to go to a party.
His wife, Lisa, sees Paul at the party. She and Paul go back a long ways, and Glendon doesn’t like it. He meets Dr. Yogami, who claims to have met him in Tibet. He says the flower requires moonlight to bloom, and his all died. The flower is said to be the antidote for “werewolfery.” Glendon doesn’t believe any of this, but Yogami definitely does. He rubs Glendon’s now-healed arms and tells him that it’s transferred by a bite. He knows more than he’s telling.
Later, Glendon gets the plant to bloom with his artificial moonlight, but also notices that his hand gets all hairy in the moonlight beam. He sticks himself in the hand with the allegedly-antidote plant, and it turns back to normal.
Yogami shows up again, and warns that tonight is the full moon. The antidote is only effective for a few hours, there is no real cure. “The werewolf instinctively seeks to kill the thing it loves best,” he says. His wife and Paul leave for another party, leaving Glendon at home.
That night, sure enough, he turns into a werewolf. More manlike than doglike, he has a very Eddie Munster-Like appearance. He goes after the antidote flowers, but they’re gone; Yogami has stolen them. Meanwhile at the party, they start hearing an animal howling. The werewolf breaks in and scares the lady hosting the party. Everyone just assumes she drank too much, which she did. Instead, the werewolf kills a girl in the street.
The next day, the police start talking about the crime, and Paul chimes up with “It could be a werewolf,” and no one looks at him like he’s insane. He’s heard stories about this sort of thing before, but no one else has. Glendon’s wife knows there is a problem, but he won’t talk about it with her. He goes off and rents a room in a nearby boarding house.
He wolfs up again the next night and kills a girl at the zoo. Yogami goes to the police saying there will be two more murders before this stops for a month. Meanwhile, Glendon goes to his country home to get away from the city. He gets the caretaker to lock him in the tower until morning. Coincidentally, Lisa and Paul stop by the same house. The werewolf sees them together, and in a jealous rage, breaks through the bars and gets out. Paul whacks him with a stick and they run off, but Paul recognizes him.
The next night, the flower is ready to bloom, and Glendon is eagerly preparing. Yogami gets there first and uses the plant. They fight, and halfway through the fight, Glendon changes, but Yogami doesn’t, since he took the antidote. Yogami is killed. Glendon attacks Paul again, then chases after Lisa. The police arrive and shoot Glendon, who dies and reverts to his human self.
Commentary
Glendon has a video phone (or maybe a security camera) in his basement lab, a little unnecessary sci-fi when this was filmed. Paul has one of those annoying little thin mustaches that make all the leading men of the period look alike. Warner Oland played an Asian in this movie, one of many Asian roles for this Sweden-born actor best known for portraying Charlie Chan.
It’s also the first mainstream werewolf movie. Almost all the mythology of werewolves in this movie was made-up, and most later movies copied the rules from this.
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