31 Days of Horror. Day 3: The Wolf Man

Every year we have a tradition in the Forto house where we celebrate the greatest month of the year, October, with scare your socks off, hide under the covers, turn on all the lights, sleep with one eye open, fright fest, movie marathon every night of the month! We call it 31 Days of Horror.

: 31 Days of Horror: The Wolfman

Day 3 Movie: The Wolfman (1941)

The Wolfman is one of the classics in the old style horror genre. I love this stuff. I love watching the Classics like Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Dracula. With the budget of today’s movies reaching millions– and the 2010 version of The Wofman costing 150 million (and only brought in 61 million to date) there is a reason why they don’t make movies like they used to.

Fun Facts:

Lon Chaney Jr.‘s make-up took six hours to apply, and three hours to get off.

Shooting lasted from October 27-November 25, 1941, with a December 12 release. This is interesting in that today movies can sometimes take years to make!

The Wolfman battled a bear in one scene but unfortunately the bear ran away during filming. What few scenes were filmed were put into the theatrical trailer.

The “wolf” that Larry Talbot fights with was Lon Chaney Jr.’s own German Shepherd.

Universal originally planned the project for it’s horror superstar, Boris Karloff, who played “the Monster” in Frankenstein.

Plot: Upon the death of his brother, Larry Talbot returns from America to his ancestral home in Wales. He visits a gypsy camp with village girl Jenny Williams, who is attacked by Bela, a gypsy who has turned into a werewolf. Larry kills the werewolf but is bitten during the fight. Bela’s mother tells him that this will cause him to become a werewolf at each full moon. Larry confesses his plight to his unbelieving father, Sir John, who then joins the villagers in a hunt for the wolf. Larry, transformed by the full moon, heads for the forest and a fateful meeting with both Sir John and Gwen.

What is your favorite scary an/or Halloween movie? I would love to hear from you!