Wolfman Chronicles

As a life long horror fan documentaries such as this are of great interest to me. I did feel that this could have been better. I know that most of the films featured are from the 1930's and 40's but the quality of the prints, including those of newer movies, is generally very poor. Lon Chaney Jr will always be best known for playing The Wolf Man and rightfully so he gets plenty of coverage here. Sadly a lot of it is some of his more obscure roles, a Mexican movie and some TV show. Whist some less well known films are featured there is barely anything more than a mention of the likes of The Howling or An American Werewolf, plus The Werewolf of Washington or Legend of the Werewolf get no mention at all. One other thing that I did not like was the amount of time given to films such as The Ape Man or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which are not werewolf movies. Chronicles is a fairly enjoyable 57 minutes for fans of classic horror but like I said could be better.

This is a documentary on the history of werewolves in the cinema. It contains clips and trailers from several rare films. I especially enjoyed the trailer for "The Beast Must Die". There's also a hilarious clip of Bela Lugosi in "The Ape Man". If your a fan of werewolf movies, you'll enjoy this.

While this video was released in the nineties, I believe this documentary was actually produced in the early eighties -- that's the only time period it covers, anyway. It begins by going through Lon Chaney Jr's career as the Wolf Man, not only in his famous Universal movies but also his later, more embarrassing appearances in "La Casa Del Terror" and "Route 66". It also has an audio interview with Lon Chaney, and I think that's actually the only interview in the whole documentary, which consists pretty much of trailers, clips, stills, and an informative narration from Ted Newsom.

Anyway, it then goes back in time and covers "Werewolf of London" and most other werewolf movies from the forties -- "The Mad Monster", "The Undying Monster", "Return of the Vampire" and "Cry of the Werewolf". It's thorough to say the least, as far as the American movies are concerned anyway. We then move on to the fifties and cover both "The Werewolf" (1957), and the American Internation Pictures movies ("I Was A Teenage Werewolf" and "How To Make A Monster"). It also covers movies with similar themes, such as "The Ape Man" and the "Jekyll and Hyde" series, including of course the "Daughter of Dr Jekyll" which actually was about a werewolf.

On to the sixties and we see clips from Hammer's "Curse of the Werewolf" and the infamous B-movie "Lycanthropus" ("Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory"). Then there's a quick segment on Jacinto Molina, with clips from "La Marca del Hombre-lobo" and "La Noche De Walpurgis", but this is where things start to get a bit lazy -- we briefly take a look at "Werewolves on Wheels" and "The Beast Must Die", and that's about it for the seventies. Even "The Howling" and "American Werewolf" are mentioned only very briefly at the end. Ah, well ...

For the most part this documentary is excellent, and I'd even go so far as to say this is the definitive video guide to American werewolf movies from 1935 to the late sixties, but it could have done with more detail on movies after that. It's definitely worth a look, though.