by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2012 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
Last night Charles and I dug out my box of the Universal
legacy collection of their classic horror films from the 1930’s and 1940’s and
decided to run one for Hallowe’en’en (well, what else do you call the day before Hallowe’en?). Alas, the
one we picked was pretty much a dog: She-Wolf of London, included as a “bonus” in the “Wolf Man” box with
the 1941 The Wolf Man, the 1943 Frankenstein
Meets the Wolf Man and the 1935 The
Werewolf of London (a film I’ve always
thought was underrated and far better than the 1941 reboot, though it would
have been even better if the originally set director and stars — James Whale,
Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi — had made it instead of Stuart Walker, Henry
Hull and Warner Oland). Alas, She-Wolf of London was made in 1946, at the tail end of the original
Universal horror cycle, and is a film so dull that I’ve never managed to sit
through it without falling asleep — not in the 1970’s when I first saw (most
of) it on TV, not later on and certainly not last night. On the plus side, it’s
got those great old-house standing sets from the Universal back lot, lots of
fog machines working in conjunction with the sets to produce the required
Gothic atmosphere, marvelous chiaroscuro cinematography by Maury Gertsman and some surprisingly oblique camera
angles by normally straightforward director (a boy named) Jean Yarbrough. It
also has a personable cast, headed by June Lockhart as heiress Phyllis Allenby,
who fears that she’s fallen victim to the “curse of the Allenbys” — that
periodically members of her family change into werewolves and go out and kill
people randomly. A series of murders is currently being committed by the
so-called “She-Wolf of London” (the film is set at the turn of the last
century) and is being investigated by Inspector Pierce of Scotland Yard (Dennis
Hoey, who plays the part exactly
the way he played Inspector Lestrade in the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce Sherlock
Holmes movies).
Phyllis Allenby lives with her aunt Martha Winthrop (Sara
Haden) and Martha’s daughter Carol (Jan Wiley) in the crumbling old Allenby manse, though a clumsy bit of exposition (the writers are
George Bricker and Dwight V. Babcock, not exactly names to conjure with in
screenwriting history) reveals that the Winthrops are not blood Allenbys at all
and have no claim to the Allenby family fortune, to which Phyllis is sole heir.
Phyllis is engaged to barrister (British-speak for trial lawyer) Barry Lanfield
(Don Porter — incidentally Porter gets top billing on the film itself but
Lockhart gets it on the trailer — was the trailer for a reissue after Lockhart
got at least a bit of fame as the mother on the Lassie TV series and then on Lost in Space?), while Carol is dating artist Dwight Severn (a
wasted Martin Kosleck), of whom her mom disapproves because Severn is penniless
and likely to remain that way. Early on it becomes all too obvious that the
“she-wolf of London” doesn’t really exist, especially since the only evidence
of her we see is a normal-appearing woman, always seen from behind, with a hood
up over the back of her head, and though we hear various snarling and ripping
sounds as she dispatches her victims (a small boy at the beginning and an inept
policeman later on) it becomes clear that this, like the contemporaneous Devil
Bat’s Daughter from PRC, is another Gaslight knockoff in which the heroine is being convinced
that she’s a monster for some sinister purpose — and not terribly surprisingly,
the real she-wolf turns out to be Martha Winthrop, who has been drugging
Phyllis every night and smearing blood on her hands when a murder occurs so
she’ll become convinced she’s the she-wolf, she’ll either be arrested for the
murders or put in an asylum, and the Winthrops will be able to go on enjoying
the Allenby house and money indefinitely. Needless to say, she doesn’t get her
wish; she ends up chasing Phyllis through the house after Martha’s own maid
Hannah (Eily Malyon) learns what’s going on and Martha decides she’ll have to
dispatch Phyllis ahead of schedule — so she grabs a knife, chases Phyllis with
it, then falls down stairs and accidentally stabs herself, allowing Phyllis and
her nice young lawyer boyfriend to get together at the end. She-Wolf
of London is a nothing movie, thoroughly
boring and without the appeal of the contemporary Val Lewton films — the makers
seemed to be going for the nerve-wracking uncertainty of many of Lewton’s
movies over whether there is anything supernatural going on or not, but they
missed Lewton’s literacy and taste by a mile and also sacrificed the more
visceral thrills and shocks of the classic Universal style — though it’s at
least professionally made and the cast is genuinely appealing.
