25 Best Werewolf Movies Ever Made

While not the very first time a werewolf had been seen on screen - The Werewolf, a lost 1913 silent movie about a shapeshifting Navajo woman, is generally afforded that accolade - 1935's Werewolf Of London was the first mainstream horror hit about a werewolf and established many of the tropes that later movies would follow, in particular the werewolf as a bipedal humanoid creature with bestial qualities rather than a complete transformation from human into wolf.

Werewolf Of London features a wealthy botanist traveling back to Britain's capital from Tibet with a rare plant and a bite from an even rarer animal. It turns out that the bite was from a werewolf and the rare plant is the only cure. From then on Werewolf Of London becomes something not unlike Jekyll And Hyde with our hero fighting to suppress his savage side before his darker self harms the ones he loves.

The film was not a big success for Universal, who would find their lycanthropic hit six years later with The Wolf Man. As such, Werewolf Of London has not gone through the latter movie's cycle of sequels, crossovers and remakes, but that does not make it a particularly worse movie than its studio mate. In fact, Werewolf Of London is as good an example of an effective Universal monster film as the original Dracula or several others.