25 Best Werewolf Movies Ever Made

As we've seen, Universal already had a werewolf on their monster roster thanks to Werewolf Of London, but it was 1941's The Wolf Man that made the real lasting impact.

The Wolf Man offers a fairly simple story. Lawrence Talbot returns home to reconcile with his estranged father, saves a girl from being attacked by a wolf-like monster which bites him, leading to Talbot finding himself turning to a similar beast at night, stalking and killing local villagers. It's the same basic premise as several werewolf movies since, including its own high budget remake.

Like many of the other classic Universal monster movies, though, the story wasn't what made the character of the Wolf Man catch on with audiences, it was the performance, the design and the effects.

Lon Chaney Jr. inherited his legendary father's ability to be transformed beneath huge amounts of makeup and still deliver a performance with real pathos. He played all of the major movie monsters at one time or another, but the Wolf Man was always his signature role.

Universal makeup maestro Jack Pierce had designed the classic Wolf Man look for the earlier Werewolf Of London, but that film's star Henry Hull complained that it would render him unrecognisable. Chaney had no such qualms and hours of having yak hair glued to his face proved worth it when the movie made that hairy face famous.