Universal’s first crack at a werewolf story exerts a certain fascination today in that it preceded their most famous lycanthropy horror, The Wolf Man (1941), and so doesn’t have any of the mythology that later film introduced, a mythology that went on to inform so many other werewolf films. As such, WereWolf of London stands apart from many wolf man films and offers a glimpse of the way that such films might have developed had WereWolf of London gripped the popular imagination the same way that The Wolf Man would.

The eponymous werewolf (the capitalised second “W” is part of the title) is Dr Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull), a wealthy botanist who we first meet scouring a remote part of Tibet in search of the rare selenotropic plant known as mariphasa lupine lumina which only blooms at night, and is attacked by a feral, humanoid creature. Returning home to London with a specimen of the mariphasa, he meets fellow botanist Dr Yogami (Warner Oland) who warns him that his attacker was a werewolf and that he could now have inherited the curse. Initially sceptical, Glendon is horrified when he transforms under the effect of his “moon lamp”, a device he has invented to help his mariphasa to bloom. He learns that the mariphasa can prevent or at least arrest his transformations but Yogami, who it turns out is also a werewolf, steals the only two blossoms. Unable to control the beast, Glendon murders starts to commit murders and, wracked by guilt, neglects his wife Lisa (Valerie Hobson). He eventually realises, that Yogami was the werewolf that attacked him in Tibet and finds himself compelled to kill that which it loves the most – Lisa.

Paul Naschy took inspiration from WereWolf of London for one of his many Waldemar Daninsky werewolf films, La maldición de la bestia/Night of the Howling Beast/The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975) which also saw his hirsute anti-hero in Tibet searching for a rare bloom that can control his condition. Universal themselves used the same plot thread in House of Dracula (1945) when their later, better known werewolf, Larry Talbot (played by Lon Chaney Jr), was cured by another magical plant. So to suggest that WereWolf of London had no influence on later films would be misleading, but it didn’t quite click the same way that The Wolf Man would later.

Which is a shame, as there are some interesting bits and pieces going on here. The mythology created by writer John Colton, from an original story by Robert Harris (and not based on Guy Endore’s 1933 novel The WereWolf of Paris as is sometimes suggested) largely ignores the many and varied lycanthropy myths from around the world (earlier werewolf films like The Werewolf (1913) and The White Wolf (1914) had drawn from Native American mythology for example) and plays more like a variation on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Glendon retains some of his human qualities even when transformed (he dons hat and coat before venturing out into the cold night and Jack Pierce’s original, more elaborate make-up was rejected when it got in the way of other characters recognising Glendon for who he was, even when he’s a wolf), the effects of the full moon are played down, Glendon partially transforming initially when exposed to the beam of his “moon lamp,” and the mariphasa would eventually morph into wolfsbane. The film was a box office disappointment, but had it been more successful, the werewolf film might have taken a very different shape in the future.

It’s not hard to see why the film didn’t click with the newly horror-hungry public. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were originally considered for the lead roles, and one wonders if it might have been more palatable had they been cast. Hull makes for a starchy and unlikable protagonist and there’s little chemistry between him and Oland. They’re surrounded by a few too many sub-James Whale working class comic reliefs, cockney coppers, a pair of slapstick, Una O’Connor-like landladies and the like. Director Stuart Walker lacks the innate feel for the Gothic that Whale had in spades – even Tod Browning managed to conjure more of an atmosphere in the otherwise stodgy Dracula (1931) than Walker manages here. There are moments – the first transformation is nicely done, Hull wandering behind a series of pillars, more transformed every time he emerges again – but not enough of them. It’s a curiously staid film, especially given what had been done in the likes of The Black Cat (1934) or the contemporary Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Though derided in some quarters, Pierce’s werewolf make-up is really rather impressive, allowing Hull to retain enough of his own features to give a decent performance as a lycanthrope that retains its human intelligence even in wolf form, though the script doesn’t really make much capital from that – imagine the torment of still being human enough to know what you’re doing is wrong, but being unable to resist the animal urges unleashed by the transformation. Sadly, Colton’s script makes nothing of that and instead becomes disappointingly episodic as the story wends its way to the climax. Pierce would reuse much of his original make-up for Chaney in The Wolf Man and the effects here would inspire Jack Nicholson’s lupine appearance in Wolf (1994).

Following the brief hiatus in horror production in the latter part of the 1930s, Universal would come back to the werewolf with the far more successful The Wolf Man. It would cement the trappings and mythologies of the lycanthrope that endure to this day, and its tortured hero Talbot would appear in several sequels. WereWolf of London was less lucky and today it has its fans, but its legacy has been patchier and less enduring.