The werewolf gambit was the finale. Keller thought of it as a wry jest, an ultimate variation on the customary etchings, a desperate tactic he was employing as a final sardonic gesture toward seduction before he abandoned the night's quest.
"You don't understand,*' he said quietly. "Je suis un loupgaron. A lycanthrope. Bristles and fangs, gleaming yellow eyes. You know?"
The waxen mask of Lora's pale face seemed to show animation for the first time that evening. "You're sure you haven't had too many drinks, darling?"
"Quite on the contrary; if I'd had too many, I assure you I'd be raging on all fours up and down the cabaret this very moment. I've got myself quite thoroughly under control, though. I won't begin to change until . . . until . . ."
Arched eyebrows flickered. "When, dear?"
"In my flat. Later tonight, perhaps." He leaned backward, craned his neck to peer through the clinging lace of the curtains. A bright shaft of moonlight sparkled against the window. "Yes . . . tonight is the beginning. It lasts three nights. I feel it stirring within me now."
Hastily, he finished his drink. The bartender glanced inquiringly at him, but Keller signaled quickly with his left index finger that the evening's drinking was over. His campaign would stand or fall on what had already been consumed. Keller saw no reason to expend further cash in what looked like a fruitless pursuit. Besides, Lora's thirst was immense; alcohol didn't seem to satisfy it at all.
The girl leaned forward. Her clinging wrap fell away from her pale throat, creating a delightful view. "I suppose it takes five martinis to extract these confidences, darling. If you had told me earlier . . ."
"Yes?"
"We could have skipped that dreadful play. We could have gone straight to your place."
"What?" For the first time within his adult memory, Keller's self- composure utterly deserted him.
"I'm terribly interested in things like this," Lora said eagerly. "Loup garous! How fascinating!" Seizing his hand with a passion she had failed to show all evening, she said, "Would it be asking too much . . . for you to show me?"
I'll be eternally cursed, Keller thought in quiet wonderment. How To Get A Girl To Your Apartment, he thought. Technique 101a: The Werewolf Gambit.
It had been only a joke to cap a wasted evening, and abruptly it had transformed a remote, passionless girl into a keenly curious and receptive woman. Someday I must write my memoirs, Keller thought, as he paid the check. If only to tell about this!
▼▼▼
"Be it ever so humble," Keller said, throwing open the door to his apartment.
Lora stepped inside and uttered a little gasp of delight. "It's a lovely room," she said. "A little austere, but lovelyM
"I like it," said Keller. "I've lived here three years."
"It's in marvelous taste," she exclaimed enthusiastically, looking around at the paneled walls, the ceiling-high ebony bookcase laden with Keller's extensive library, the kidney-shaped swirl of the dark coffee- table, the low bulk of the phonograph-tape recorder sprawling along the far wall. She slipped lightly out of her evening jacket; Keller hung it in the hall closet and tiptoed happily into the little kitchen.
"Drink?" he asked, a little tensely.
"No . . . thanks," she said. She was at the bookcase, tugging at the ponderous red-bound volume that was his copy of Rites and Mysteries of Goesic Theurgy. "You have strange taste in books," she said.
"Strange? Is it so strange for a werewolf to be reading Arthur Waite? Not at all." He was determined to carry the joke along as far as he could.
She chuckled lightly. "Of course not. I apologize."
He emerged from the kitchen with two oliveless martinis and set them down on the little inlaid end-table near her. As he moved toward the phonograph, he observed with professional pleasure that she had lifted one of the drinks to her lips. It was a rule he had long followed with great success in the past: If a girl you've brought to your apartment refuses a drink, bring one anyway. She'll drink it.
"Putting on a record?" she asked, still busy at the bookcase.
"Vivaldi. It's good music for late at night."
He turned the volume low, and as if from a great distance there issued the bright sheen of violin music accompanied by the silvery tinkle of a tiny harpsichord. "There," he said. "Just perfect."
He glanced at his watch in the dim light of the one lamp. It was quarter to three. Barring unforseen happenings, they should be safely bedded down before four-fifteen.
He crossed the room, reached agilely around her to snare his drink from the table, brushed the nape of her neck lightly with the tip of his nose as he straightened up. "Care to join me on yonder divan?" he asked, indicating the couch.
She smiled and nodded. Keller gave her his hand in formal fashion and escorted her to the couch. She kicked off her shoes and drew her knees up to her bosom, wrapping her arms around her kneecaps and letting her head droop broodingly.
wTm not in the habit of visiting men's apartments this late at night," she remarked. "Or at any hour."
"That's obvious," he said. "I can tell by the luminous purity of your eyes that—" He let his voice trail off, then tacked on the coda: "But there's always a first time, of course."
"Of course. About this affliction of yours, this lycanthropy—"
"Oh, that. We can talk about that later." There would be plenty of time for explanations, he thought, in the morning. "Mind if I come a little closer? It's cold in here, at this distance."
Without waiting for her reply, he edged up next to her and slid one arm suavely around her bare, cool shoulders. It seemed to him that she quivered faintly at the contact, but he decided it was just his imagination.
"They say only virgins can ride unicorns," he observed softly, letting his fingertips graze the lobe of her ear.
"There's some truth in that," she admitted, intercepting his hand neatly as it began to slide further down her shoulder. "Unicorns have an unerring way of telling, I hear."
"It's too bad we're not all unicorns."
"Yes," she said, sighing. "It's too bad."
Through the drawn blinds, a single beam of moonlight wandered and glistened momentarily against Keller's onyx cufflink. "The moon is full," she pointed out. "You must be fighting a terrible struggle within yourself. But we're alone, now. You can change over, if you like."
"Do you really want me to?"
"Unless it's dangerous, of course. Can you control yourself when you're—you're changed?"
"I don't know. I never really know what I do when I'm—changed
"Oh," she said. "I'll have to risk it, then. I must see it. Please? What are you waiting for?"
He fingered his suddenly sticky collar uneasily. The recorded ended; Vivaldi faded with an abrupt click and was replaced by a Shubert quartet. Moonbeams continued to pour into the room.
The girl was carrying the thing too far. "Let's not talk about lycanthropy now, my lovely," he whispered harshly. There had been enough talk of werewolvery; the time had come to forget the introductory gambit and get down to the main business of the evening.
He crushed up closely against her, and this time he sensed a definite shudder of repugnance as his body came in contact with hers. She was cool and distant, but permitted his caresses almost absently.
After a few moments, she wiggled away. "You promised to show me—"
Keller began to laugh, coldly at first and then almost hysterically. "Lora—darling—for a sophisticated girl, you're incredibly guillible! Can't you recognize a spoof when you fall for it?"
She drew back. "What do you mean?" she asked acidly.
"This werewolf business—did you really believe it?"
There was a stunned pause. Then: "I should have known you were lying. I could have told that you were no loup-garou . . . but yet I trusted you. I came up here to see—to see—"
The edge of a tear glittered brightly in the corner of one eye. She had the cheated look of a maiden wronged. Keller scowled; this evening was turning into t
he most unmitigated fiasco he had experienced since the age of sixteen. Determined to make one last try in a valiant attempt to recoup his honor and capture hers, he took her cold hands in his.
"Lora honey, I just did it because I love you so damn much!" The words nearly stuck in his throat, but he got them out with as much sincerity as he could muster. "I wanted you so bad I'd tell you anything. Just so long as you'd come up here. Just so I could be with you for a while. Do you understand? We can go home now ... if you like."
Her eyes pierced his. "You're not a werewolf, then? It was all pretense?"
Exasperated, he said, "I'm not even a ghoul, darling. I'm disgustingly mortal . . . and disgustingly enamored. You know that?"
"Of course I know that," she said suddenly, moving closer to him. She seemed to grow warmer; to his astonishment, Keller realized that he was going to succeed after all. Her arms touched his shoulders, drew his face near hers.
Looking up into his eyes, she said, "You're really not a werewolf?"
Her lips were only inches away, and triumph now seemed near. Smiling sadly, Keller shook his head. "It was all a game ... a game men play some time. No, I confess I'm not and never have been a werewolf, darling. I hope I didn't disappoint you too much. I'm not even a vamp—"
The sentence was never finished.
He felt the sudden hot sting of tiny needle-sharp fangs meeting in the flesh of his throat, and Lora's passionate arms gripping him tightly, as she slaked her fearful, furious thirst.
THE WOLF MAN:
A SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
First, a note and then a disclaimer.
The filmography that follows does not pretend to be complete. Rather, it is a representative list of those films which, taken together, display the range of treatments the movies have given to the theme of the werewolf.
Now, the disclaimer. "Lycanthropy in the Movies" or "The Werewolf Cinema" ought properly to be the title of this filmography but, since this volume celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of " The Wolf Man," I have decided to let the title stand as it appears above.
It is clear, even from the most cursory look at the horror cinema, that, of the three great American film monsters in the pantheon of horror, the wolf man occupies the least glorious pedestal. There are hundreds of films dealing either with Dracula or vampirism; scores that retell the Frankenstein story, but not more than a couple of dozen films with a werewolf theme. The reason is fairly obvious. Dracula, Frankenstein, and his creature have specific identities. Filmgoers who come to see a Dracula or Frankenstein movie expect to become reacquainted with monsters they know. The "Wolf Man" film treated its protagonist, Larry Talbot—not the first werewolf to appear in the movies—as an instance of a man suffering from the disease of lycanthropy; and it is the disease as it afflicts each new hero around which subsequent werewolf films have revolved. The result is that the force of the werewolf imagery, unattached to a person with a name, has been dissipated; and werewolf films, with a couple of weak exceptions, have, more or less, to establish themselves each time on their own instead of building on the film lore that previous films have created.
WOLFMAN FILMOGRAPHY
The Werewolf of London
1935 (B & W) U.S.A. 75 minutes Universal Pictures Director: Stuart Walker Producer: Stanley Bergerman Screenplay: Robert Harris Photography: Charles Stumar
An eighteen-minute "Werewolf" silent film made in 1913 in which a Navajo witch-woman, wanting to avenge herself against men, raises her daughter to be a werewolf was actually the "first" film with a werewolf theme. "The Werewolf of London" is the first full-length treatment of the myth.
The film tells the story of the botanist Henry Hull who, searching a rare plant, the marifasa lupina in Tibet, is bitten by a werewolf and so turned into a werewolf. We learn that the werewolf that infected him is also the Japanese Dr. Yogami, played superbly by Warner Oland (of Charlie Chan fame).
Yogami follows Hull to London determined to get the flower, which is the only known remedy for lycanthropy, from him. Dr. Yogami is killed in the ensuing struggle. The botanist in his guise as a wolf is killed by policemen.
Warner Oland is smooth and oily and properly evil-looking, but almost everything else about this film is hesitant and unconvincing. A couple of its elements, however, have become part of the stock formula of every subsequent werewolf film: the reluctance of the human to become the werewolf, and his remorse when he discovers that he has shed blood. It is a formula that, by defining the monster as victim, leaches moral authority from werewolf films. An innocent monster is essentially a contradiction in terms.
The Wolf Man
1941 (B & W) U.S.A. 71 minutes Universal Pictures Director: George Waggner Producer: George Waggner Screenplay: Curt Siodmak Photography: Joe Valentine
Cast: Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, Evelyn Ankers, Warren William, Ralph Bellamy, Bela Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya
Lon Chaney Senior was known as "the man of a thousand faces"; Lon Chaney Jr. evidently inherited only one. That one has immobile, lugubrious features on which is stamped a look of hangdog bewildered sorrow for which nothing in any of the films in which he has appeared can account.
And yet that slightly pudgy woodenness serves Chaney well in this classic film. He is the truly woebegone werewolf with the look of a man who does not deserve the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that have been discharged against him and who is unequipped to take arms against them.
The story of the film must by now be known to almost everyone who goes to the movies or who owns a TV set: Larry Talbot, a Welshman who has lived in America, returns to his family home in Wales where, one full moon night, as he is struggling to save his fiancee Gwen's friend, Jenny, from the attack of a werewolf, he is himself bitten. The bite turns him into a werewolf.
Knowing that the only metal that can kill a werewolf is silver, and fearful that he, Larry, may attack Gwen, Larry gives his father his silver-headed walking stick. When he does attack Gwen, Larry's father, wielding the stick, beats the werewolf to death and Larry, now an innocent corpse, can be buried with honor.
Rarely in horror film history has a simple-minded story been so buoyed up by a director's lyric treatment of it. The film, in George Waggner's hands, becomes profoundly atmospheric and is made to seem like a dreamlike fairy tale with its roots in distant primordial times. Even the fake poetry that Maleva, the Gypsy fortune teller, declaims as she warns Talbot of his future, has the wonderful ring of fake truth ringing down the ages:
Even the man who is pure at heart And who says his prayers at night
May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms And the autumn moon is bright.
No doubt.
And of course.
The Undying Monster
1942 (B & W) U.S.A. 63 minutes
20th Century Fox
Director: John Brahm
Producer: Bryan Foy
Screenplay: Lillie Hayward, Michel Jacoby
Photography: Lucien Ballard
Cast: James Ellison, John Howard, Heather Angel, Heather Thatcher
Instead of starting with a dark and stormy night the way a proper "old dark house" film should, this one begins on a clear night on the coast of Cornwall as we hear a family retainer, Walter, worrying: "I only hope Mr. Oliver doesn't come through the lane tonight." The reason for his anxiety is that for several generations members of the Hammond family have been involved with mysterious deaths. The family curse goes:
When stars are bright
On a frosty night
Beware thy bane
On a rocky lane.
And indeed, once again, there has been violence. A young woman, Kate O'Malley, has been ferociously attacked. A couple of Scotland Yard detectives show up, and the rest of the film plays off their scientific investigation against the possibility that there is a dark, occult explanation for the family violence. As the film ends, the solution turns out to be a hereditary disease that turns the afflicted person into a werewolf on clear,
frosty nights.
Static and cold, this is not by any means a great film. What it does have are a couple of great sets and direction so shrewd that it transcends the mediocrity and the scientific banality of its script. Brahm has his camera in constant nervous motion, implying, by glimpses of sky and cloud, sea and cliff's edge, that whatever the clever folk from Scotland Yard discover, ominous ancient presences are ineradicably part of the real world.
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man[1]
1943 (B & W) U.S.A. 74 minutes Universal Pictures Director: Roy William Neil! Producer: George Waggner Screenplay: Curt Siodmak Photography: George Robinson
Cast: Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Ilona Massey, Maria Ouspenskaya
Here is a film that is important only because it marks the signal decline in film of the compelling "Frankenstein" idea. The wolf man theme does not fare much better. If the film proves anything it is that one can not make a fine horror movie by simply throwing great old horror regulars together. Lugosi as the monster, elicits pity, but only because his performance is so shabby. Nobody cares that Lon Chaney Jr. (as Laurence Talbot) wants medical help to escape the curse of werewolfism. Everybody is grateful when both monsters (so far as the law of sequels will permit) are destroyed at the end of the film. That end comes none too soon.
IWas a Teenage Werewolf
1957 (B & W) U.S.A. 76 minutes Sunset Production Director: Gene Fowler, Jr. Producer: Herman Cohen Screenplay: Ralph Thornton Photography: Joseph La Shelle
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