Today is Father’s Day and, as such, TCM is showing lots of movies with dads, from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father to Life with Father to, well, lots of other movies with the word “Father” in the title but there’s one movie that they’re not showing and it’s too bad, really. It’s one of the best father/son movies out there and a personal favorite since I was a kid. It contains a father who is both tormented by the decisions he has to make and nurturing and giving all at once. He, in the end, has to do something unimaginable for a dad but he does what he has to do and deals with the consequences, or does he? The dad is played by Claude Rains, the son by Lon Chaney, Jr, and the movie is The Wolf Man.
Before we go into that one title in particular, let me extol the great talents of Mr. Rains and even mention another great dad performance by the man. Claude Rains is famous to probably everyone even if they don’t know it. Most people in this age of the internet have become accustomed to writing, or reading, that they are “shocked, SHOCKED” at something or other that happens to be quite obviously not shocking. Like finding out a politician is corrupt and saying you’re “shocked, SHOCKED” to discover such a thing. People who have never even seen Casablanca are nonetheless aware of the now ubiquitous line spoken by Claude Rains and, thus, indirectly aware of him. For that great line reading alone, he will go down in history (the line is, of course, made immortal by not only what he is shocked by but what happens immediately following his consternation). But Rains did so much more and was capable, as he showed in Mr. Skeffington, of playing a loving father and husband, entirely free of the snarky witticisms that danced off of his tongue in the aforementioned Casablanca. In Mr. Skeffington, he’s a great dad, indeed, and I have always loved the scene where he takes his daughter out to dinner. In the moments he has where he agrees to take her with him to Europe, knowing the hardships they will face there as Jews, but better off with him than her uncaring mother, it couldn’t be more heartfelt. Really, for those who haven’t seen it, Rains is surprisingly effective with tender, emotional scenes.
Three years before, in 1941, he played father to a wolf man in the movie that started this post, The Wolf Man. Horror, as with sci-fi and fantasy, is never taken as seriously as straight ahead dramas and comedies which is a shame because so many of the horror movies of the classic era, certainly this one and some of the James Whale and Tod Browning classics, outshone many of the big award winners of their day. One big mistake a lot of people make is looking only to the fantastical side of the story and ignoring everything else. When people say things like, “it rises above the genre,” it sounds crazy to me. It’s implying the genre is lesser to begin with and that’s not true (we don’t assume that Citizen Kane rises above the genre of drama, we simply consider that it’s a great drama, not that drama as a genre itself is inherently flawed and Kane made it better). What is actually happening, in reality, is that most movies in the horror genre, as with most movies in any genre, are merely average or maybe even outright bad. And it’s all of those movies, the vast 95% of them, that fall below the genre. When they’re done right, like The Wolf Man, the movie meets the genre head on. In The Wolf Man, there’s a great story of father and son playing out right before our eyes, and there’s nothing in the genre that intrinsically rules that out.
The story concerns the return of Larry Talbot to his father’s estate in Wales. He’s been away for 18 years in America, which explains the completely different accent from his dad but not really the difference in size. There’s even a line between Rains and Ralph Bellamy, who plays an old friend who’s now a constable, about how big he is. We never hear or see anything of the mother but I’m assuming she towered over Claude. Anyway, Larry returns home because his brother, it is briefly mentioned, perished in a hunting accident, so now Larry has come back to make good with his estranged father. And his father, Sir John Talbot, welcomes him with open arms. He wants both of them to show nothing but good will towards each other, implying that previously their relationship had been strained. There’s a few comments about how the late brother did better with the family estate and all the people living around it but now Larry can take over that role and do just as well. In fact, Sir John goes out of his way to support Larry the entire time he’s home. When the inevitable happens (you know, the whole werewolf thing), Sir John protects Larry from too many questions, trusts that Larry never killed anyone, and that he’s simply under a lot of stress. When Larry can’t shake the idea that he’s a werewolf (because, well, he is), Sir John even agrees to tie him up so that he cannot escape when he turns into one but all he really wants to do is break Larry of his delusions (which aren’t delusions because, you see, he actually is a werewolf). That all leads us to the moment when Sir John takes with him the instrument of Larry’s death, a silver handled cane. For those who don’t think this movie has any emotional underpinnings, this scene dispels that notion altogether.
In the scene, Sir John has tied up Larry to prove to him that he’s no werewolf. Larry will stay tied up, he thinks, and in the morning, when he’s still there he will know it was all a fantasy. The thing is, Larry knows the truth and he knows his father will be out there looking for a wolf that doesn’t exist. Larry knows from when he killed a werewolf earlier in the story (the gypsy Bela, played by Bela Lugosi) that the silver handled cane can do the job. Before his father leaves, he asks him to please take the cane with him. Sir John thinks it’s ridiculous but then Larry asks again, with a terrible sadness, knowing he’s asking his father to protect himself against his own son, and Sir John, oblivious at first, understands. He knows what Larry is asking him to do, he just doesn’t think it’s real. He still believes it’s all a fantasy but he does know that to his son it is real and that he’s asking him to take something that can kill him. When Sir John finds himself in precisely the situation Larry feared, he does kill the werewolf with the cane and when the werewolf changes back to Larry upon his death, Sir John can’t believe his eyes. He’s just killed his son, his last son, and words cannot express the loss and grief he feels. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any. Sir John doesn’t have any more dialogue before the movie ends seconds later. Just a look that says more than most actors can muster with a 1,000 words in monologue. They were only back together for a short while, but in that time, they formed a father/son bond to rival any other one found in the movies. So today, while you enjoy the great movies TCM has to offer, if you have some extra time, pop in The Wolfman. It’s a tribute to fathers and sons, yes, but it’s also a howling good time.