Having seemingly ended the 'Wolf Man' franchise with the previous year's heavily flawed "House of Dracula", Universal Studios set their sights on a different kind of werewolf altogether ...

A series of horrible murders have been occuring in London, and many suspect a 'wolf woman' is to blame. Phyllis Allenby, having heard about an ancient family curse of hers, suspects that she might be responsible for the attacks after she wakes up one morning with blood on her hands. Slowly she begins to go insane as she attempts to hide her secret from those around her, confiding only in her cold, distant step-mother.

There's really not much to say about this movie. It's dull, predictable, poorly written, poorly acted, poorly directed, and it's nothing like the other Universal horror movies. But to be honest, this is really more of a drama than a horror movie, and shouldn't really be connected at all with the "Wolf Man" series. It stars a young June Lockhart, who went on to fame playing Mrs Robinson in the sci-fi TV series "Lost in Space". For many people this alone may be a reason to watch and enjoy it, but along with the rest of the cast Lockhart unfortunately doesn't show a whole lot of spark in this particular outing.

On the other hand, the movie is mercifully short. But when you're fifty minutes into the movie, just ten minutes to go, and you realise that hardly anything has actually happened, then you'd be right to be a bit concerned. There is a twist at the end, that you'll probably see coming, but it's nothing that you couldn't see done much, much better in a Hitchcock movie. Some amusement can come from the dialogue ("She's done me in!"), but aside from that it's dull, dull, dull. However, it's interesting that Universal chose to produce a 'serious' movie about werewolves once it's 'Wolf Man' franchise had almost come to an end (only "Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein" followed). It probably could have worked, but it didn't. And if you don't see this one, you won't miss much.

Nice little movie, thanks to the Victorian setting and werewolf theme. Heroine is sympathetic, one gets happy ending (unlike in other 1940s movies) and when I am the in right mood, this and Werewolf of London are perfect flicks for werewolf-themed night show...

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The Wolf There isn't actually much werewolf content in this movie at all. No transformation scenes, no real special effects of any kind. There's an interesting scene where the main character talks about lycanthropy, about tribes who worshipped wolves and about strange dreams she has involving transformation. Her fiancee quotes from "The Merchant of Venice" (that whole "souls of animals" speech). And there's another scene where she is reading a book called "Lycanthropy : The Werewolf Legend" (see photo). But aside from that, there's really nothing to see here.

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