The Wolfman

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Steven Schneider

The Wolfman--a bipedal, cinematic version of the werewolf archetype--dramatically embodies the Jekyll/Hyde (superego/id) dichotomy present in us all. The Wolfman first took center stage in Universal's Werewolf of London (1935), starring Henry Hull in a role reprised decades later by Jack Nicholson (Wolf, 1994). Soon after, Curt Siodmak (Donovan's Brain) finished the screenplay for Universal's latest horror classic, The Wolf Man (1941), directed by George Waggner. Lon Chaney, Jr. starred as Lawrence Talbot, an American-educated Welshman who wants nothing more than to be cured of his irrepressible lycanthropy. Make-up king Jack Pierce devised an elaborate yak-hair costume for Chaney that would come to serve as the template for countless Halloween masks. Siodmak's story differed from previous werewolf tales in emphasizing the repressed sexual energy symbolically motivating Talbot's full-moon transformations. Four more Chaney-driven Wolfman films came out in the 1940s; numerous imitators, updates, and spoofs have since followed.