The Wolf Man

Most of what you believe about werewolves was invented for this script.

The silver bullet, the pentagram appearing on the next victim, the rhyme about wolfbane blooming and the autumn moon: Curt Siodmak wrote all of it in 1941. None of it is folklore. It has been repeated so consistently since that it now functions as folklore.

Lon Chaney Jr plays Larry Talbot as a large, sad, slightly slow man who cannot stop what is happening to him, which is a better performance than the film usually gets credit for and the reason he played the part four more times.

Jack Pierce's makeup took six hours and used yak hair applied a section at a time between exposures for the transformations.

Siodmak, a German Jewish refugee, has said he wrote it about a man marked against his will by something he cannot escape. He was not being subtle.