House of the Wolf Man (2009) Review

Plot: Four guests are invited to the creepy mansion of a dead-panning scientist (Ron Chaney) to find out who will be considered his heir.

Review: I have been a lifelong fan of the Universal Monster movies. As a kid, I would take books from the library dealing with the Universal gallery of monsters and maniacs and pore over every detail. On my desk, I have mini-busts of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. I own the entire Universal Monsters set on Blu-ray. I even suffered through that horrible Mummy movie. So, when a friend told me about this movie, I took one look at it and was in.

For those who have never heard of this movie, it’s shot in the old Universal Monsters style – black and white, creepy mansion on a hill, terrible weather outside, an ornate and impossibly large interior – it was obvious that the director is a fan. Just by shooting this movie in this style, I want to like it. Unfortunately, some flaws with the film prevent me from gushing enthusiastically about it in this review.

For starters, the pacing is off. There’s an excessive amount of time getting to the obvious – that the creepy scientist who hosts the unsuspecting guests is more than it seems. There’s a lot of exploration about the connections between the guests and who is responsible for the roving eyes behind the paintings. There is a lot of talk about who Dr. Reinhardt is and what he wants. This would be resolved within 10-15 minutes in a classic Universal movie. This movie drags all of this into the 40–50-minute range. I get it – the budget for this movie was tiny. Unfortunately, most of the characters are not that interesting to pull off the lengthy dialogue scenes.

I hate to say it, but one of the problems is Ron Chaney. As Lon Chaney’s great-grandson and Lon Chaney Jr.’s grandson, I want this guy to succeed in the role. He’s too stiff, too wooden, and his voice is all wrong. The mad scientists in Universal movies had aristocratic English accents, which, for some reason, immediately sounded menacing. Ron Chaney sounds like an insurance salesman in the role. It lacks the punch I would expect from the creepy mad scientist. Most of the guests are alright, with Jim Thalman as the world-wise adventurer and Jeremie Lonka as the brainiac milquetoast as the highlights. The rest are relatively bland and unmemorable, which is a shame – Cheryl Rhodes especially had potential as a femme fatale, but her character was too generic for her to pull it off. I did enjoy John McGarr’s understated performance as the mute, disfigured servant, though.

The makeup is also hit-and-miss. The Frankenstein Monster look is brilliant, a poignant callback to Jack Pierce’s original makeup mixed with the modern-day ability to show the decay in the Monster’s visage. Likewise, The Wolf Man is not bad and harkens back to the original makeup. Then you have Dracula, who looks a small step up from Grandpa on the Munsters, and his brides look like they got their makeup from the dollar aisle of the Halloween store.

As for the music, it serves its purpose, and while it wasn’t memorable, it fits the scenes and what the director tried to accomplish with the film. There are no scares in this movie – nor were there any in the classic film. Universal Monster flicks were to entertain and thrill, and this movie, unfortunately, misses the mark. With a larger budget, I’m sure the director would be able to accomplish something more. Hopefully, at some point, a big-name director comes in and does the classic Universal Monsters the right way, not that recent horrible Mummy movie and the equally craptacular Invisible Man – and regrettably, not this movie, either.