HOUSE OF THE WOLF MAN (2009)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*

**SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS**

HOUSE, as many others have observed before me, must have been a labor of love for writer-director Eben McGarr. Clearly no one would seek to duplicate the look of the 1940s Universal monster-mashes without having an abiding affection for the material. At the same time, McGarr-- who to date only has a smattering of credits on IMDB-- wasn't doing a "straight" version of a Universal monster-mash, nor was he doing a spoof-horror, like ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN and at least three different films titled MONSTER MASH. I'd guess that he hoped to appeal to the enthusiasts of "so bad they're good" films, but with a calculated irony that would have been foreign to guys like Ed Wood and Jerry Warren.

The setup: five individuals are summoned to a mysterious castle for an inheritance. None of the five-- athletic Reed, his scientist-sister Mary, antiquarian Sully, "loose woman" Elamira, and big game hunter Whitlock-- think that they're all related to their summoner, Bela Reinhardt (Ron Chaney, grandson of Lon Chaney Jr). But they're all willing to check things out in case there's a big payoff. 

All five are meant to be sendups of familiar Hollywood "types," and though the first four recall similar POV characters from "old dark house" mysteries, the big game hunter Archibald Whitlock seems to have been imported from an imitation MOST DANGEROUS GAME. McGarr's script doesn't expand the other four beyond the stereotypes they represent, but the writer lavishes more attention on Whitlock. He shares the Nietzschean worldview of GAME's Count Zaroff, and travels with three African bearers just in case he decides he wants to hunt something. In a mild shot at 20th-century racism, Whitlock knows the lead African's real name but calls him "Leopold" for his amusement, while he's never learned the names of the other two. That said, he's equally arrogant toward White people, since in the film's best line, he says to Reed, "I shall call you Azrael because the name Reed displeases me." I'm probably in the minority, but I think all five actors did well with their deliberately artificial dialogue, whether the dialogue hits or misses-- and there are possibly more misses than hits. All five performers make Ron Chaney look worse, because there can be little doubt that he was hired just for the value of his familial connections.

  

But if anything's weaker than Chaney's performance, is McGarr's conception of Reinhardt, who occupies the position of the "main menace," but who is more poorly conceived than the most threadbare Monogram mad scientist. Here are the big reveals: Reinhardt is the offspring of Peter Frankenstein, son of Wolf in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, and the never-mentioned sister of Bela the Gypsy from WOLF MAN. Therefore, even though his real surname is Frankenstein, his "house" has inherited the werewolf curse-- though maybe it doesn't pass through paternal genes, since none of his offspring have lycanthropic qualities. And who are his offspring? All of the supposed heirs (though one may be adopted, that part was hard to follow) are half-siblings because Reinhardt had sex with at least four mothers. This leads to a little recrimination when Mary realizes she's been vamping half-bro Whitlock, though like most Universal horror-flicks, no inappropriate genes were mixed in the scripting of this movie.

And what is Reinhardt's endgame, given that he's due to "wolf out" soon? Well, he has some hazy "survival of the fittest" notion, in that he wants to test his children in bloody battle. Somehow this will help him suss out whether his lycanthropy is some biological mutation, rather than a magical curse. It makes no sense, and most if not all the "heirs" get killed by Reinhardt's rampage. Whitlock and the bearers at least put up a fight, but they're slaughtered too. However, a certain "abandoned experiment" escapes confinement, and once again, the Frankenstein Monster Meets (a) Wolf Man. The fight's one of the better things about HOUSE, being livelier (though no longer) than the one from the 1943 movie. 

One more visitor arrives during the fight, and yes, it's Dracula, decked out in full Lugosi regalia, and he either finishes off the last victim or makes her a vampire. Oddly, though Dracula and the Monster are the only characters who make this a crossover, both of them are irrelevant to the movie-- which would have been improved if there had been SOME reason for Reinhardt's family-killing madness.