If Twilight and What We Do in the Shadows are to be believed, vampires and werewolves are sworn enemies — but let’s face it, this is not exactly a fair fight when it comes to how these creatures are depicted. In the battle of cinematic representations, vampires have a considerable advantage: There are simply far more classic vampire movies than there are classic werewolf movies, whether that’s because vampires are a more enduring cultural fixation or because believable werewolf makeup is extremely hard to get right. Even the most famous cinematic werewolf, the titular Wolf Man introduced by Universal Pictures in 1941, has struggled to stand out.
In that first iteration of The Wolf Man, we meet Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.), who returns to his ancestral home in Wales and scoffs at the local legend of the werewolf — that is, until he’s bitten by one. Chaney went on to star as Talbot in four sequels, despite the fact that the character dies in nearly every installment. Those subsequent films — Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein — were mash-up movies, pitting the Wolf Man against other Universal Monsters. After that series ended, the studio left Talbot alone for over 60 years, resurrecting him in the form of Benicio del Toro for the 2010 remake The Wolfman. Now, Universal is reviving the franchise once again with Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man, a take so tight and lean that the title loses its definite article. Christopher Abbott’s werewolf isn’t Larry Talbot, but he’s a Universal Monster all the same.
Watching these movies back-to-back forces you to confront a reality that goes beyond the vampire-vs.-werewolf rivalry: There has never been a great Wolf Man film. Each of these movies has its moments; a couple are even good! True excellence, however, remains as elusive as a cure for lycanthropy. But that doesn’t make the series any less interesting to talk about — in fact, sometimes the most compelling thing about these films is where they fall short. To separate the slightly flawed from the true disappointments, I ranked all seven Universal Wolf Man movies, including Whannell’s divisive reboot.
7.
House of Frankenstein (1944)
The poster for the third Universal Wolf Man film promises a crossover event uniting Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula, and the Wolf Man, along with Hunchback and Mad Doctor, unofficial Universal Monsters but called out on the poster nonetheless. (Confusingly, Hunchback has nothing to do with the title character in Universal’s 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame, played by Lon Chaney Sr. Here, it just refers to any kyphosis-stricken lab assistant.) Unfortunately, House of Frankenstein is less graveyard smash and more poorly paced anthology, with the stories linked by Boris Karloff as evil scientist Dr. Gustav Niemann (the Mad Doctor).
Larry Talbot spends most of the classic sequels begging to be put out of his misery, which makes him a rather pathetic figure. On the plus side, Chaney is better in sad-sack mode than he is in the original Wolf Man where he’s trying to play seductive. The real problem here is John Carradine’s Dracula — a far cry from the Bela Lugosi character — and the supremely silly bat-transformation effects he’s saddled with. (As Frankenstein’s Monster, Glenn Strange isn’t quite Karloff, but he’s serviceable given how little is required of him.) While none of these sequels has a strong plot, this one is the most obviously held together by tape and glue, and the episodic structure makes House of Frankenstein feel longer than its 70-minute run time.
6.
House of Dracula (1945)
One year after House of Frankenstein came House of Dracula, with much of the cast and crew carrying over and critics similarly unimpressed. The biggest twist here is that the Hunchback is now a beautiful woman, played by Jane Adams, with Onslow Stevens stepping into the Mad Doctor role as Dr. Franz Edelmann. While the plot is as convoluted and silly as in the last film — Dr. Edelmann tries to cure Dracula’s vampirism through blood transfusions, among other developments — there’s slightly more cohesion.
The Wolf Man also gets a more dynamic role in House of Dracula, with Talbot seeking his own cure from Dr. Edelmann instead of simply trying to get himself killed. Chaney does a decent job at playing Talbot’s desperation, and given the fact that we keep seeing the character die and come back, usually without explanation, it’s easy enough to feel his urgency. By this point in the series, however, it’s also impossible to ignore how repetitive the sequels are. Poor Frankenstein’s Monster keeps waking up at the very end only to get himself killed in the final moments. At 67 minutes, House of Dracula should be breezier than its predecessor, but once you recognize the formula, you’re ready for it to be over.
5.
The Wolfman (2010)
Joe Johnston’s 2010 remake of The Wolf Man opted to make “wolfman” one word for some reason — otherwise, it’s a fairly direct (and largely superfluous) retread of the 1941 film. Benicio del Toro is at least a better actor than Lon Chaney Jr., to the point that he almost convinces you Larry Talbot is the biological son of Anthony Hopkins’s Sir John Talbot. While the final act delivers its big twist, the plot is otherwise lifted directly from The Wolf Man with the biggest change being the addition of R-rated gore. Frankly, that’s a welcome update that at least keeps things interesting, along with Rick Baker’s Oscar-winning werewolf-makeup effects.
Sadly, the other effects in The Wolfman have not aged as well: The film is burdened with relentlessly ugly CGI that instantly dates it, undermining set pieces that might otherwise be engaging. Equally cringe is the decision to go with the same racist Romani story line from the ’41 movie, down to casting another white actor as Maleva, the wise old Romani woman who knows all about werewolves. (It’s always nice to see Geraldine Chaplin, just not in this particular role.) Overall, The Wolfman is crying out to be a silly gorefest, but it also wants to be taken seriously, and that disconnect makes the whole thing less fun than it should be. Though it teases a sequel — Talbot bites Hugo Weaving’s Inspector Aberline before dying — it’s not surprising Universal put a pin in the franchise after this film’s release.
4.
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
The first sequel to The Wolf Man is surprisingly consequential, retconning Universal’s werewolf mythology so that the transformation is linked to the full moon and introducing the Wolf Man’s friendship (or frienemyship) with Frankenstein’s Monster. The original plan was to have Chaney play both Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster — the movie is also a direct sequel to The Ghost of Frankenstein, where Chaney stars as the title doctor’s creation — but 55 years before The Parent Trap, that was too daunting a task. Ultimately, Bela Lugosi was cast as the Monster, and his surprisingly weak performance makes Chaney look better in comparison.
That’s probably more of a backhanded compliment than Chaney deserves. As I said, he’s much more compelling in all of these Wolf Man follow-ups, where he’s playing a tortured man trying desperately to die before he kills again. In Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Talbot reunites with Maleva (Maria Ouspenskaya) and seeks the aid of Baroness Elsa Frankenstein (Ilona Massey) and Dr. Frank Mannering (Patric Knowles), determined to discover the secret to undoing his immortality. The plot does what it needs to do, and it feels fresh enough this early in the franchise. Most important, it finds a way to climax in a battle between Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man, the kind of spectacle that audiences were surely going to these “monster rally” movies to see but that the films often forgot to include.
3.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Some critics will say that the Universal Monsters jumped the shark when they were forced to share space with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello — and they may be right in terms of the later entries in the Abbott and Costello Meet … series. But the first of those movies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, is actually pretty fun. It helps that after three repetitive and oddly humorless sequels, this film’s inherent silliness is a breath of fresh air. That’s to say nothing of the fact that Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein also marks Lugosi’s one-and-only return to playing Count Dracula on the big screen. Even though he was visibly in his mid-60s at this point, his long-awaited return does not disappoint.
The title comedians star as Chick and Wilbur, two baggage clerks who wind up in possession of Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster. Meanwhile, Talbot does his best to warn them of the danger — when he’s not busy transforming into the Wolf Man and wreaking havoc of his own. More than any of the other monster mash-up movies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein delivers on the promise of seeing these horror icons face off. The slapstick finale has all the Universal Monsters going at it, with a hapless Chick and Wilbur trying to escape in one piece. Your enjoyment of the movie may depend on how much you can take of Abbott and Costello’s shtick, but even as the longest of the original series — clocking in at a whole 82 minutes! — it’s by far the breeziest of the bunch.
2.
Wolf Man (2025)
Following 2020’s The Invisible Man, Leigh Whannell returns with another stripped-down take on a classic horror character where the real “universal monster” is toxic masculinity. In Wolf Man, Christopher Abbott plays Blake, whose trip back to his childhood home in Oregon gets derailed when he and his family are attacked by a werewolf in the woods. Over the course of a harrowing night, Blake tries to fend off the bloodthirsty creature, while he himself begins to change into something inhuman. Julia Garner plays Blake’s wife, Charlotte, who isn’t sure whether the bigger danger to their daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth) is outside the home or within.
The film is an entirely different take on werewolf mythology and on the Wolf Man in particular, but Whannell once again shows his ability to craft a tense and thematically resonant monster movie that still echoes the decades-old original. To that end, you can mostly forgive that it doesn’t have anything all that new to say. Abbott is (again, apologies) a better actor than Chaney, and Blake is a more sympathetic character than Talbot has ever been. This Wolf Man wisely leans into the body horror of the werewolf transformation, leading to some thrillingly disgusting scenes that hit harder because we care about the person they’re happening to. While the film’s limited scope makes it feel a bit slighter than it should, the intimacy and groundedness result in the scariest Wolf Man movie to date — not that there was much competition.
1.
The Wolf Man (1941)
It’s easy enough to point out the flaws of The Wolf Man, the film that started it all. There’s the aforementioned Romani plotline, very much a product of its time. There’s the flimsy story, stretched out to a mere 70 minutes. And then there’s the fact that Chaney is, as I’ve alluded to throughout, not the performer that Lugosi and Karloff were. He’s certainly outmatched by the great Claude Rains, who plays Larry’s father, Sir John Talbot. Thankfully, Rains’s performance goes a long way toward elevating the material, emphasizing the tortured father-son relationship that’s the clearest through-line to the Wolf Man movies, showing up again in the 2010 remake and the 2025 reboot.
And flawed or not, it’s tough to argue with The Wolf Man’s impact and influence. Talbot’s reluctant transformation into the title monster and Jack Pierce’s special-effects makeup remain iconic, responsible for the dominant cultural perception of how a werewolf looks and feels — even as cinematic werewolves have become beastlier in the decades since. The Wolf Man may not be as sensual as Dracula or as tragic as Frankenstein’s Monster, but there is a humanity to him that has lasted through all iterations of the character. From this first film, he is a creature doomed by fate with a painful longing to protect the loved ones he feels fated to harm. And it’s that idea, articulated most succinctly here, that makes this movie the best of Universal’s Wolf Man franchise, warts and all.