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Every Universal Wolf Man Movie, Ranked

Including Leigh Whannell’s latest take on the hairiest of the classic monsters.

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. 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. 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.

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