"The overall mood of The Undying Monster is less that of a horror film and more that of a mystery thriller, with its obvious echoes of the famous Sherlock Holmes tale The Hound of the Baskervilles.The audience is teased for the longest time before ever actually seeing the werewolf..."

By STEVEN ELDREDGE

Ask anyone you know to mention a werewolf film and chances are  he will mention the 1941 Universal classic The Wolf Man.   Ask a fan of horror films the same question and you might hear  The Werewolf of London (1935), The Werewolf (1956) or I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957)  Only a real devotee of the genre might add to the list a somewhat unknown 1942 offering from 20th Century-Fox, The Undying Monster.

Hoping to repeat Universal's great success with The Wolf Man, 20th Century-Fox, a studio not particularly noted for horror films, produced The Undying Monster (sometimes also known as The Hammond Mystery),  as a double bill with Dr. Renault's Secret.

Based on a novel by Jesse Kerruish it stars James Ellison, Heather Angel, John Howard and Bramwell Fletcher. It was directed by John Brahm, who later directed The Lodger (1944) and went on to a very successful career in television, directing many episodes of such shows as Thriller, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits.

The different twist on the werewolf theme in this story allowed the studio to create something at once like The Wolf Man and  yet very different from it.

The action is set in Cornwall at the turn of the century, where the wealthy Hammond family has been under a curse for centuries. According to local legend, one of their ancestors sold his soul to the Devil and still lives hidden away in a secret room in Hammond Hall, a monster issuing out occasionally to feed upon a human life in order to prolong its own. The victim is always a male member of the family, who after an attack by an "unknown" beast usually goes mad and ends up  as a suicide.

The current lord of the manor, Oliver Hammond is the latest in this line. He is attacked on the Rocky Lane along the cliffs near the ancestral house. Found by his sister Helga and nursed back to health, he can offer no description of his attacker. A young woman from the nearby village is also attacked but she never regains consciousness. These events bring Inspector Curtis from Scotland Yard to investigate, accompanied by his intrepid assistant Miss Christopher. Their investigation is met with resistance at every front, the family, the servants, even the local officials; it seems that everyone at Hammond Hall has something to hide or someone to protect.

The overall mood of The Undying Monster is less that of a horror film and more that of a mystery thriller, with its obvious echoes of the famous Sherlock Holmes tale The Hound of the Baskervilles. The movie audience is teased for the longest time before ever actually seeing the werewolf.

The one recurring theme in most of the classic werewolf films is the sympathy which the audience feels towards the protagonist. It is almost a given that a successful werewolf movie must combine fear of the monster with pity for the man.

In The Wolf Man, we know all along what has happened to Larry Talbot, and we can empathize  with the agony he feels with each surrender to the curse. He is portrayed as a lonely man, an outsider whose affliction renders him even more separate from the rest of humanity.

In The Werewolf, Steven Ritch plays a husband and father driven away from his family by this terrible force, running ever further from them to avoid doing them harm. In I Was A Teenage Werewolf, Michael Landon's lycanthropy worsens this already alienated teenager, making it even harder for him to trust anyone. In all these films it is  the plight of the hero which makes for the central tragic crisis, and the viewer's empathy for that plight which provides the emotional punch.

In The Undying Monster the issue of the werewolf's plight, although not incidental, is not really central to the narrative of the story, until the final few minutes of the film. So rather than feeling sympathy, the viewer is guessing along with the detective the actual identity of the monster.This leaves the emotions free to respond to the mood, the particular aura of this film.

Lacking the parade of name stars and big budget that Universal put into The Wolf Man, Fox had a sort of triumph in The Undying Monster in showing how care and imagination in a B film could produce a terrific final product. I think this film is worthy of mention along side such titles as The Bride Of Frankenstein, The Son Of Frankenstein and some of the Val Lewton films when it comes to the beauty of art direction and photography. Indeed The Undying Monster is one of the most visually gorgeous films of its type.

The settings both interior and exterior are magnificent. The photography by Lucien Ballard is nothing short of spectacular. Consider the opening few minutes of the film, showing the interior of the mansion at night, wrapped in shadows, the camera moving in long silent panning shots and slow tracking shots, like the viewpoint of a creeping cat.  (The terrific shots of the gloomy staircase with the gigantic stained glass window looming above and the snarling Great Dane were repeated by Hitchcock a decade later in his Strangers On A Train.)

The exterior shots are of extreme beauty. Unlike the rather flat stage-like foggy moor set in The Wolf Man, The Undying Monster has outdoor scenes really suggestive of cliffs and crashing surf, with the moonlight seen shimmering upon the ocean. Often the camera looks down upon the action, as though perched up in the tree branches which gives a wonderful feeling of depth to the scenery. The final chase over the cliffs and rocks in the bright moonlight has a fantastic and eerie feeling which is quite unforgettable. The entire look of the film is so sensuous and downright ravishing that the final look at the werewolf (we only see a close-up during the change back from wolf) is somewhat disappointing, but only if we judge a werewolf by its fur.

If it is gothic atmosphere and unseen horror that you seek, I hope that readers of HORROR-WOOD will make it a point to look for this film, and the next time the full moon rises, pack an extra silver bullet and aim for The Undying Monster!

Thanks, Steven, for shining the "full moon" on this shaggy film curiosity! It's recommended viewing for those readers who haven't seen it--and it's worth a re-look for those who have.  Cheers!

Article copyright Steven Eldredge

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