This review is part of the A Play of Light and Shadow: Horror in Silent Cinema Series

Movie Review – Wolfblood: A Tale of the Forest (1925)

Wolfblood: A Tale of the Forest (1925), also known simply as Wolf Blood, is saddled with some modern misconceptions. Firstly, it is often erroneously described as the first werewolf film, but that honor belongs to the now lost The Werewolf from 1913, considered by some to also be the first true Universal monster, though the much later The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) would have far greater impact in establishing that studio’s series. The Werewolf involved a Navajo witch who transformed into a wolf to kill white settlers, and then returned a century later to kill again. (Some are even more in error in calling 1935’s Werewolf of London the first werewolf film, but it was merely the first mainstream Hollywood one.) Nevertheless, Wolf Blood can properly be considered the earliest surviving werewolf movie.

Secondly, Wolf Blood is today advertised as a horror film, but really it’s a drama-romance with some werewolf elements coming into play in the second half. It tells of the manager of a logging camp named Dick Bannister who falls in love with his pretty young boss. After a fight with a business rival he requires a blood transfusion, and the only blood available is that of a she-wolf. Worries about the effects soon spring forth and he fears that the blood is changing his brain, edging him ever further toward homicide and madness.

Lycanthropy comes fairly late in the film, more than half-way through. There is no transformation scene. Instead, we see Bannister running through the forest in a fit of madness alongside ghostly wolves. Before the release of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931, American films generally shied away from inserting the sincerely supernatural into their narratives, unlike their German and Scandinavian counterparts. American plots had a tendency to explain away the seemingly supernatural with human agency, misunderstanding, or mental breakdown, and the trend is no different here.

The director and star, George Chesebro, was a regular fixture in B-movie Westerns, often playing a villain. Likewise, his co-stars were also well-known to contemporary Western fans, and the influence of that genre can be felt throughout. Also present are numerous jokes about Prohibition and jazz, as well as a pinch of racism, placing this film firmly within the time in which it was created.

The forest vistas, with the stately pine trees, are beautiful to behold, but the rest of the movie is very dimly lit and at times difficult to discern. The story is simple and the curious ideas about blood transfusion innocently quaint, but there isn’t much to invest the viewer’s attention. I couldn’t find contemporary reviews, but I imagine this was seen as pretty middling-fare even in the 1920s.

Wolf Blood, while not being a bad film, does not have a great deal to offer the modern audience except for its novelty as the longest surviving runt in a very particular pack.

Grade: D