Werewolf of London (1935)

Deep in the artificial set of the mountains of Tibet, some British racist botanists are looking for a moon-powered lupino flower. The only other white person in Tibet, a priest riding on a camel, tries to frighten them off, warning of demons in the valley. They run off into the valley, and one of them starts having supernatural hallucinations immediately.

A werewolf peers over a mountain cliff when they find the flower. He attacks and wounds one of the botanists before being fought off. The botanists return the plant to London, where they zap it with a tesla coil because they're scientists. His wife pulls him away to a high society garden party where the guests are very inquisitive about his "artificial moonlight" machine. The women talk like stereotypical slappers. Some giant, fake fly traps munch on giant, fake flies. They also have a venus frog trap on display.

The husband meets his wife's old childhood friend at the party, and the tension in the air is thick with jealousy. Then one of the Tibetans shows up, inquiring about the moon flower. He says the flower is the cure for lycanthropy. "The werewolf is neither man nor wolf, but a satanic creature with the worst qualities of both!" Intriguingly, despite being from 1935, they assume the viewer is already quite familiar with werewolfery; something that films several decades later will not do.

Almost nobody in this London has a English accent, even though most of them are, in fact, English. There's a significant amount of background noise, like a recorder with the gain turned up way too high, but the camera work is top notch, the sets are great, and the acting and writing are just fine. It's amazing how much better this film from '35 is at telling a compelling visual narrative compared to just about any horror film from the 1970s.

The lupino blooms under the researcher's fake moon machine, but his hand goes quite hairy at the same time. He stabs his hairy hand with the flower and it immediately fades back to normal. The doctor has a futuristic CCTV with a video doorbell for his lab. The Tibetan rings. The Tibetan is played by an entirely non-Asian Swede from Nyby who had a rich and illustrious career playing Asian characters. He tells the doctor that the difference between a "cure" and an "antidote" is that this flower is a mere "antidote" – it only lasts a few hours. And "the werewolf only seeks to kill the thing it loves best."

I take it back, it does do some werewolf explaining later via shots of passages in books. But wild, unique stuff: "Unless this rare flower is used the werewolf must kill at least one human being each night on the full moon or become permanently afflicted." The doc is starting to get some lycanthropic side-effects and a touch of paranoia. His cat doesn't like him at all anymore.

The doc wolfs out and terrorizes a high society evening party. He's maybe 90% human, 10% wolf, and designed by the same Jack Pierce who would later design the slightly more advanced The Wolf Man (1941). Despite being a wolf, he still knows how to use a hat and cape when out in public. He is a gentleman, after all. The police find a dead lady and debate whether werewolves are real.

The doc checks himself into a hotel run by two drunk ladies to keep his wife safe from his new primal instincts, but fails to keep the general public safe.

He tries again, checking himself into a drafty old tower in a countryside castle. It doesn't work again, but this time his wife has come to play hide-n-seek at the castle with her childhood friend and modern-day suitor. The friend successfully fends off the wolf, escapes, and identifies him as the lycanthropic doc.

He comes after his wife again, and as she briefly struggles with the man-versus-beast dilemma, the cops show up and solve the dilemma with guns. The doc monologues himself to death on the floor, and fades triumphantly back to human form. It ends on a shot of an small airplane, which seems to have nothing to do with the film, and then runs the credits again with the slogan "A GOOD CAST IS WORTH REPEATING," which is nice.