Why Universal’s First Werewolf Movie Is Probably Lost Forever – Screen Rant

While The Wolf Man (1941) is often considered Universal's first werewolf movie, this isn't the case the real one is potentially lost forever.

The Werewolf is cited as the first werewolf movie ever made; the 1913 film, from Universal studios, is probably lost forever. While this lost footage means that the werewolf sub-genre of horror movies had to take a different route, it's interesting to consider it as a new source for how these movie could have evolved. Here's what happened to the first werewolf movie, and why it'll likely never re-emerge.

Universals The Wolf Man (1941) with Lon Chaney Jr. is often viewed as the studio's first and primary piece of werewolf cinema. The Wolf Man appropriately got things rolling on the werewolfsub-genre of horror, but Universal actually had another werewolf movie that predates The Wolf Man by nearly three decades, and has since become unavailable. WhileThe Wolf Manwas not the second werewolf movie ever made, it was Universal's second attempt at bringing the werewolf to the big screen, and preceded by other films in the '20s and '30s.

Related: Why The Wolfman Was The Only Good Universal Monsters Movie Of The 2010s

The Werewolf is a 1913 film by Henry MacRae that tells the story of a Navajo witch who bestows her daughter with the power to transform into a wolf to help protect their land from colonialism. The werewolf daughter, Watuma, lives for hundreds of years to enact her revenge. Its a story that actually sounds similar to Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning. The Werewolf mightsound like it has a lengthy, complicated narrative, but it's allegedly only 18 minutes long. Unfortunately, it cant be watched because all copies of the film have been destroyed on the premises of Universal Studios here's what happened.

Its devastating when media gets lost forever; thisis a more common occurrence with film from earlier generations that arent backed up on a gigantic server. Universal Studios has historically been prone to a number of fires of various degrees of severity, usually with electrical issues being cited the problem. Several fires struck Universal Studios in the 1920s; it's been reported that one in 1924 destroyed the copies of The Werewolf. Universal Studios also destroyed the majority of the negatives for their silent films in 1948, so any remaining copies of the picture would have been taken out then. This means that The Werewolf is truly lost;The Wolf Man was able to replace it as the formative werewolf movie for both Universal Studios and pop culture history.

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Why Universal's First Werewolf Movie Is Probably Lost Forever - Screen Rant