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Universal Horror Library
The Werewolf of London
The Werewolf of London [Jul 01, 1977] Dreadstone, Carl …
- GenresHorrorWerewolvesFiction
194 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 23, 2025
The promotion for this 1935 film was to hysterical women to shut their eyes when some of the most terrifying scenes on film appear. Dr Glendon goes to Tibet in search of a flower so rare it's just of legends. If he found it, it would be a pleasant way to celebrate the silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary as she examined it at the Chelsea Flower Show. The porters of Dr Glendon were scared of the Yeti. Out of the shadow a gigantic, bestial creature with yellow eyes and fangs missed the throat but bit Glendon on the arm. Upon return to England Glendon had tea with the Queen. Slowly Glendon becomes secluded from his wife Lisa and retreats to his laboratory which holds his legendary flower which only blooms under moonlight. Glendon feels unclean . The flower is now an obsession. Glendon is dreaming about murder, of tearing out throats. The first sight of hair appearing on his knuckles and howling from his throat. Lycanthrophobia is a fearful thing. A visitor Dr Yogami informs Glendon that the flower is the only thing protecting him from becoming a werewolf. Licking the pollen and putting it on his arm stops the distorted jaw and hairy hands. Now he was indebted to this flower. Yagami steals the flower and Glendon can't resist. His first kill is a dog and then the owner. Throats ripped out. Blood greedily drunk. Killing is now a treat. An animal urge. The papers report the murders as brutal and bizarre. An absolute madman. He wants to kill his beautiful wife. His urge will only be stopped by his own bullet. Awesome read and happy to have in the collection.
March 15, 2017
Another novelization from the Universal Horror Library, and another one written by Walter Harris (?). And it's much better than his Creature from the Black Lagoon. Much.
English botanist Wilfrid Glendon sits alone in his bedroom with a gun. He is contemplating killing himself. As he tries to decide whether or not to it, he thinks back over the events of the last several months of his life...
Glendon and his friend Hugh Renwick go adventuring in Tibet, where they hope to find the rare flower known as the Mariphasa, which blooms by moonlight. Along the way, they have an amusing discussion about the possible existence of Yetis. Although Glendon finds the plant, he is attacked and bitten by a creature he thinks is a Yeti. He survives and fights the mysterious creature off.
He returns home to England where he and his assistant Cuthbert Haskins try to coax the Mariphasa buds to bloom by way of a machine Gleondon invented which generates artificial moonlight. They're partially successful, managing to get two of them to bloom. He then attends a garden party with his wife Lisa where he meets (and instantly dislikes) her childhood friend Paul Ames. The bite on his arm bugs him from time to time, but, Paul aside, things are going rather swimmingly for Dr. Glendon until he receives a telegram from a visiting Japanese botanist named Yogami.
Excusing himself, he goes to the house Dr. Yogami is renting where his fellow scientist reveals he is a werewolf. He's heard of Glendon's success at acquiring the Mariphasa and wishes to share it with him, as it is an antidote for lycanthropy. Without it, he explains, both men will become werewolves and seek to hunt and kill human beings. Yogami explains that in that particular valley in Tibet there lives a colony of werewolves who wish to keep the Mariphasa all to themselves and look upon normal, uncursed humans who enter their domain with hatred and will attack them without provocation, which is what happened to Glendon.
Glendon however refuses to share the plant with Yogami, not believing his story. Over the coming days, though, Glendon notes a change in the tone of his voice, the fact he is becoming increasingly more tempermental, even towards his friends and family, and, interestingly, begins to feel "unclean," and furthermore that by touching others he is somehow contaminating them with his uncleanliness. As a result, he takes to avoiding Lisa for fear of angering her with his unintentional short temper or "contaminating" her with his imagined (and possibly spiritual) uncleanliness, which of course only makes himself look like a jerk. He is still skeptical, though.
In desperation, on the night of the full moon Yogami steals the two flowers that have already bloomed from the plant in Glendon's lab. Without any usable flowers, Glendon finally learns Dr. Yogami's story is true the hard way - he transforms into a werewolf and kills his first victim. Afterwards, he reverts to human form and is horrified by what he has done, and he realizes the other scientist was telling the truth. He is doomed to repeat the cycle over and over again, unless he can successfully cultivate the Mariphasa plant.
Other ways Glendon's ailment affects his mind - and consequently makes his scientific work difficult - is that he begins to have a considerably more wolfish thought process. He starts longing for the company of others like himself, but his practical mind keeps trying to focus on staving off his transformations. When they do happen, he tries to either find a way of either avoiding killing anyone, or killing someone as quickly as possible to just get it over with. His attitude towards Yogami is a mixed one. On the one hand, he is angry with Yogami for stealing the flowers, and views him as competition for the remaining ones, but the wolfish part of him sees in Yogami a kinship, and on more than one occasion has fantasies of the two, once fully transformed, on the hunt together.
Trying to think like a scientist, Glendon attempts to find a means of curing himself, and seeks help from a colleague named Dr. Payne. Glendon confides in Payne about his condition, but never actually calls it lycanthropy, dancing around the issue for fear of sounding insane. Payne notes the odd symptoms and can't deny that there is something terribly, terribly wrong with his patient, but can find no way of helping him, so he sends him to a "specialist," a man named Sir James who maintains a psychiatric hospital. But Sir James turns out to be a total condescending jerk of a man that he winds up being the only character in the novel Glendon actually deliberately kills - of course, technically, he deliberately kills every one of his victims, but what I mean is, he becomes a different person once wolfed out, and while still human and in control of his emotions he'll do everything he can to get away from someone before transforming - he even considers arming Haskins with a pistol, so Haskins will have protection against his boss should Glendon encounter him while transformed, which was a nice touch. However, he takes such an intense dislike to Sir James that Glendon actually convinces the guy to come over to his house on the full moon so he'll kill him once transformed.
Yogami approaches Glendon again with an offer of cooperation between them. However Glendon's Mariphasa has inexplicably died, so he and Yogami agree to return to Tibet to get more. They can't leave just yet, though, as the next full moon is upon them by this point, and neither wants to transform while on board a plane full of innocent passengers, so they try to come up with a way of preventing themselves from killing anyone until then. Glendon then hits on the idea of hypnotism, so he and Yogami visit a hypnotist and have him put them into a deep sleep on the night of the full moon, hoping they'll remain asleep when transformed.
It doesn't work, and upon transforming they both awake. Yogami kills the hypnotist, then he and Glendon fight to the death, both in werewolf form. Glendon wins and kills Yogami. He then returns to human form and goes home, taking the hypnotist's gun with him. The novel then concludes with Glendon alive, but contemplating shooting himself rather than continue living a life under the constant threat of transforming without being able to get to a Mariphasa flower in time...
A definite improvement over Harris' Creature from the Black Lagoon, as I said. The story is told entirely from the point of view of Wilfrid Glendon, which of course allows for absolutely no cutaways to other scenes involving other characters, therefore very nearly the entire structure of the story had to be redone, and the concept of the flashback was a good one. Another side effect of telling the story entirely from Glendon's point of view is that characters like Paul Ames and Colonel Forsythe, major supporting characters in the film, are pushed to the sidelines. Paul exists merely as someone for Glendon to glower at occasionally, and Forsythe appears in only one scene, at a dinner party.
The subplot involving Dr. Payne is based on a deleted scene from the movie. Actor Reginald Barlow was scheduled to play a character named Dr. Phillips whom Glendon seeks help from. I'm unsure if the Sir James character appeared, or is entirely Harris' invention. But it was felt that reaching out for help violated Glendon's solitary nature, so the Phillips character was excised (Barlow does appear in the film, though, albeit in a different role). Harris' novel restores this subplot, but for some reason changes Phillips' name to Payne.
English botanist Wilfrid Glendon sits alone in his bedroom with a gun. He is contemplating killing himself. As he tries to decide whether or not to it, he thinks back over the events of the last several months of his life...
Glendon and his friend Hugh Renwick go adventuring in Tibet, where they hope to find the rare flower known as the Mariphasa, which blooms by moonlight. Along the way, they have an amusing discussion about the possible existence of Yetis. Although Glendon finds the plant, he is attacked and bitten by a creature he thinks is a Yeti. He survives and fights the mysterious creature off.
He returns home to England where he and his assistant Cuthbert Haskins try to coax the Mariphasa buds to bloom by way of a machine Gleondon invented which generates artificial moonlight. They're partially successful, managing to get two of them to bloom. He then attends a garden party with his wife Lisa where he meets (and instantly dislikes) her childhood friend Paul Ames. The bite on his arm bugs him from time to time, but, Paul aside, things are going rather swimmingly for Dr. Glendon until he receives a telegram from a visiting Japanese botanist named Yogami.
Excusing himself, he goes to the house Dr. Yogami is renting where his fellow scientist reveals he is a werewolf. He's heard of Glendon's success at acquiring the Mariphasa and wishes to share it with him, as it is an antidote for lycanthropy. Without it, he explains, both men will become werewolves and seek to hunt and kill human beings. Yogami explains that in that particular valley in Tibet there lives a colony of werewolves who wish to keep the Mariphasa all to themselves and look upon normal, uncursed humans who enter their domain with hatred and will attack them without provocation, which is what happened to Glendon.
Glendon however refuses to share the plant with Yogami, not believing his story. Over the coming days, though, Glendon notes a change in the tone of his voice, the fact he is becoming increasingly more tempermental, even towards his friends and family, and, interestingly, begins to feel "unclean," and furthermore that by touching others he is somehow contaminating them with his uncleanliness. As a result, he takes to avoiding Lisa for fear of angering her with his unintentional short temper or "contaminating" her with his imagined (and possibly spiritual) uncleanliness, which of course only makes himself look like a jerk. He is still skeptical, though.
In desperation, on the night of the full moon Yogami steals the two flowers that have already bloomed from the plant in Glendon's lab. Without any usable flowers, Glendon finally learns Dr. Yogami's story is true the hard way - he transforms into a werewolf and kills his first victim. Afterwards, he reverts to human form and is horrified by what he has done, and he realizes the other scientist was telling the truth. He is doomed to repeat the cycle over and over again, unless he can successfully cultivate the Mariphasa plant.
Other ways Glendon's ailment affects his mind - and consequently makes his scientific work difficult - is that he begins to have a considerably more wolfish thought process. He starts longing for the company of others like himself, but his practical mind keeps trying to focus on staving off his transformations. When they do happen, he tries to either find a way of either avoiding killing anyone, or killing someone as quickly as possible to just get it over with. His attitude towards Yogami is a mixed one. On the one hand, he is angry with Yogami for stealing the flowers, and views him as competition for the remaining ones, but the wolfish part of him sees in Yogami a kinship, and on more than one occasion has fantasies of the two, once fully transformed, on the hunt together.
Trying to think like a scientist, Glendon attempts to find a means of curing himself, and seeks help from a colleague named Dr. Payne. Glendon confides in Payne about his condition, but never actually calls it lycanthropy, dancing around the issue for fear of sounding insane. Payne notes the odd symptoms and can't deny that there is something terribly, terribly wrong with his patient, but can find no way of helping him, so he sends him to a "specialist," a man named Sir James who maintains a psychiatric hospital. But Sir James turns out to be a total condescending jerk of a man that he winds up being the only character in the novel Glendon actually deliberately kills - of course, technically, he deliberately kills every one of his victims, but what I mean is, he becomes a different person once wolfed out, and while still human and in control of his emotions he'll do everything he can to get away from someone before transforming - he even considers arming Haskins with a pistol, so Haskins will have protection against his boss should Glendon encounter him while transformed, which was a nice touch. However, he takes such an intense dislike to Sir James that Glendon actually convinces the guy to come over to his house on the full moon so he'll kill him once transformed.
Yogami approaches Glendon again with an offer of cooperation between them. However Glendon's Mariphasa has inexplicably died, so he and Yogami agree to return to Tibet to get more. They can't leave just yet, though, as the next full moon is upon them by this point, and neither wants to transform while on board a plane full of innocent passengers, so they try to come up with a way of preventing themselves from killing anyone until then. Glendon then hits on the idea of hypnotism, so he and Yogami visit a hypnotist and have him put them into a deep sleep on the night of the full moon, hoping they'll remain asleep when transformed.
It doesn't work, and upon transforming they both awake. Yogami kills the hypnotist, then he and Glendon fight to the death, both in werewolf form. Glendon wins and kills Yogami. He then returns to human form and goes home, taking the hypnotist's gun with him. The novel then concludes with Glendon alive, but contemplating shooting himself rather than continue living a life under the constant threat of transforming without being able to get to a Mariphasa flower in time...
A definite improvement over Harris' Creature from the Black Lagoon, as I said. The story is told entirely from the point of view of Wilfrid Glendon, which of course allows for absolutely no cutaways to other scenes involving other characters, therefore very nearly the entire structure of the story had to be redone, and the concept of the flashback was a good one. Another side effect of telling the story entirely from Glendon's point of view is that characters like Paul Ames and Colonel Forsythe, major supporting characters in the film, are pushed to the sidelines. Paul exists merely as someone for Glendon to glower at occasionally, and Forsythe appears in only one scene, at a dinner party.
The subplot involving Dr. Payne is based on a deleted scene from the movie. Actor Reginald Barlow was scheduled to play a character named Dr. Phillips whom Glendon seeks help from. I'm unsure if the Sir James character appeared, or is entirely Harris' invention. But it was felt that reaching out for help violated Glendon's solitary nature, so the Phillips character was excised (Barlow does appear in the film, though, albeit in a different role). Harris' novel restores this subplot, but for some reason changes Phillips' name to Payne.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 13, 2018
I was surprised to be so entertained by this book. My expectations were low, because this is a "novelization" of a classic movie of the same title. (I'm pretty sure, however -- although I wouldn't swear to it because it has been a while since I've seen the move -- that this book departs from the movie plot in several important ways.)
I found the book capably written, and the story drew me in. It helps that I'm a fan of the old Universal Horror classics, and that the book contains many stills from the movie.
The basic plot-line is as follows: the main character, Wilfrid Glendon (what a name!), is bitten by a werewolf while trying to harvest samples of a rare flower in Tibet. He survives and imports the flowers to London, where he sets up a home laboratory apparatus devoted to maintaining the flowers. The blossom of the flower has a strange property: it only opens when touched by moonlight.
Our hero soon discovers that he has been infected by werewolfism. The strange, imported flower (called Mariphasa) is, coincidentally, the only antidote. But maintaining the health of the flower is difficult, and soon he discovers that a rival werewolf is attempting to raid his stash. Much of the story is concerned with how our hero struggles with his monthly bloodlust -- and especially his stratagems to protect his wife from himself and his rival. I won't bother to say more, in case readers of this review prefer to read the book.
"Carl Dreadstone" is apparently a pseudonym used by several authors who "novelized" six of the classic Universal Horror Films from the 1930's and 1940's. All six "Universal Horror Library" books were published in a matching format by the Berkley paperback imprint in the early 1970's. Most of them are very hard to come by nowadays. Consequently, you can expect to pay $25 and up per book, unless you are lucky enough to find copies at a thrift store or a garage sale.
If I remember correctly, the other five books in the set are: The Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula's Daughter, The Wolf Man, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. According to isfdb.org, Walter Harris wrote this novelization of The Werewolf of London. goodreads, however, attributes the book to Ramsey Campbell, a well-known horror author who takes credit only for the introduction.
I found the book capably written, and the story drew me in. It helps that I'm a fan of the old Universal Horror classics, and that the book contains many stills from the movie.
The basic plot-line is as follows: the main character, Wilfrid Glendon (what a name!), is bitten by a werewolf while trying to harvest samples of a rare flower in Tibet. He survives and imports the flowers to London, where he sets up a home laboratory apparatus devoted to maintaining the flowers. The blossom of the flower has a strange property: it only opens when touched by moonlight.
Our hero soon discovers that he has been infected by werewolfism. The strange, imported flower (called Mariphasa) is, coincidentally, the only antidote. But maintaining the health of the flower is difficult, and soon he discovers that a rival werewolf is attempting to raid his stash. Much of the story is concerned with how our hero struggles with his monthly bloodlust -- and especially his stratagems to protect his wife from himself and his rival. I won't bother to say more, in case readers of this review prefer to read the book.
"Carl Dreadstone" is apparently a pseudonym used by several authors who "novelized" six of the classic Universal Horror Films from the 1930's and 1940's. All six "Universal Horror Library" books were published in a matching format by the Berkley paperback imprint in the early 1970's. Most of them are very hard to come by nowadays. Consequently, you can expect to pay $25 and up per book, unless you are lucky enough to find copies at a thrift store or a garage sale.
If I remember correctly, the other five books in the set are: The Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula's Daughter, The Wolf Man, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. According to isfdb.org, Walter Harris wrote this novelization of The Werewolf of London. goodreads, however, attributes the book to Ramsey Campbell, a well-known horror author who takes credit only for the introduction.
June 9, 2025
Parece ser que EL HOMBRE LOBO DE LONDRES es la primera película de hombres lobo (en algún otro lugar leí que no, que hay otra anterior, muda) y cuando la vi en DVD en realidad que me gustó. Creo que se merece un remake bien hecho y expandido. Esta novelización de la película fue escrita por Walter Harris, no por Ramsey Campbell como se cree. Eso sí, Campbell, uno de los grandes escritores ingleses de terror colaboró en toda esta colección de novelizaciones: The Universal Horror Library que incluye a The Wolfman, Bride of Frankenstein y Dracula's daughter (de Ramsey Campbell); The werewolf of London, Creature of the Black lagoon (Walter Harris) y The Mummy (Desconocido).
Un botánico de viaje de exploración en el Tíbet, es mordido por una extraña criatura, mitad bestia, mitad humana (en la película, un niño) y esa mordida lo infectará con la enfermedad —o mejor dicho, la maldición— de la licantropía, que lo convertirá en un sangriento asesino. Solo el contacto con una extraña flor traída del techo del mundo, puede calmar su sed de sangre, pero esta flor es extremadamente delicada y solo se abre a la luz de la luna. Pronto el botánico se dará cuenta de que no es el único hombre lobo en la ciudad y que su enfermedad pone en peligro no solo a la gente de Londres, sino a la persona que él más quiere: su esposa.
La novelización presenta una versión más profunda y aterrorizante del personaje principal, agregándole tridimensionalidad al personaje, pero extrañamente, la película sigue siendo mejor.
Un botánico de viaje de exploración en el Tíbet, es mordido por una extraña criatura, mitad bestia, mitad humana (en la película, un niño) y esa mordida lo infectará con la enfermedad —o mejor dicho, la maldición— de la licantropía, que lo convertirá en un sangriento asesino. Solo el contacto con una extraña flor traída del techo del mundo, puede calmar su sed de sangre, pero esta flor es extremadamente delicada y solo se abre a la luz de la luna. Pronto el botánico se dará cuenta de que no es el único hombre lobo en la ciudad y que su enfermedad pone en peligro no solo a la gente de Londres, sino a la persona que él más quiere: su esposa.
La novelización presenta una versión más profunda y aterrorizante del personaje principal, agregándole tridimensionalidad al personaje, pero extrañamente, la película sigue siendo mejor.
June 26, 2018
Great read. Well written.
April 27, 2024
My rating: ★★
November 8, 2024
Enjoyable novel
July 18, 2011
It is great story of a scientist who goes on a expedition to Tibet to find a plant and gets attacked
by a monster. By the full moon he becomes a werewolf and terrorise the people of London. It is based on the Universal film of Werewolf Of London.
by a monster. By the full moon he becomes a werewolf and terrorise the people of London. It is based on the Universal film of Werewolf Of London.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews