Wolfblood (1925)

Wolfblood: A Tale of the Forest (1925)

Chesebro, you ask? Here is what Wikipedia yields,
"George Chesebro (29 July 1888 – 28 May 1959), was an American film actor. He appeared in over 400 films between 1915 and 1954. He was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and died in Los Angeles, California."
This is true. He was a prolific actor. He had a moderately handsome face and often took the lead in silent westerns and serials.
Of interest to us, however, is his sole outing as a director, Wolfblood: A Tale of the Forest. This is perhaps one of the most evocative film titles if the silent era. How does the film measure up?
The film concerns a logging company foreman, Dick Bannister, working in Northern Canada. Across the river is a rival logging company that resorts to sinister means to keep the upper hand. One of those means is shooting lumberjacks in the legs to prevent them from working!
After one such incident, Bannister decides to call the owner of Ford Logging Co. to get him to come in with a surgeon. It turns out the owner is a pretty young heiress and her fiancee just happens to be a surgeon (whom, we're informed, is so rich he never performs actual surgery, but treats it as an academic discipline).
The owner and the surgeon show up just when things are getting even more heated with the enemy foreman, Devereux. Devereux has Bannister beaten so badly that he busts an important artery. The only blood nearby is wolf's blood. Our surgeon, being so learned, knows it's possible to use animal blood, though the side-effects are unknown.
With the wolf-blood coursing through his veins and suffering from a concussion, Bannister becomes obsessed with the notion that he's a werewolf and wants to rejoin the pack--the pack of Phantom Wolves.
Lupine motifs increase as we bound towards the end, though it all resolves rather neatly, I'm afraid to say.
Wolfblood not a bad film. It has no great visual style like you would get from German horror of the time. The story itself bubbles down to a Gothic-inspired, lumberjack melodrama. However, if you enjoy silent films in general, the one hour is no waste of time. And it is perhaps the first instance of an attempt to base the werewolf ('Loup Garou') legend on science.
(For horror completists, Wolfblood has the distinction of being the oldest surviving werewolf movie. There was, in fact, a 1913 Canadian werewolf movie called The Werewolf that was destroyed in a fire.)

PHOTOS:

This wolf is thinking, 'I knew I shouldn't have volunteered; I hate needles.'
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3067/3068013916_555520e208.jpg?v=0

Scruffy Canadian meets a not-very-threatening wolf. Oh dear.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3184/3068013686_8d06c44a6c.jpg?v=0

Bannister chasing the Phantom Wolf Pack.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3041/3067175981_975fdb7279.jpg?v=0

A kiss,
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3027/3068013376_e159bb8358.jpg?v=0