Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns to his ancestral home in Llanwelly, Wales to bury his recently deceased brother and reconcile with his estranged father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains). While there, Larry falls in love with a local girl named Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers) who runs an antique shop. As an excuse to talk to her, he purchases a walking stick decorated with a silver wolf's head, and Gwen tells him that it represents a werewolf (which she defines as a man who changes into a wolf "at certain times of the year".) Various villagers recite a poem whenever the subject of werewolves comes up: