You know you talk about werewolves a lot when your phone’s predictive text suggests the word “lycanthrope.”
I have always been a particular fan of werewolves but since I started working on WHERE WOLF in 2020, it really feels like the furry lil’ cusses have become an all-consuming part of my life. It’s gotten to the point where I actually get a little fearful about what people think of me - afraid that my whole outwards personality is shifting to being a one-note “werewolf dude.” I guess there are worse things to be associated with, but I have a natural inversion to being pigeonholed in any capacity, even if that pigeonhole has teeth and fangs.
But, without any real topic that I felt like writing about in this week’s newsletter, I’m gonna talk about werewolves some more.
I watched the excellent documentary MARK OF THE BEAST: THE LEGACY OF THE UNIVERSAL WEREWOLF this week. The film, included on Arrow’s recent AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON special edition blu-ray, traces Universal Studios’ werewolf films - from their early silent film THE WEREWOLF (1913) to Joe Johnson’s 2010 remake of THE WOLFMAN. It spends special time on George Waggner’s 1941 THE WOLF MAN, specifically the remarkable contributions writer Curt Siodmak made to the werewolf legend.
If you think about werewolves (and I do, a lot), certain things come to mind: full moons, silver bullets, wolfsbane, pentagrams. These are all the inventions of Siodmak who, pressed with making a werewolf movie but not having any literary source material to pillage from, created his lore out of whole cloth.
I think that’s one of the best parts of the werewolf sub-genre - there are no rules. Not really. Unlike vampires, who have pretty established lore, the werewolf legend has always felt malleable depending on the story you’re trying to tell. Want a story to take place in a relatively condensed period of time? Don’t make the werewolf’s transformations triggered by the presence of a full moon. It’s the SILVER BULLET versus CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF approach.
There are dozens of ways to become a werewolf, such as being bit by a werewolf or being cursed by birth (being the child of rape and having the misfortune of being born on Christmas Day is enough to do it in 1961’s THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF). My personal favorite way to become a werewolf is by sipping water out of a wolf’s paw print under the light of the moon. When I was a kid, my friends and I once drank puddle water out of a dog’s paw print during recess. Nothing happened. I assume because we didn’t have access to a full moon. In Chuck Palahniuk’s RANT, the author muses about how the paw print legend might have a connection with early man’s misunderstanding of how rabies works - people could have drunk water out of a paw print and somehow contracted the disease. Their neighbors, not knowing why Steve was foaming at the mouth and biting anything that crossed his path, settled on the idea that he became a werewolf. Checks out, Steve!
Not enough werewolf stories use this flexible lore to their advantage. I wish werewolf books and films would invent more new wrinkles to the curse of the werewolf.
I love how in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, David is haunted by the spirits of all those who have been killed by a werewolf. This is a genius way to not only explain to the werewolf victim the necessary exposition surrounding their curse but provides great visuals (rotting corpses) during that exposition. I stole and tweaked this idea for my own use in WHERE WOLF because I have no shame. Side note - I’ve always wondered if David had not been killed following his rampage in Piccadilly Circus, would he have been haunted by the ghosts of all the people who died in the traffic accidents caused by his hootenanny?
Another film that introduced a cool new twist to the werewolf legend was GINGER SNAPS, even if I don’t think it’s ever explicitly stated. It seems that, in GINGER SNAPS, you slowly transform into a wolf over the course of the month - becoming more lupine as you near the height of the moon’s cycle. Once that full moon hits, though, you become a wolf and stay a wolf. You even grow more hair - compare the nearly hairless werewolf Ginger transforms to during the climax of the first film with the hairier werewolf hunting Brigitte in GINGER SNAPS 2. In fact, the popular fan theory is that the werewolf hunting Brigitte in the sequel is the transformed Jason McCardy from GINGER SNAPS, permanently stuck in his wolf form.
On the literary side, Stephen Graham Jones’ book MONGRELS takes a Grant Morrison-like approach to the lycanthrope lore - in that everything exists and it’s all real. SGJ manages to address a ton of contradictory aspects of werewolf lore - and even introduce some new ones, like the dangers of werewolves wearing pantyhose. I loved the way he included both the quadruped werewolf and the two-legged man-wolf variety by having full-blooded genetic werewolves transform into wolves and humans bitten by werewolves turn into man-beasts who are unable to control their actions. To put on my nerd hat, this approach means that 1941’s THE WOLF MAN could, theoretically be a part of the MONGRELS universe and solve a continuity issue that’s always perplexed werewolf buffs - namely, the fact that Bela Lugosi’s werewolf gypsy character is shown to be a four-legged wolf while Lon Chaney Jr’s Larry Talbot is transformed into a two-legged monster.
I love werewolves. I love writing about them, I love watching movies about them and I love reading books about them. While I plug away at the script for WHERE WOLF 2, I feel an urge to fill my well of werewolf dreams and to watch some movies and read some books that I have not previously enjoyed yet.
So, I’m howling at you, hit me up with your favorite werewolf deep cuts in the comments. I’d sure appreciate it. Arrooo!