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Extract from The Werewolf Book: An Encyclopedia of Shape-Shifting Beings by Brad Steiger
On February 12th, The Wolfman, starring Benicio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot and Anthony Hopkins as Sir John Talbot will be released after a nearly two-year wait on the studio shelves. Those of us who are werewolf fans are eagerly waiting to view the new interpretation of the 1941 classic and to see if hardy and vicious werewolves can compete with the current sex appeal of buff and attractive vampires.
HOLLYWOOD AND THE WEREWOLF
It has often been said that Americans learn their history through motion pictures. For millions of contemporary men and women, the word "werewolf" conjures up images of the actor Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man (1941), creeping through the nocturnal mists, a good man tortured by the knowledge that the bite of a werewolf has caused him to endure a monthly metamorphosis into a monster during the full moon. Although a wolf, we still recognize Chaney as a man, fully clothed, walking upright in a peculiar loping movement.
In later motion pictures, such as The Howling (1981), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), vastly improved visual effects allow us to witness the complete transformation of man into wolf, but The Wolf Man created a number of werewolf traditions that became cinematic werewolf dogma in many horror films to follow:
• People become werewolves after being bitten or scratched by a werewolf.
• Upon the rising of the first full moon after surviving the attack by the werewolf, the victims are themselves transformed into werewolves. Such shall be their fate forever.
• The process of transformation causes fangs and claws to grow, hair to sprout all over the body, and human compassion to be clouded by blood lust.
• Werewolves retain an upright, two-legged human body shape and continue to wear the clothing in which they were attired before the transformation began. Shoes are the only items of wearing apparel discarded before the lycanthropes terrorize the moonlit countryside. The werewolf of ancient tradition runs on all fours and has discarded all vestiges of clothing before the process of transmutation begins. If the shape-shifter should be killed while in the form of a wolf, he or she would return to human shape and be found to be naked.
• Wolfbane is very effective at keeping a werewolf at bay. Garlic is also a good werewolf deterrent, and a pentagram (the five-pointed star) might save your life if it is made of silver.
• An object made of silver is the only thing that can kill a werewolf. (A silver bullet in heart would be added in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man, 1943.)
With these cinematic rules for lycanthropic behavior, manners, and mores firmly established in The Wolf Man, Universal Pictures rewrote centuries of werewolf lore and legend. Even the famous folk wisdom "Even the man who is pure at heart/And says his prayers at night/May become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms/And the moon is clear and bright," was composed by the screenwriter for the film.
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