Guest Author - Andy Boxall

The werewolf has been portrayed on the cinema since the early days of talkies, and although two werewolf films existed before it (a 20 minute short from 1913 named The Werewolf and 1935’s Werewolf of London), the genre truly got underway with 1941’s The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney Jr. The Wolf Man became firmly established as a horror classic and Chaney received at least some of the fame he had always desired.

The Wolf Man was important not only for these reasons, but for the mythos it added to the genre courtesy of the movie’s writer, Curt Siodmak. The full moon and physical transformation was already vaguely in place, but Curt added the five-pointed star as the sign of the werewolf, wolf’s bane and the potential for silver to kill the werewolf. Interesting that these points are now firmly routed in the mythology and taken almost as ‘fact’, were invented by a screenwriter!

Lon Chaney Jr’s character in The Wolf Man was Laurence Talbot, who returned in no less than four further films, not letting a small thing like death hold him back. Larry can be seen in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House Of Dracula and the awesome Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Although Chaney never played Talbot again, he did reprise the role of a werewolf in the 1960 film Face of the Screaming Werewolf.

After Chaney gave the werewolf movie the silver bullet, it was down to an actor named Jacinta Molina to take over the role as the alpha wolf. Better known in horror circles as Paul Naschy, he starred in no less than 13 werewolf movies including Mark of the Wolfman, Dr. Jekyll and The Werewolf and the yeti-battling Night of the Howling Beast. Without Naschy’s contribution to the genre during the 60’s and 70’s, I wonder if it would have survived.

At the beginning of the 80’s several films arrived which have gone on to become the defining articles, against which all others shall be compared. Joe Dante’s The Howling and John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London were both home to startling transformation sequences and amusing scripts, where Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves concentrated on dream-like imagery and a the more sexual side of the lycanthropic legend.

It was around this time that mainstream Hollywood took notice of the werewolf boom and created the Michael J Fox vehicle Teen Wolf and it’s sequel Teen Wolf Too. Although they contributed little to the genre, they were popular within their target audience, the teenagers. The 80’s finished with the variety of disappointing Howling sequels, none of which were directed by Joe Dante.

Big bad Jack Nicholson took the role that many thought he was born to play in the 1994 effort, Wolf. Light on horror, it harked back to the FX style of the original wolf movies in the 40’s. Wolf concentrates more on the nature of the werewolf and the beast within the person. Mike Nichols film is a love-it or hate-it affair, many not caring about the thinking side of the werewolves.

During the last 5 years, mainstream fantasy cinema treated us to Underworld and Van Helsing, both employing CGI effects to bring the lycanthrope to life. Both were popular, but disappointing to the horror fan over 12 years old. Without a doubt the best werewolf focussed movie since the 80’s is Dog Soldiers, a British film directed by Neil Marshall. Taught, exciting, frightening and well written, Dog Soldiers shows great promise for Marshall.

The most obvious comparison to a werewolf movie is the vampire movie, backed up by their many on-screen collaborations. For me, the underlying violence, madness and ‘urban’ feel to the werewolf is far more interesting and exciting than the traditional movie vampire. Unfortunately, the werewolf movie is treated as the poor cousin to the more up-market vampire flick. Perhaps someone will come up with a rival to Dog Soldiers and increase the poor old dogs standing soon.

Your Editor used to be a werewolf, but…