The return of the werewolf

Benicio Del Toro as the the deadly title character from the remake of the The Wolfman. Photo / Supplied

Is the vampire's reign as creature of the night coming to an end? For some time now, bloodsuckers have been hogging the moonlight in everything from the chaste, teen-friendly Twilight to HBO's kinky True Blood, to Park Chan-wook's mad sanguinary love story Thirst, and Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant.

But could the release earlier this year of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, the return to cinemas of John Landis' influential comedy-horror An American Werewolf in London, and the delayed arrival of the remake of George Waggner's seminal The Wolfman, starring Benicio del Toro as the titular lycanthrope, be a sign that the scales are tipping in favour of another mythical creature? As will be evident when The Twilight Saga: New Moon is released, werewolves are on their way back - and they're coming in force. It had to happen, eventually.

"If vampires are popular, it follows that werewolves must soon arrive," says Brad Steiger, author of The Werewolf Book. "In cinema, the two are paired like horse and carriage. You can't have one without the other."

Chris Weitz, director of New Moon, concurs. "I suppose they're the two most relatable human monsters we can think of," he said recently. "They nicely encapsulate restraint and passion. Vampires are cold-blooded, literally, and werewolves are hot-blooded."

Whether we will go as loopy over lycanthropes as we have over vampires remains to be seen. But like them or loathe them, they will be hard to avoid. Indeed, New Moon will offer a whole (six) pack of buff Native American werewolves. Writer/producer/director Alan Ball has promised that the beasties will soon be padding around True Blood's Bon Temps. Jack and Diane, a notorious lesbian werewolf movie originally, but no longer, starring Juno's Ellen Page, looks likely to finally appear in 2011, while MTV is developing a pilot for a series based on the popular 1985 Michael J Fox movie Teen Wolf. Fox network's "dramedy" Bitches - yes, really - about a quartet of female New Yorkers who happen to be werewolves, has, apparently, been put on the back-burner.

Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, is putting together a "Gothic re-imagining" of Little Red Riding Hood, with Twilight director, Catherine Hardwicke, at the helm. Some early oral versions of the story involve a werewolf rather than a wolf; after all, the girl's fate at the end of the first published version, by Charles Perrault, was more grim than Grimm.

Add to this list a proposed, some might say pointless, remake of An American Werewolf in London and who can doubt that the fur is really going to fly? But why now? According to Steiger, the werewolf might just be the perfect creature for today.

"What could give one more of a sense of power in these troubled times," he muses, "than being able to shapeshift into a wolf and run off into the night, howling at the moon, and being able to demolish one's enemies and anxieties?" Steiger has a point. Who doesn't feel like going wild these days?

Werewolves in various forms have stalked the imagination for millennia, the reasons for their existence changing over the centuries. In some legends, people become werewolves by choice, says Steiger; they "seek the power of transmutation through incantations, potions or spells, glorying in their strength and in their ability to strike fear into the hearts of all who hear their piercing howling on the nights of the full moon. They also become great warriors in the legends of the Norse and other countries."

After the Church condemned them as Satanic in the Middle Ages, however, a lycanthrope was one of the last things anyone wanted to be identified as. Take the case of Peter Stubbe, in 1589, for instance. He was accused of a series of wolf attacks near Cologne - the wolf itself having vanished - and confessed under torture to making a pact with the Devil, who he claimed gave him a belt that transformed him into a wolf. He said he had killed and eaten children - including his own son - and livestock, and committed incest. The least grisly part of poor Stubbe's punishment was his beheading.

Today, our concept of the werewolf comes mainly courtesy of Hollywood. Though there had been earlier werewolf films, notably Universal's Werewolf of London, in 1935, it was the same studio's The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney Jr, six years later, which would fix the creature in popular culture, and for a long time serve as the blueprint, effectively, for future werewolf movies.

Intelligently scripted by Curt Siodmak, the film "rewrote centuries of werewolf lore and legend", says Steiger. Even the film's famous poem - "Even the man who is pure at heart/ And says his prayers at night/ May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms/ And the moon is clear and bright" - was written by Siodmak.

"The Wolf Man created a number of faux werewolf traditions that became cinematic werewolf dogma in many horror films to follow," notes Steiger. These included the transmission of lycanthropy via a bite or scratch, the first full moon following an attack as the trigger for the victim's initial transformation into a werewolf, the look of the creature, the "clouding of human compassion by bloodlust", and the lethal effect of silver. A silver bullet in the heart, he points out, was not added until Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943.

If werewolves have anything to be thankful for, it is surely that, unlike vampires, at least they aren't undead. The sun's rays are harmless to them, they can see their reflection in mirrors, and crucifixes pose no danger. On the other hand, pentagrams, especially silver ones, must be avoided.

The years since The Wolf Man have seen the creature's popularity wax and wane, as actors including a pre-Little House on the Prairie Michael Landon (I Was a Teenage Werewolf), Oliver Reed (The Curse of the Werewolf) and Jack Nicholson (Wolf) have followed in Chaney Jr's paw prints.

In 1981 the sub-genre gained a new lease of life with the release of An American Werewolf in London. The film was a perfect meld of comedy, horror and satire, and featured groundbreaking, ultimately Oscar-winning special effects by Rick Baker, which seamlessly transformed David Naughton's hapless backpacker, horrifyingly, into a ravening wolf before our eyes.

The momentum was maintained by two other films released the same year: Joe Dante's The Howling and the more serious-minded Wolfen. While the rest of the 80s produced further memorable outings for werewolves, such as A Company of Wolves and Teen Wolf, the 90s proved disappointing, offering the likes of Mike Nichols' so-so Wolf and the dire An American Werewolf in Paris.

The Canadian cult favourite Ginger Snaps gave the werewolf a much needed boost at the beginning of the noughties, and the creature has barely been away since, re-appearing in Dog Soldiers, the Underworld and Harry Potter films, and Van Helsing, among others.

Next year, The Wolfman will take us back to the creature's cinematic roots. It is a risky business remaking a classic and time will tell whether it works like moonlight on the werewolf sub-genre, or a silver bullet. "I am not a fan of remakes, but I do have great hopes for the film," says Steiger.

- INPENDENT