'Beware the Moon' - an article by Claudia Glazzard

[mad_docs_of_lit]

“The werewolf is neither man nor wolf, but a Satanic creature with the worst qualities of both.”

Dr. Yogam, ’Werewolf of London’ (1935)

It was only a matter of time before legends and tales of the werewolf that had been passed down for generations took on a new form and brought those horrors to life, and with the age of the feature film, this did indeed become reality.

Alas, the first werewolf film was lost many years ago. Made by Universal in 1913 it was based around Native American legend, which hasn’t been touched upon too much since, which is a shame as there is whole host of old legends to provide inspiration.

The first well-known werewolf film to rear its ugly head was ‘Werewolf of London’ in 1935, which was very much the blueprint for ‘The Wolfman' but is equally as good. Lon Chaney, who stared in the latter, will forever be the classic movie werewolf. His portrayal is amongst the best for both the make-up and Chaney’s acting prowess.

There were plenty of films to follow. Classics such as ‘I was a Teenage Werewolf’ kept the people at the drive-in entertained and were very good films with quite a lot of heart as well as the shock factor! The style by then had already become firmly fixed with the curse not only dooming the body but condemning any relationship or chance at love the lycanthrope had.

Hammer, of course, got in on the act in the memorable ‘The Curse of the Werewolf’. You really can’t go wrong with Oliver Reed playing the beast and as to be expected once again, everything on the relationship front was left in ruins, with Reed hamming it up to great effect.

Enter the age of special effects and enter the more visceral age of werewolf, the best of which of course is the classic ‘American Werewolf in London’, which manages to seamlessly blend pure terror and comedy as well as a love story. It is also famous for having the first single shot transformation scene, which is still to this day extremely effective. It’s no wonder the director John Landis went on to direct Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video. Things got very bloody but it really showed the bestial brutality and just how painful it would be to go through the transformation.

There have of course been a number of, shall we say, howlers. ‘The Howling’ series got more ridiculous by the installment and Jack Nicholson’s ‘Wolf’ left a bit of a bad taste in the mouth. Oddly though werewolves seem to do quite well in the quirky senses, ‘Teen Wolf’ being the prime example of this, combining high school comedy with the werewolf genre.

Werewolves do come in different forms, of course, such as Remus Lupin from the Harry Potter films who is shown as more of an actual wolf and seems to have the problem under control, but things probably are simpler in the wizarding world. The film ‘Ladyhawke’ doesn’t follow the norm, being more of a traditional fantasy film where two lovers are separated, the woman being forced to live as a hawk by day and the man as a wolf by night so they can never be together.

In more recent times there has been more of an attempt to make lycanthropy ‘sexy’, with the likes of ‘Underworld’ and of course the ‘Twilight’ series, which on the whole is best not mentioned. With the romanticised ‘Red Riding Hood’ poised to come out in cinemas the genre is in danger of getting too soft, but time will tell.

There is some hope, though, with the perfectly decent remake of ‘The Wolfman’ going back to where things started. Maybe there is a chance of a better future for werewolves on film.


Copyright

Claudia Glazzard

"Beware the Moon"

© 2011, Claudia Glazzard
Self Published
mad.docs.of.lit[at]gmail.com