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Popular Culture Review
the focal werewolf s origin as a primary narrative focus, with the werewolfery
generally resulting from either a curse or the machinations of another—usually a
scientist who has strayed from the straight and narrow.
What leads to a more specific analysis of a production’s utilization of
the origin story, however, is examining how each film’s focal lycanthrope
succumbs to being a shapeshifter. As noted above, only six of the films in
question tell us how that production’s major werewolf became so. The
remaining thirteen films forego this explanatory material by assuming the
existence of one or more werewolves who pass on their condition to the film’s
focal character. The question here thus becomes how one of the film’s major
character’s lycanthrophobia comes to be, rather than whether or not we are told
how werewolfery in general originates in the first place.
Although this survey studies nineteen films, we discover only three
general methods by which the focal character becomes a werewolf. In essence,
these films tell us that a person may turn into a werewolf when bitten by an
existing lupine, as the result of a family curse, or because another character
somehow causes the protagonist to transform into a werewolf.
In ten films spanning the seventy years from 1935 through 2005, the
featured shapeshifter is bitten—usually during the plot’s expository stage. These
films follow the classic formula established in the Universal releases discussed
above. Additionally, these narratives mirror the form alluded to previously in
which the audience is asked to accept as a narrative precondition the premise
that werewolves exist. If not, how could the lead player become infected? This
“classic” plot element is present in films from multiple generations that include
Werewolf o f London, The Wolf Man, An American Werewolf in London, Wolf
An American Werewolf in Paris, the Canadian release, Ginger Snaps, and Wes
Craven’s contribution to the genre, Cursed. The latter two titles are particularly
significant because, unlike the conventional template for such productions, the
primary werewolf in each is a female.
The bite is slightly less evident in Joe Dante’s The Howling, until the
scene midway through the film in which the werewolf colony’s resident
nymphomaniac has sex in the woods with the heroine’s vegetarian boyfriend. As
evidence of this film’s unique sense of humor, the boyfriend wakes up in the
morning with a newly found appetite for meat. Somewhat along the same line as
infection by the bite are the transformations that take place in Neil Marshall’s
Dog Soldiers (2002). Here, one focal werewolf (Special Operations Captain
Ryan) is not merely bitten but clawed to within inches of death when the local
family of lycanthropes attacks the special operations unit he is commanding
during the group’s search and seizure assignment in a remote area of Scotland.
Also suffering this fate is Sergeant Wells (Sean Pertwee), when he leads the men
of his unit through the forest to escape the wolf pack only to be graphically
disemboweled by them. What stands out in Marshall’s film is the lack of any
origin story telling us how the werewolf family came into being. In something of
a twist, we find the werewolves are immortal when transformed and hunt