Abstract
This chapter examines British movies—The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), Legend of the Werewolf (1975), The Company of Wolves (1984)—as well as werewolf films that feature Britain, including Werewolf of London (1935), The Wolf Man (1941) and An American Werewolf in London (1981). It investigates werewolves’ origins and migrations, as films demarcate territories of ‘home’ and the exotic or marginalized, amidst the multiple versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ that permeate the films. Motivating reflection on what makes us human, or animal, the werewolf expresses tensions between conscious / unconscious (or repressed / liberated), predicated upon a dualistic (Jekyll / Hyde) understanding of self /‘other,’ or culture / nature. Despite the films’ final containment, their critique of societal repression has an indelible force.
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- 1.
Transformations triggered by the full moon can be traced back to Werewolf of London (Stuart Walker, 1935). In Guy Endore’s novel, The Werewolf of Paris (1933) and George Waggner’s film, The Wolf Man (1941), silver alone can kill a werewolf, as other films and magazines went on to emulate. However, as Chantal Bourgault du Coudray (2006: 77) notes, silver had been listed among other methods for a long time, for example Frank Hamel’s book Human Animals (1915).
- 2.
My translation from the French, ‘Surtout de jeunes filles Belles, bien faites, et gentiles’.
- 3.
- 4.
The tale is reproduced in Jack Zipes (1993: 21–23).
- 5.
While other interpretations are possible, from denoting the material of the ground / path (e.g., pine needles) through to different stages of life or materials linked to the telling of the tale, critical consensus rests on the choice indicating those linked with emerging womanhood.
- 6.
Tex Avery made this element his central fixation. In his animation Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), the protagonist is a blonde striptease artist in a Hollywood nightclub. The wolf is a gentleman in top hat and tails whose eyes pop out on stalks at her provocative performance—the joke being that the wolf ends up being chased by a sexually besotted grandmother. As Catherine Orenstein (2002: 115) argues, “The showgirl and her lascivious partner were not just a girl and a wolf, but the characters and symbols of the human sexual drama.” The representation perpetuates the notion that sexual desire is defined by the male voyeur’s active objectification.
- 7.
That the setting is also the grounds of the dreaming girl’s own grand home (introduced in the opening frame) gives a further unsettling depth—especially since her fantasy of herself in the dream is that of a poor village girl.
- 8.
In the (1984) Channel 4 Visions series about The Company of Wolves, Carter says she does not fear the wolf, but does see the grandmother as a terrifying figure in her desire to have the girl for herself.
- 9.
However, the threat of going feral remains with certain breeds; if left to live in the wild, it does not take long for most dogs to lose the aptitude for being controlled by humans.
- 10.
As Pauline Greenhill (2008: 143) observes, the notion of younger sisters learning from older sisters’ mistakes is an established fairytale trope.
- 11.
Carter and Jordan’s screenplay (1997: 189) describes, “peasants out of any number of fairy-tales, redolent of the late-eighteenth century, perhaps, the world of the Brothers Grimm, but much else besides.”
- 12.
The dates “1740–1840” are handwritten a number of times on the Shooting Script front cover and preliminary pages; the description of the location is general, “A small Spanish Farming Town. The Square” (Elder, August 1960: 1). With thanks to Professor Steve Chibnall and the Hammer Script Archives, De Montfort University. Sue Harper (1998: 110) observes that while Hammer Films’ pre-1957 productions had “modern settings,” The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958) launched the new Hammer horror cycle with historical settings: “Over half the films produced between 1957 and 1974 had historical settings.” Hammer Films received the Queen’s Award for Industry in 1968 for international profits.
- 13.
The Inquisitor concerned the Spanish Inquisition taking root in a small town.
- 14.
Although the basic structure was kept, much of Endore’s novel would have needed to be removed anyway due to its heavy descriptions of political and historical context, and allegorical themes.
- 15.
The Shooting Script (August, 1960) reveals a regressive conceptualization of women: “fat and raucous, and the music is loud and bad; but it makes up for any deficiencies by a rowdy ‘Hogarthian’ good humour. In fact, the combined noise of the girls’ piercing laughter, the shouts of the happy CLIENTS, and the blaring of the musicians, is almost deafening.” The “madam” is described as a large woman, and later “JOSE bursts back with two large, laughing strumpets” (Elder 1960: 70). The hand-drawn sketch on the right margin of the script depicts three cartoonlike women, bulging over tight corsets. Thanks to Professor Steve Chibnall and the Hammer Script Archives, De Montfort University for reprinting this copy for me. The film’s bordello dancing girls, different from the script, are attractive, sexualized Spanish dancers. Although Jose introduces them as two good friends he does not know their names, exposing their disposability in his mind.
- 16.
There are red tinges to the lighting in the brothel, the sky is notably red when Leon is imprisoned; the Shooting Script describes it as having “deepened to a blood colour” (Elder 1960: 77).
- 17.
Victorian art perpetuated this fantasy of a ‘found’ fallen woman, who had drowned herself in despair—for example, the painting Found Drowned, GF Watts, c. 1850. Don Alfredo as narrator notably declares that it is here (in the lake) that he “found her.”
- 18.
While incest between mother and son is a feature in Guy Endore’s Werewolf of Paris, it is clear that there is no allusion to this in these images.
- 19.
This recalls Bourgault du Coudray’s observation: “Little Red Riding Hood’s diversion from the path among the trees signals her liability to sensual abandonment even before she meets the wolf, who focuses the diffuse dangers of the forest in an obviously sexualised and gendered way” (2006: 116).
- 20.
A restored version was made for the BBC in 1992, but accidentally the old print was shown.
- 21.
Of the other British 1970s films, the (Amicus Productions / British Lion Film Corporation) whodunit The Beast Must Die (Paul Annett, 1974) is set in a mansion on a non-specified island, where Britain is mentioned only in passing as a place free from werewolves or werewolf belief. Generically, the werewolf is thus ‘othered’ rather than set up in relation to a self/other duality. By contrast, Demons of the Mind (Peter Sykes, 1972) portrays the decadent Baron Zorn imagining himself as a wolf running wild in the forest, thus focusing on the psychical over the physical transformation—an image that is later rekindled in An American Werewolf in London (David Landis, 1981).
- 22.
A relatively large percentage (16.5%) of Legend of the Werewolf’s modest budget was spent on “Sets and models” (Buscombe 1976: 30).
- 23.
The film introduced the trend for depicting the condition being passed on by the bite of another werewolf; according to Bourgault du Coudray (2006: 77), this idea did not feature in fiction or folklore before 1935.
- 24.
She might easily be mistaken for a prostitute, her staggering gait across a street at night-time mirroring that of stereotypical cinematic representations of prostitutes. Robert Spadoni (2010: 55) describes the care taken, after she was changed from prostitute in the script to beggar woman in the film, to distinguish her from a prostitute to appease the Breen Office, but that even so she was still read as one by a critic.
- 25.
- 26.
The film was billed under his famous father’s name, Lon Chaney; “Lon Chaney as The Wolf Man” appears on the opening star profiles, and the closing credits.
- 27.
Two other werewolf films were released the same year (1981), The Howling (Joe Dante) and Wolfen (Michael Wadleigh, John D. Hancock [uncredited], Rupert Hitzig [uncredited]).
- 28.
The girls are uncannily reminiscent of the ‘twins’ in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining that came out the year before. The girl in red outside Alex’s flat has a dog that barks at him (its canine instincts clearly sensing his lupine interior). This animal sixth sense is a staple of the werewolf film, for example: Aunt Ettie’s dog in Werewolf of London, growling at Glendon while still physically in human form.
- 29.
Notably, The Shining had a not too dissimilar opening visually but the (‘Dies Irae’) music casts a grave tone.
- 30.
These scenes were actually filmed in Wales. The Yorkshire Moors works, both as a tourist destination and a place that in its remoteness can be threatening.
- 31.
Amongst the crowd is a young, up-and-coming Rik Mayall who Landis had seen doing stand-up in London and asked semi-jokingly to come along in the morning.
- 32.
A poster for See you Next Wednesday is seen on the wall of the underground where the commuter tries to flee from the werewolf.
- 33.
In 1981, polarities between rich and poor were broadening in Britain and America. In the UK, the miners’ strike coincided with London bankers gaining more power internationally. Large car manufacturing unions were crushed in the USA. Right-wing leaders would gain force as the year progressed, with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher beginning to forge a nominally stronger US/UK ‘special relationship’ based on shared values.
- 34.
This sequence also seems to strike a chord with the World War II German–American encounter ‘deeply engraved in the American mind’ that captivated the imagination of popular culture: “the story of the German ‘werewolves,’ Hitler’s last underground fighters, who challenged the occupying armies in the war’s closing months” (Christina von Hodenberg 2008: 71). Hodenberg suggests that the fears of a Nazi insurgency (in which American G.I.s were warned that friendly German civilians might be ‘wolves’ in disguise) was greater than the threat but that it captured the imaginations of American genre movies (2008: 78).
- 35.
Carter’s radio play A Company of Wolves is a more radical rewriting of the fairy tale. The heroine removes her clothes first, and almost has to make him do the same; once the heroine expresses her desires, the werewolf has difficulty articulating his. The radio play is not contained by opening and closing sections like the film is.
- 36.
The screenplay aimed for an ambitious ending, of Alice diving into the floor (in the screenplay, Alice is the heroine within the contemporary frame, who witnesses her own death in the dream, with Rosaleen her younger sister taking over). Alice bounces on her bed, then springs off “as if on a diving-board,” then “plummets”: “The floor parts. It is in fact water. She vanishes beneath it” (Carter and Jordan 1997: 244). A he- and she-wolf enter the remaining room “half-forest, half-girl’s bedroom” nosing Alice’s items (1997: 244). It was never screened due to the technical difficulties it would cause at the time.
- 37.
Paul Naschy (famed for Mexican werewolf movies since the 1960s) also had a similar physique.
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Hubner, L. (2018). Encountering the Werewolf—Confronting the Self: On and Off the Path to The Company of Wolves. In: Fairytale and Gothic Horror. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39347-0_5
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