Stuff: Because owning a silver cross you could maybe melt down into a bullet isn't really "werewolf insurance."

I don't often get the chance to throw a link to an insurance site up on ANTSS, so when it does happen I feel weirdly elated. Term Life Insurance, of all folks, has actually whipped up the following table of super serious, very real threats for you to ponder when you debate just what sort of coverage you need. Click to read the whole thing.

Via: Term Life Insurance

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Stuff: The roots of lycanthropy.

Sorry I've been flying under the radar for so long. While I toil away on the next review, here's some quality reading to keep you occupied. First, from the late, great Martin Gardener comes this study of lycanthropy.

This choice bit describes the origins of the term lycanthrope:

The Greeks worshipped the wolfgod, Zeus Lycaeus and there are many stories of ordinary men being transformed into wolves and other creatures. In Graves' translation of Greek myths an account is given of the inhabitants of Parnassus who followed a pack of howling wolves to a mountain top where they established a new city, Lycorea. According to the myth, the Parnassians practiced Lyacaon's Abomination, a ritual where a boy was sacrificed and his guts made into a soup which was eaten by shepherds, one of whom would then turn into a tormented werewolf who was condemned to wander the countryside for 8 years, regaining his humanity if he refrained from eating human flesh. According to this legend a full recovery was possible as illustrated in the legend of Damarchus who went on to win a boxing prize at the Olympic Games after rigorous training in the gymnasium. The connection with cannibalistic practices is further illustrated in the legend of Lycaon, King of Arcadia, who was changed into a wolf as punishment for secretly feeding Zeus human flesh.

The article traces the cultural history of lycanthropy (as late as the 1700s, epidemics of lycanthropy would break out and, in one case, a French judge is reported to have condemned more than 600 sufferers to death) and ends on a curious note that suggests our own affection for werewolf fictions may have replaced religious inspirations for the disease. In short, movie werewolves might be creating modern lycanthropes:

To gain an understanding of certain bizarre psychiatric symptoms it may be helpful to consider the effects of religion and culture. At the time of the Inquisition, when the werewolf was a feared satanic representation, the incidence of lycanthropy peaked. As religious beliefs have changed, the perception of the devil as a wolf or goat-like creature has receded but is not entirely unfamiliar. These beliefs may be revived in those suffering from severe depressive illness where they are incorporated into delusions of guilt and sinfulness. Similarly, the cannibalistic and aggressive qualities of the lycanthrope can be traced back to the content of ancient myth and followed through the centuries when the werewolf retained these characteristics. Despite the passage of time, the werewolf remains a powerful and evocative image. The influence of myth and legend has been filtered and obscured with the passage of time but it is likely that the symptom of lycanthropy will continue to be seen as long as tales of the wolf-man can frighten us.

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Mad science: How werewolves became imaginary.

Over at the Fortean Times web site, writer Brian Regal tracks the history of the werewolf feared monster of Europe's darkest forests to figment of the imagination. The broad arch of the werewolf's lapse into fantasy is familiar, but Regal points out that the extent to which the werewolf became strictly fictional is uniquely notable:

For most of recorded history, the half-man, half-wolf lycanthrope reigned supreme as the creature travellers most feared encountering in the woods and along dark roads at night. Numerous legends concerned werewolves – the awful deeds they committed, how to protect against them, how to kill them – and belief in their reality can be found in many cultures from ancient times to the present. But while the werewolf still holds a place in fiction and films, few people today actually fear meeting one in reality. Many individuals and groups actively search for cryptids, but there are no werewolf-hunting organisations. So – where have all the werewolves gone?

From the late 19th century on, anomal­ous primates like the Yeti, Sasquatch and Bigfoot nudged aside the wolfmen of old and stepped forward to occupy the niche of this fearsome man-like monster. But what accounts for this curious transformation?

Regal starts his story with a discussion of the dog-headed proto-werewolf of Greek legend: the Cynocephali, the race of dog-headed men that even included (in the lore of the Eastern church) St. Christopher, pictured above. He notes that, curiously, Europe started to dismiss the possibility of werewolves even as its belief in demons and witches proved fatally strong:

Despite the widespread cultural acceptance of werewolves as a reality, by the late 1500s some European writers were questioning the concept. While belief in witches flourished with murderous abandon, views on werewolves had little consistency in learned circles, and though werewolves often found themselves associated with witches, no werewolf ‘craze’ ever developed. In fact, there are only a few werewolf trials on record. As the Enlightenment dawned, a debate ensued over whether demons could transmute a human into a werewolf. Philosophers and theologians wondered whether the human soul was capable of becoming genuinely bestial, and such theological reservations posed the same problems for werewolfery as evolution did two and a half centuries later. It was during this period of scient­ific revolution that psychological, rather than physical, explanations for lycanthropy gained currency.

Ultimately, he argues, the rise of Darwin put paid to the wolf man. Evolutionary theory began to kill off the beasts of myth, replacing them with an equally fantastic, but more "scientific" zoo of missing links, prehistoric survivals, and "nature's mistakes" (though Darwin himself was dismissive of any notion of a missing link). Notably, apes - and their cryptid shadow relatives, Bigfoot, yeti, sasquatch, the stink ape, and so on - became the beast-man link of choice.

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Music: Neo-prog taco-eating werewolf.

And he fights a vampire.

Here's Bear in Heaven's "Werewolf."

It's like two dudes who got too old and got kicked off the set of New Moon had a drunken brawl outside a Motel 6 in Rich Creek, Virginia, while a Catherine Wheel tribute band attempted its first Lungfish cover in the background.

At least, that's what I thought it was like.

Bear In Heaven - Werewolf from Hometapes on Vimeo.

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Music: Moonwalk macabre.

Formed originally as a folksy duo by the name Unitard, singer Karen O and guitarist Nicolas Zinner electrified their sound, hooked up with drummer Brian Chase, and became the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Producing a strong of critically and popularly successful albums and EPs, the trio emerged as one of the few "it bands" to survive the post-White Stripes neo-garage bubble.

The YYY's new long-player, It's Blitz, expands the groups sound, adding dreamy electronica, dicso, and even a hint of Celtic traditional to their rock palate. The video for the second single from that album, "Heads Will Roll," features a Michael Jackson inspired werewolf that not only has some nice moves, but goes all chomp-chomp-slash-slash on the audience and band. Dig, Screamers and Screamettes.

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Stuff: Therewolf.

I wanted to plug a nifty post by the relentlessly productive B-Sol of Vault of Horror. Among the video blogs, weekly top ten lists, news bulletins, and paternalistic odes to the joys of raising monster-kids, this engine of Interweb copy has managed to produce the first of three posts on the history of werewolf flicks.

It's nice to see ol' fuzzy face get the B-Sol treatment. Long the red-headed stepchild of the Universal fold, the werewolf's is to the universe of classical monsters what Martian Manhunter is to the Justice League – everybody feels he's iconic, but nobody has ever been able to raise his status to the level of a Frankenstein or a Dracula (the Superman and Batman of the JLA conceit).

From B-Sol's post:

With the highly anticipated Benicio del Toro remake of Universal's The Wolf Man on the way this fall, the time is ripe to take a long, considered look at the history of one of the horror genre's most venerable and beloved sub-categories. Although not quite as popular as its cousin the vampire, and perhaps not as thoroughly explored cinematically, the lycanthrope has nevertheless provided us with some of the most terrifying films ever made.

A beast whose origins go back nearly to the beginnings of Western civilization, the mythological being who can transform from man to wolf under the influence of the full moon has gone through its fair share of Hollywood-ization, much like its blood-drinking brethren. And in general, the history of werewolf films can be divided into three major eras. Today we will take a look at the first.

Most of the comments have focused on the odd film that's been left out, notably the list's lack of reference to the werewolf cycle of Euro-horror "master" Paul Naschy. These omissions don't bother me. You can't cover everything and, while Naschy probably deserves mention for holding the record for most-performances-as-a-werewolf, it doesn't strike me that his body of work has had some massive influence on the development of the genre. Despite their cult status among Euro-horror fans, they're sort of an evolutionary dead end. I think Naschy's the William Blake of werewolf filmmakers: There was nobody quite like him and he left no notable imitators, so he stands alone as a weird one-shot mutation in the genetic history of the subgenre. That's my take anyway.

I would, however, underscore something in his discussion of 1935's Werewolf of London:

The movie is Werewolf of London, and for some connoissuers of vintage horror, it remains the high watermark of lycanthrope cinema. Henry Hull stars as Dr. Glendon, and English botanist who falls under the curse of the werewolf after being bitten on an expedition in the Himalayas. The vast bulk of cinema's take on the werewolf legend is already established in this one film: the transmission through biting, the transformation under the full moon, the beast's desire to destroy that which its human half loves most.

The makeup created by Jack Pierce is striking, and Hull's humanoid, intelligent portrayal of the creature is quite unique, giving us one of the only talking werewolves of the silver screen. The film also puts the transformation scene front and center, a tradition that would continue throughout the history of the subgenre. Werewolf of London remains one of the most influential, and yet also one of the most underrated horror films of the Universal canon.

The biggest paradigm shift Werewolf of London introduced to the subgenre is the "humanoid" part. Prior to Werewolf of London, werewolves were depicted as changing from men into standard issue wolves. After London, the norm would be a mostly bipedal human-wolf hybrid creature. Ancient wolf stories tended to assume either a purely mental transformation (a dude gets on his hands and knees and starts acting like a wolf) or a complete physical transformation (in which the transformed person becomes a wolf-wolf). The ancient idea that the transformation is complete – though often a crucial part of the pre-film folklore - would become increasingly less common.

(There are, of course, dissidents. Perhaps ironically, American Werewolf in London and its sequel mostly keep their wolves on all fours. The Ginger Snaps franchise avoids extensive two-legged walking as well. Sharp Teeth and Sacred Book of the Werewolf are novelistic exceptions to the general trend – both assume a complete transformation).

Still, that's a small quibble. It's an excellent post and worth your attention. Dig, Screamers and Screamettes.

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