'But Grandma, what big teeth you've got.'
'All the better to EAT YOU WITH!!!'
The idea of the human behind the beast - and the beast behind the human - is central to the werewolf genre. Yet despite the relative newness of its cinematic treatment in films like The Werewolf (1913), An American Werewolf in London (1981) and more recently in Dog Soldiers (2002) and Wes Craven's Cursed (2005) there is nothing new about the lycanthrope, in film or in fairytale.
The werewolf is a figure that emerged from collective social mistrust of outsiders, fear of the dark, of mutability and death. It evolved through medieval myths and fairytales and - as with many other fairytale horrors - served and continues to serve as a warning to 'stay on the path!'
Fairytales, rather than being tales for children as they are viewed now, began as the earliest stories of human experience; they passed on news and gossip, cultural trends, entertained and carried warnings. As such they were oral tales passed on through word of mouth and committed to memory. They were edited and amended according to culture, or the teller's purpose. It wasn't until the 18 th Century that people like Charles Perrault and after him the Brothers Grimm began writing the tales down and choosing fixed structures to the stories.
The Little Red Riding Hood myth is one that has been heavily borrowed from by tellers (and sellers!) of the werewolf genre. It is the tale of a young girl given a duty by her mother to deliver some food to her sick grandmother, who lives deep within the dark wood. 'Go straight there,' warns the mother, who stays at home and puts her feet up, 'and stay on the path!'
'Keep off the moors; stick to the roads,' repeats a character in John Landis' gruesomely funny An American Werewolf in London , grounding the film in its fairytale origins. But as with the irrepressible red riding hood, protagonists Jack and David find they can't stick to the straight and narrow roads. Landis illustrates this is a very cleverly shot scene early in the film, and which is both understated yet full of suspense: one minute the moonlit road stretches back behind them; the next the boys have wandered off onto the moor.and into the wolf's lair.
In fact the boys are all but sacrificed by the villagers of East Proctor (does the 'altar' in the pub signify a wolf cult?) partly as a result of the innate fear of outsiders. The reaction of the customers in the Slaughtered Lamb has become a cinematic legend often aped, though in itself it is a copy of a visual trick employed in Westerns: gunslinger enters the saloon, pianola music stops, everyone falls silent.
Another wolf comedy utilises the isolation of the outsider, this time as an allegory for contemporary youth society. In Teen Wolf (1985) Michael J. Fox demonstrates his alienation and frustrations by metamorphosing into a werewolf, albeit a successful, likeable one. Rather like the Hulk, the beast beneath breaks through the thin veneer of civilisation at times of stress.
This is reflective of another strand of fairytale composition: the (often religiously-led) mistrust of human nature, particularly sexuality. Little Red Riding Hood was a kind of warning to young girls to be wary of beastliness, especially from young men lurking in the woods.
But as Freud said, the repressed will always return; repressed desires can explode in an extreme fashion. Similarly, in American Werewolf , while David tries to bury the guilt of Jack's death, Jack (rather like Macbeth's dagger) comes back from the dead with a warning, and a memorable line: 'can I have a piece of toast?'
Writers like Angela Carter have utilised the idea that the repressed - human beastliness - should be embraced. Carter re-wrote Little Red Riding Hood as The Company of Wolves, which was filmed under the same title by Neil Jordan in 1984. Carter used these re-imaginings to show in a more positive light active sexuality, likening encounters with beasts to new beginnings and re-births. Despite that, even Carter's stories are grounded in traditional fairytale elements, before she subverts them.
In the first written versions of Little Red Riding Hood, the story had two main endings. In earlier versions, the girl was eaten, and the narrator gave a rather sinister warning to little girls everywhere to listen to their mothers and on a deeper level to adhere to community rather than individualism. Others, such as the Grimms rewrote that ending so that the father (or woodman) then arrived and killed the wolf. When the wolf was cut open, little red riding hood and her grandmother climbed out, unhurt.
In Landis' film, the father/woodman figure is played collectively by the villagers. Having a change of heart, they arrive on the moor in time to save David. An American Werewolf then follows with a slick contemporary twist what happened after the rescue of the girl and her grandmother. What if those characters escaped and thought they were safe, but actually were to carry symptoms of the attack for the rest of their lives? Landis (who wrote and directed the film) shows you one possibility.
A silver bullet is to a werewolf what a stake through the heart is to a vampire - generally the silver bullet is accepted as the only way to kill a werewolf. Both types of 'mutant' must be destroyed because they are a kind of plague. Just as medieval society feared the Black Death or illnesses like leprosy, those bitten by werewolves and vampires face the same fate. They must be destroyed, or isolated, or risk spreading an infection. It is for this reason that traditionally cemeteries were located outside or on the edge of towns and villages, and in the Red Riding Hood myth, the sick grandmother lives in isolation deep in the wood.
Once the importance of ending the contagion has been accepted, however, it can leave hard choices. In Dog Soldiers it means a stranded outfit of soldiers (who end up trapped in the isolated cottage itself) must turn on each other, each having to shoot down close friends for self-preservation, and to end the lycanthrope line. In American Werewolf , this means - or at least as David believes - that his lover must also kill him. Perhaps this accounts for the rather abrupt ending to the film - after all, there can be no other ending than the end of the werewolf.
When a character in a film says, 'you've changed!' it is usually a condemnation rather than a compliment. Change - mutability -is something else that people tend to fear, whether it's death (the change of something living and breathing into something cold and inert) or, in this case, actual, physical metamorphosis. Again, this is something that the werewolf genre has cashed in on, particularly as far as special effects are concerned. For Landis, it's a darkly comic prospect: he builds the sense of David's restlessness and anxiety to breaking point before having him change into the wolf - while the soundtrack plays Bad Moon Rising .
The soundtrack to American Werewolf is very much tongue in cheek - each track has the word moon in it: Blue Moon , Moon Dance and so on. The moon, of course, is central to the genre: werewolves change under a full moon. Again this is something that has origins in medieval fears. A baby, it was said, should not be left to sleep under the gaze of a full moon, or risk growing up moon-struck. Those who broke social rules and behaved in an inexcusable or inexplicable manner were called lunatics.
The film continues some interesting links with traditional beliefs and myths. When the (American) werewolf kills a commuter in a deserted tube station there is a strong visual reminder of the Minotaur's labyrinth. Even David's doctor says, somewhat anachronistically given he is a man of modern medicine that, 'a madman has the strength of ten [men].'
Then there is the play on moon/lunar/lunatic that reoccurs throughout the script, particularly through in the doctor's character. David worries that he is going crazy (becoming a lunatic). In fact he is a lunatic - the full moon will give him amazing strength and a hunger for human flesh. When Dr. Hirsch says, 'please, remain sane' the irony is that it's only while David is 'sane' (not under the influence of the moon) that anyone is safe. While David struggles to remember the events of the night Jack was killed, the doctor remarks, 'I'm sure it'll all come back to you.' And so it does come back, with a bite.
The werewolf and horror genres - like the fairytales they've borrowed from - continue a tradition of warning and enlightening through entertainment. Freud said that we tell jokes as an excuse to laugh; so perhaps horror films are an excuse to scream in public? Next time you think you need an excuse to watch a really gory horror film, remind yourself it's all part of your social education!
Ruth Bushi
Trivia
- Landis uses the figure of an angel to start and end the films, firstly in East Proctor and then again in the Cupid at Piccadilly Circus .
- Rik Mayall plays one of the chessplayers in the Slaughtered Lamb!
- Frank Oz - the voice of Miss Piggy (David watches the Muppet Show in hospital) also plays Mr Collins.
- The closing credits state congratulations to Prince Charles and Lady Diana on their wedding - which happened the year the film was released.
- In order to get arrested, David shouts out in Trafalgar Square that 'Prince Charles is a pervert!' It doesn't work.
- Brian Glover, who leads the villagers, also appears in the Company of Wolves.
- A poster for the porno picture, See You Next Wednesday , which plays while David changes into a werewolf in a Piccadilly cinema, can be seen in the tube station killing. The tube station is Tottenham Court Road.
- All the songs on the soundtrack feature the word 'moon' in the title. Landis also wanted to get Cat Steven's Moonshadow and Bob Dylan's Blue Moon - but both refused.
- John Landis plays the man who is smashed through a window in the final mayhem in Piccadilly Circus .
- Landis wrote the screenplay for American Werewolf when he was just 19 years old.
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