Werewolves, those loopy lupine lycanthropes -- #1 in the series "Of Myth 'n Monsters"

‘He’s the hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent

Lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair

You better stay away from him

He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim

Huh, I’d like to meet his tailor…’

Werewolves of London -- Warren Zevon

Werewolves -- can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em. The legendary shape-shifters scared the bejesus out of the ancient Greeks, who called them lycanthropes , and things weren’t much different in medieval Europe, where werewolves were all the rage. Classical scribes like Herodotus, Virgil and the poet Ovid wrote on papyrus about people who roamed the world as wolves, and various modern authors, including Sabine Baring-Gould (‘The Book of Were-Wolves’), investigate the theory that werewolf stories might have been used to explain serial killings in bygone days.

Werewolves have adapted well to life in the modern world. Their beastly presence has graced contemporary music, literature, film and innumerable Halloween costume parties. The ‘Twilight’ series of novels and films bring together lupine shape-shifters and vampires, with the stories borrowing heavily from Native American folklore’s take on the legendary shape-shifters. Some say the werewolf will always play second fiddle to the vampire in the hierarchy of monsters. Hopefully the manic, tragic werewolf, he of the bad hair day and salivary gland problem, will not fall into the mythological trap of trying to imitate the suave, brooding uber hotness of vampirism. I’m concerned that as soon as a society can no longer tell the difference between werewolves, vampires and zombies, the end is near.

The precise origin of the werewolf legend is lost to history. However, considering humankind’s longstanding love-hate relationship with the natural world, it isn’t surprising that werewolf stories took shape in the human psyche. Perhaps the legend of the werewolf is as old as campfire stories, when our ancestors, in equal parts fascinated and intimidated by nature, spent dark evenings huddled around the clan bonfire while wolves howled deep in the primeval forest. Under circumstances like that, it would have been a no-brainer for a good storyteller to come up with a character like the werewolf, a character rich in thematic potential; part man, part beast, part self-control, part unchecked emotion, part intellect, part raw instinct, at times an integrated member of society, at times a rampaging rogue. What’s not to like?

Did most people in the proverbial ‘olden days’ view the werewolf as fact or fiction? Beats me; I wasn’t there. But it is, I think, safe to say that the majority considered the stories to be factual (unfortunately, numerous people were executed on suspicion of being werewolves) while surely some individuals considered the tales to be the metaphor loaded outcroppings of imagination, a collective imagination that has spent eons bending over backwards to assign human characteristics to virtually every aspect of nature (anthropomorphism). We interpret the world through the lens of our own experience, and the lens of human experience has included those ‘hairy-handed gents’ who straddle the razor fine line between the civilized and the bestial, the light and the shadow, the breaking of dawn and the falling of twilight. The werewolf is one of many X-marks on the twisted, convoluted map of the human psyche.

How can we say what light is if we don’t have darkness to compare it to? What are angels if there aren’t demons around to put their alleged virtues to the test? What is Frodo without the albatross of Sauron’s ring around his neck, without the shadow of Gollum ever at his heels? Just another dull-as-dirt hobbit, that’s what. And what is a lovely, blissfully laidback goddess of the wood without the counterbalance of a spastic butt-ugly werewolf periodically running wild in her idyllic patch of real estate? Stupendously boring, methinks. Bliss is only interesting when you’re living it. Very few people want to hear stories about it.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the concept of blissful laidback goddesses, and I certainly don’t want a werewolf to attack me as I take a nocturnal stroll through my supposedly monster-free neighborhood. I’m not interested in having my liver yanked out of my body without my express written consent as an organ donor. Death-by-werewolf seems like a painful and aggravating way to go (plus, according to some legends, you may come back to this world as a werewolf). Who needs the shock of it all? One minute you’re thinking life is at least somewhat better than average, the next moment a big bad buzz is showing you that your liver is actually located on the right side of the body rather than the left, as you had always mistakenly assumed. Silly you.

At any rate, there must be a better way to learn about human anatomy and physiology than to be eviscerated and dismembered by a werewolf. The anatomy lesson may sink in swiftly – ‘oh, so that’s where the liver’s located!’ – but the lesson runs out of gas as soon as the student drops dead. Yes, a victim may spend his or her last precious seconds in this particular world feeling like an idiot: ‘Dang it all, I knew mucking around in this Hungarian swamp on a full moon was a freakin’ lousy idea. I’m just another one of history’s stupid tourists -- and a dead one, besides.’ So the end comes without having learned the family lesson passed down from Uncle Louie, who became a vampire while spending a starless night poking around the ruins of a Romanian castle looking for artifacts. Well, ol’ Uncle Louie found his artifact – and it had fangs.

No matter how inherently unnerving a myth or a monster is at heart, you can bet at times it has been layered in cheese – sometimes intentionally, sometimes inadvertently. The werewolf legend first appeared on the silver screen in 1935’s delightfully and unintentionally campy ‘Werewolf of London.’ This Jekyll-Hyde style story gave the world a werewolf that was quite debonair and well-dressed (‘huh, I’d like to meet his tailor’) and lampooning the film came naturally to the late songwriter Warren Zevon, who knew a good target when he saw one. Fortunately the werewolf situation got on track in 1941 when Lon Chaney, Jr. and ‘The Wolf Man’ gave us Lawrence Talbot and his tortured soul, a suitably tragic, beastlike character that the psyche could really sink its teeth into – and a flick that the remake machine known as Hollywood released in the winter of 2010 with Benicio Del Toro in the lead role.

Some monsters endure, being tweaked and reinvented according to the culture of the times. The cornball Creature from the Black Lagoon is right where it belongs -- on the ash heap of monster history -- but the werewolf, in one form or another, will be with us for countless years to come.

I find that fact both comforting and chilling. Somewhere down deep within us we can all relate to the werewolf. This evening I feel the pull of the forthcoming full moon. It calls to me. It beckons from the shadowed heart of a primeval dream…

Happy hunting…