Comments on: Spooky Month Open Thread: How Vampires Won the PR War

By: Captain Splendid

Captain Splendid — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:23:47 +0000

whereas a werewolf, regardless of the best intentions of the human alter-ego, will still mostly kill you and eat your face. Something I have not seen the Hulk do.

STOP GIVING MARVEL IDEAS!

By: MaxBenign

MaxBenign — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:12:08 +0000

I don’t really have a dog in this race, though I note my favorite vampires are the least human (Nosferatu & the vorvon riff on same in Buck Rogers, the werebat transformation in Coppola’s Dracula).

I’d concur with the comments pointing out the lack of a definitive and widely known werewolf novel. I also wonder if the werewolf isn’t something of a casualty of the industrial revolution, in that few Europeans and Americans live in close proximity to wolves the way many did a couple hundred years ago, a point touched on in your review of Wolfen.

Your comment about the werewolf as metaphor for sexual awakening rings true as well — I’ve been digging on the first Cramps record lately, and “I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” is a pretty unhinged take on hormone crazed adolescence. (There’s also the older and more negative metaphor of wolf as sexually aggressive man — wolf whistles, slavering zoot-suited cartoon wolves, etc.) Interestingly, someone afflicted with lycanthropy generally ends up an autonomous monster, whereas vampires turn their victims into thralls.

By: Phill

Phill — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:04:27 +0000

Some just prefer their men bigger and hairier.

By: Gareth Wilson

Gareth Wilson — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:14:15 +0000

I like the class theory of monsters, with vampires representing the upper class and zombies the working class. In this theory werewolves are the middle class – they look normal and secure but are constantly terrified of losing control and moving down the social or evolutionary ladder. So if vampires are more popular it just means the aristocrats are winning.

By: Hayden

Hayden — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:21:21 +0000

Anyone have thoughts on other shapeshifters? Wolves have become pretty passe, from what I’ve seen in the romance market. Now it’s all about writers coming up with the craziest animal that the tormented hero can turn into. Octopus? Check. Dolphins? Check. Dragons? Yep. Dinosaur? I’m not sure, but I think I might’ve seen a T-Rex shifter somewhere. I hope to see someone attempt a banana slug shifter; then I can really wax philosophical on the psychology behind it.

By: Nik

Nik — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 19:25:08 +0000

Even though I just wrote a long post about lovin’ vampires, I dig this one too — I think what werewolves have lacked is that one defining work like Bram Stoker’s Dracula. There have been decent werefolk movies and bad ones galore, but vamps won the battle like you say. I do think there are great werewolf possibilities out there but when all we get is stuff like Jack Nicholson’s “Wolf” I’m not too hopeful (although Del Toro’s “Wolfman” could be cool).

By: Shepen

Shepen — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 05:21:11 +0000

To be fair, Victorian era New Englanders had a VERY different idea of what vampires were than their Goth/Emo descendants. 19th century American vampires were tuberculosis victims who pressed on the chests of living relatives suffering from TB until they too died (at least according to contemporary reports!) Thus people kept dying until someone went an decapitated the suspected vampires, crossing the femurs below the skull. Or they just exhumed & burned the bodies of TB victims to keep them from feeding on the living. We’ve found 18th and 19th cemeteries with graves containing such skeletons, thus confirming the belief in vampires as something far more unpleasant than the later fantasy versions.

http://www.registercitizen.com/articles/2008/11/02/news/doc490e5cc2edca6475695642.txt

Now as far as modern versions go, I also much prefer werewolves to vampires. ‘Course I like my horror more along the lines of H.P. Lovecraft and less along the lines of Laurell K. Hamilton.

By: Tim O'Neil

Tim O'Neil — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:10:40 +0000

I realized after I wrote my last comment that wild man on the fringes of society seeks to control his dark urges but becomes entangled in sinister machinations” is essentially the storytelling engine for the Hulk, but the Hulk is big, green essentially heroic and ultimately misunderstood, whereas a werewolf, regardless of the best intentions of the human alter-ego, will still mostly kill you and eat your face. Something I have not seen the Hulk do.

By: JamesK

JamesK — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:18:14 +0000

There is nothing I hate more then “I am in love with both a vampire and a werewolf. One is loving, hugs me, is handsome and warm and totally human 90% of the time. The other is a pale scrawny dick who holds me at arm’s length and generally acts like an ass. I’ll go with the vampire!”.

I stopped reading Laural K. after it became clear the werewolf was staying dumped. And whatever few dregs of interest watching the Rifftrax of Twilight generated was quashed by the knowledge that adorable-as-hell wolfie boy was going to get dumped for scrawny pale stalker-pire.

Were’s the supernatural love triangle where the werewolf gets to live happily ever after, I ask?

By: Evan Waters

Evan Waters — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:37:47 +0000

It helps that vampires have one defining Great Story that’s in the public domain, while there’s no one work of classic horror literature you can point to for werewolves, for whatever reason. So much of the popular werewolf myth dates to 1941 and Curt Siodmak’s screenplay for THE WOLF MAN, and though you can apparently steal bits and pieces of it without Universal suing you, it doesn’t have the same level of cultural penetration.