{"id":87800,"date":"2016-06-02T16:46:04","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T15:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=87800"},"modified":"2016-06-02T16:50:03","modified_gmt":"2016-06-02T15:50:03","slug":"mongrels-author-stephen-graham-jones-on-75-years-of-the-wolf-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/interviews\/mongrels-author-stephen-graham-jones-on-75-years-of-the-wolf-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Mongrels author Stephen Graham Jones on 75 years of The Wolf Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

On The Wolf Man Turning 75<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1941, screenwriter Curt Siodmak reimagined the werewolf for the twentieth century. Before his and director George Waggner\u2019s The Wolf Man<\/em><\/strong>, the werewolf had been an ungainly conglomeration of legend and lore\u2014a campfire monster, more or less, with each new telling adding another spur-of-the-moment characteristic.<\/p>\n

A werewolf\u2019s the one with the eyebrows that touch in the middle, right? Or is it hairy palms? Or is that long middle finger? And, do they kill their beloved at the full moon, or do they plunder fresh graves? Two feet or four? Canine snout or just bushy sideburns? Do werewolves maintain their human intelligence, or does the wolf form give license to man\u2019s more bestial nature? Is being a werewolf a condition of the mind or an inherited trait? Does it come from a spell, a salve, a belt, a skin, a bite? Are all seventh sons really werewolves, or is it all children born to priests? Or is it all children born on Christmas? Are werewolves really in the employ of the devil, or are they werewolves because they made a deal with the devil? Is a witch in wolf-form a werewolf? Is the werewolf to be pitied, to be feared? All of the above, some of the above? More?<\/p>\n

It was getting to be too much baggage for even the werewolf to carry.<\/p>\n

Just eight years before The Wolf Man<\/em><\/strong>, another screenwriter, Guy Endore, had tried to compact the werewolf down into a single form with his novel The Werewolf of Paris<\/em><\/strong>. And it was a valiant effort, to be sure. To try to fit everything in, Endore had to track a more than slightly-cursed character from birth to adulthood, and finally to the asylum and death, as polite society\u2014Warren Zevon notwithstanding\u2014doesn\u2019t allow werewolves.<\/p>\n

The result of Endore trying to fit everything in, it\u2019s an entertaining story, to be sure, but the monster in the spotlight, it finally doesn\u2019t make sense, is always shifting from actual to virtual, from physical to mental.<\/p>\n

And, while the werewolf in the 1935 film Werewolf of London <\/em><\/strong>wasn\u2019t nearly so chimeric, still, rather than trying to engage all the centuries of myths and legends surrounding the werewolf, Werewolf of London<\/em><\/strong> instead more or less offers a wolfed-out version of Stephenson\u2019s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde<\/em><\/strong>,<\/a> which had just been famously adapted for the screen in 1931.<\/p>\n

We can try to look back to the nineteenth century for precedent and lines of influence, of course, to George Reynolds\u2019s Wagner the Wehr-wolf<\/strong> <\/em>and Alexandre Dumas\u2019s The Wolf-leader<\/em><\/strong>, but the Wagner is pretty much a soap opera character, and the wolf-leader\u2019s werewolfism is the direct result of a deal with the devil, and never actually requires a transformation .<\/p>\n

Curt Siodmak was taking the werewolf a completely different direction. It\u2019s as if he took a sounding of all these texts, and then decided that, instead of building upon them, he would, instead, just start all over.<\/p>\n

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But no, as if often claimed, he didn\u2019t come up with The Wolf Man<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s wolf man completely from scratch. Let\u2019s tick through the characteristics right quick, and trace their origins out:<\/p>\n