Choosing Monsters

There is no sense owning DVDs of classic (classic by age if not always by quality) movies without revisiting them occasionally. So, now and then I’ll spin up one or more on a sleepless night even when I’m only lukewarm on the idea. Rarely do they fail to re-catch my interest and play through to the end. Recently over several nights I revisited the flicks in one of Universal’s The Legacy Collection boxes: Dracula (1931), Dracula's Daughter (1936), Son of Dracula (1943), and House of Dracula (1943). Somehow it seemed appropriate then to follow up the vintage vampires with The Legacy Collection box of Universal’s werewolves: The Wolf Man (1941), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), Werewolf of London (1935), and She-Wolf of London (1946).

These hoary movies have accumulated enough reviews over the past eight decades to be in no need of mine. I will mention, though, that Lon Chaney’s character in The Wolf Man has the most interesting psychological profile. He is so guilt-ridden about the harm he does as a wolf that he openly wishes to die; yet whenever he actually is attacked his survival instinct takes over, even while he is in fully human form, and he defends himself … and then feels guilty about that. Dracula, by contrast, is just a narcissistic psychopath with a natty wardrobe and questionable taste in beverages. These movies tweaked the centuries-old vampire and werewolf mythologies into the basic forms that still underlie most tales involving the creatures today, including the supposed mutual antagonism between the two species that still turns up in the 21^st century as in the Underworld films.

Harold Lloyd encounters vamp in
"Girl Shy" (1924)

It is hard not to wonder at the persistence of these night creatures in film and fiction. Other classic monsters recur too, of course, but not to the same extent or in the same way. Much of it has to do with the well-acknowledged erotic appeal of vampires and werewolves of and to both sexes, which was recognized even before the Universal movies. “Vampire,” commonly shortened to “vamp,” was colloquial for a seductress of a certain kind (sort-of Goth, but more upscale) in the 1920s as it very occasionally still is today. Then came the movies with Bela and kin as seducers. Then came Anne. It’s not fair to blame Anne Rice for Twilight and its ilk, but it is unlikely the series and others like it could have happened without Anne’s novel Interview with the Vampire (1976) and its sequels, which by the way are better literature than one might expect. Anne in her fiction rebalanced the erotic appeal of the male vampires in particular to such an extent and so effectively that her (less capable) imitators writing Romance fiction largely replaced highwaymen with vampires. Werewolves’ appeal is more feral. The hint of fierceness inside werewolves even when in human form regularly is played as an attractive element in fiction and films, e.g. The Howling, Wolf, and Cursed. Also, calling someone a wolf – in the sense of “predator” – never sounds quite as insulting as intended; it’s often taken as a compliment.

I’m leaving Buffy out of this, for Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer deserves special treatment all its own.

Vampirism and lycanthropy (werewolfism) are both recognized medical-psychiatric conditions. The sufferers (practitioners?) aren’t the real thing of course, but the people with the conditions think they are. The “vampires” do shun the sun and (often) drink blood. The lycanthropes are convinced they shape shift. (They don’t.) Lycanthropy isn’t common, but there are some 30 cases on record in the US in the past 15 years. One suspects they are less romantically appealing than their fictional brothers and sisters, but I lack the personal experience to state that definitively.

Werewolves and vampires of the fictional type appeal to the dark side of our natures. Humans are forever repressing that side with mixed success, but it is always there. At the time The Legacy Collection movies were first in theaters, many folks because of the dictates of traditional morality were inclined either self-delusionally to deny having a dark side or to be guilt-ridden about having one; today there are folks who deny or are guilt-ridden by their dark sides because of the dictates of PC morality, which is as Victorian in its own way as the traditional kind. Either will keep Dr. Freud and his successors paying the bills. There are no thoughtcrimes. Acknowledging and accepting (but not acting upon) one’s dark impulses is an easier way to get happy. A good vampire or werewolf movie might well help.

It says a lot about a person with which creature of the night he or she most identifies: vampire or werewolf. To which one is attracted (not necessarily the same), if either, also says a lot. Do you hear the call of the tux or the call of the wild? If I get to choose, I’m going with the wolf for both answers. However, while both critters have inspired popular songs, it must be conceded that vampires by and large have the better music.

Concrete Blonde – Bloodletting