What Do We Know About Werewolves?Nineteen eighty-two was the first year that an Academy Award was given for makeup in a motion picture. The famous award, more commonly known as an Oscar, went to Rick Baker. He had created the special effects for a movie called An American Werewolf in London.
Moviegoers were both shocked and mesmerized by one particular scene in the film, in which the main character—a college student who is bitten by a wolf—transforms into a wolflike monster in a most horrific manner. He screams as his hands and feet lengthen painfully into paws. Thick hair sprouts from his skin as his face extends into a twisting, snarling snout. Sharp claws sprout from the man’s fingertips. Audiences were wowed by how detailed the transformation was, and Rick Baker’s special effects made some people almost believe that werewolves could be real.
Ever since the first humans left their shelters to hunt and gather food, wolves have fascinated us. When people began keeping livestock, wolves—always looking for an easy meal—became our enemies. We eventually hunted them nearly to extinction in Europe. And yet still, we admired the wolf pack for what it was—a killer team, working together to survive—and, in some ways, we wanted to be like them.
Rick Baker had been making monsters all his life. The second mask that ten-year-old Rick made in 1960 was that of a Wolf Man, inspired by a classic movie. The special effects in 1941’s The Wolf Man were not as advanced as those in An American Werewolf in London. But at the time, the on-screen man-to-wolf transformation was impressive—even scary!
Surely, though, audiences understood these frightening scenes weren’t real. Werewolves and wolf men couldn’t truly exist. Could they?
Tales about people becoming wolves have been told—and believed—for almost as long as people have been telling stories. From ancient Mesopotamia to the Americas, classical Greek mythology to the Twilight Saga of the twenty-first century.
In early human history, werewolf tales may have been created to help make sense of our world.
Today, we mostly tell them to give people a good scare at the movies.
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