The REAL Monsters of Halloween: The Werewolf

THE WEREWOLF

The lore and tradition of the werewolf are ancient and complex. A werewolf is a human shapeshifter who, traditionally under a full moon, turns into a wolf. From the popular Wolfman movies of the ’50s to the more special-effects laden films like An American Werewolf in London, the werewolf has been a standard character in horror culture and Halloween costumes. But the werewolf legend goes back thousands of years.

“In European folklore,” says the Encyclopedia Britannica, “a man who turns into a wolf at night and devours animals, people or corpses, but returns to human form by day. Some werewolves change shape at will; others, in whom the condition is hereditary or acquired by having been bitten by a werewolf, change shape involuntarily, under the influence of a full moon. If he is wounded in wolf form, the wounds will show in his human form and may lead to his detection. Belief in werewolves is found throughout the world. The psychiatric condition in which a person believes he is a wolf is called lycanthropy.”

How does one become a werewolf? According to “Werewolf Facts,” you can become infected if you:

* Eat the brain of a werewolf.
* Drink from a place where werewolves have drank from.
* Wear or smell the plant wolfbane.
* Are bitten by a Werewolf.
* Were born on Christmas Eve.

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Sex In The City Meets Werewolves, And Nobody’s Safe, in “Bitches”

The next Fox dramedy series follows a foursome of New York women who are buddies by day and werewolves by night — which isn’t that far from the last season of Sex In The City.

The new lady werewolf series is still in development, but the script comes from Superman Returns and X2 screenwriter Michael Dougherty.

Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts, Pushing Daisies producers, are on board to supervise Dougherty, and since it’s being described as a quirky fairy tale, they seem like a great fit.

So this would be the next in the long line of werewolf projects coming out next year. What, is the mainstream public sick of Vampires already? With The Wolfman, Twilight’s wolf-centric New Moon sequel and the werewolf that should be joining the pack on True Blood, werewolves are becoming the next vampires. I’m just not looking forward to the after-feasting gab session that these ladies are certain to have. Read more …