Werewolves are among the most enduring horror movie characters, but they’ve gone mainstream in recent years, popping up in numerous ways and places. Have these shape-shifting creatures lost their ability to scare us by appearing in so many movies, games, and even songs?
Source: Pixabay
Werewolves in Games
Many games have werewolves in them, from Blood the Werewolf, released by Scientifically Proven in 2013, to Werewolf Within, and several of the Castlevania titles. Not all of these games present the wolf-like creatures as being scary, but they do give them special powers, such as extra speed and power, making them extremely hard to defeat.
We can also see werewolves feature in online slots, making these creatures available to a wide audience of gamblers. Titles include Curse of the Werewolves Megaways by Pragmatic Play, which is available on the Paddy Power site. While it sits alongside online roulette versions like Lightning Roulette and Premium Roulette, it takes a different approach by immersing the players in a cartoon-style setting where the werewolf is a valuable symbol rather than a threat. The same site has slots on other horror themes, like Vampire Prince of Darkness, showing the global reach of the genre.
Werewolves in Songs
While they might not make an obvious subject for lyrics, werewolves have been mainstream enough to appear in several songs over the years. I Was a Teenage Werewolf by psychobilly punk rockers The Cramps and Of Wolf and Man by Metallica show us how very different approaches have been taken over the years.
Ozzy Osbourne’s Bark at the Moon might be one of the few genuinely disturbing songs about the idea of men turning into wolves. Meanwhile, Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London was inspired by the movie of the same name and adds in a comedy element and some over-the-top howling to the lyrics on this rock track.
A History of Werewolf Movies
1913 saw the release of the silent short film named The Werewolf, which is considered the first werewolf movie ever made. No copies have survived to the present day, so we can’t know how scary it was. The first mainstream movie on the subject was 1935’s Werewolf of London, which isn’t especially frightening by modern standards, but was probably enough to scare audiences in the 1930s.
A list of the best werewolf movies of all time needs to include titles such as 1961’s The Curse of the Werewolf and The Howling from 1981. It’s noticeable how many werewolf movies opt for a comedy approach, like An American Werewolf in London and What We Do In The Shadows. Few movies with these creatures can truly be described as offering us the chills and thrills of a pure horror film.
It seems strange that we regard werewolves as one of the most fearsome types of creatures in horror movies when the truth is that they’ve made very few truly frightening appearances in movies. However, the legend of men that turn into wolves under the full moon is strong enough that it appears in many other places in popular culture and shows no sign of losing its appeal.
