I’ve been thinking a lot about werewolf lore and where it comes from. My husband and I watched the 1941 movie The Wolf Man recently. What a cast! Not only Lon Chaney, but also Bela Lugosi and Claude Rains. From what I’ve read in other places, the idea that a werewolf bite could turn you into a werewolf originated in the screenplay of this movie. In this movie, Larry Talbot (played by Lon Chaney) turns into a werewolf on nights when wolfsbane is in bloom. However, in the 1943 sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Larry Talbot turns into a wolf when the moon is full. This seems to be the first instance of this idea.

Points that I noted about the movie

• Everyone in the small Welsh village (in which no one speaks with a Welsh accent, BTW) seems to know that a werewolf is a man who changes into a wolf “at certain times of the year.” Multiple characters repeat this to Larry Talbot.

• The werewolf is not depicted as an actual wolf after transformation, but walks upright on wolf feet (whose tracks seem indistinguishable from those of a wolf) and is hairy all over with an enlarged nose and pronounced fangs.

• A pentagram is the sign of a werewolf, and a werewolf will see a pentagram on the palm of his next victim.

• Bela, the gypsy werewolf played by Bela Lugosi, bites Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney). Although the bite vanishes, Larry is now a werewolf.

• Werewolves can be killed with silver. Larry kills Bela, the gypsy werewolf, by bludgeoning him with a silver-topped cane. Later Larry’s father, unaware that the wolf man is his son, uses the same cane to kill Larry. No silver bullets in this movie. Baring-Gould, in Book of the Were Wolf (1865), cites tales of silver items affecting werewolves. Silver bullets seem to be a twentieth-century invention.

• The old gypsy woman (mother to the deceased Bela) gives Larry an amulet (the sign of the pentagram, though not shown in the movie) that she says will protect him from becoming a wolf. We don’t see if this works, because Larry gives the amulet away. The gypsy woman also appears to perform a spell that transforms Larry back into a human after he has been caught in a bear trap in his wolf form.

• The Wolf transformation seems to happen on nights when wolfsbane is in bloom, as stated in this verse, repeated by the villagers:

Even a man who is pure of heart,
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright

The last line was changed in the sequels to “And the moon is full and bright.” In the 1943 sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Larry Talbot only transforms into a werewolf during a full moon rather than every night while wolfsbane is in bloom, as in The Wolf Man.

More research is needed!