Wolf Tools is a living, evolving repository of Werewolf stories.
My goal is to gather a huge literary canon of Werewolf books/films/etc, set them all in a greater context of the time/space they were written, and organize them all with a set of common analysis points (THE “Wolf Tools”)
Wolf tools is one part archive, one part history and analysis, one part book/film review, and one part writing process blog.
If you like writing, film, history, and especially werewolves, stick around!
As this blog develops (once I clean out my backlog), I’ll be taking requests on what Werewolf media to hunt down next! Feel free to drop in and make suggestions
I neeeeed a good movie studio to do an adaptation of Stephen Graham Jones' novel Mongrels. we were literally talking about how the language in one particular chapter conjures up super vivid horror movie imagery in my class today, it's a travesty that there isn't a movie adaptation. also there should be a movie of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter as well because I just finished reading it and it was a gorgeous piece of horror literature. nobody is doing it like SGJ
i have no idea whether or not i can classify this character as “ruggedly handsome” so i literally did an image search for “ruggedly handsome man” and im no closer to an answer. this
they both look like werewolves except the top guy is from a video game where he constantly wrestles with his beast self and his human self and it’s a metaphor for the rage inside us all and he probably accidentally kills his girlfriend and the bottom guy is on a sitcom where he doesn’t keep track of the phases of the moon and his kids are always embarrassed when he turns into a werewolf at the movie theatre and eats all the popcorn
Why 'The Werwulf' Will Be Eggers’ Most Unlikely Horror Film Yet
“Nosferatu” director Robert Eggers’ next project is “The Werwulf”: a 13th century horror tale set in England. This is a fascinating and bold choice for a follow-up; not so much for the subject itself, but the time and place.
While werewolf tales were rife upon the continent throughout premodern times, there were practically none in England. According to Tim Flight’s "Basilisks and Beowulf," the Anglo-Saxons associated wolves with the devil, and went to great efforts to extinguish them. The association with evil was so strong in the Anglo-Saxon mind that one of the worst punishments to be levied on a malefactor was to be declared a “wolf’s-head.” It was essentially a stripping of humanity.
Once declared a wolf’s-head, you were in essence a wolf and beyond the protection of the law. Wolves were exterminated en masse, a process that continued under the later Norman kings. While a few hung on perhaps into the 17th century, by the 13th century, reportedly the time of Eggers’ film, wolves were on the back-paw. Thus, no wolves, no werewolves.
What few contemporary English mentions of werewolves to be found (Gervase of Tilbury) can only cite cases in continental Europe. Undoubtedly those tales were in circulation among the educated classes (Gervase was an attorney), but there were none about native English lycanthropes that I’m aware of.
This is all very interesting to me because Eggers is nothing if not fastidious about history and folklore. He is undoubtedly aware of the the things I’ve mentioned. It suggests to me that he has something surprising in mind, but maybe not.
I’m going to be happy either way. I love Eggers’ work, and the shapeshifting powers of the werewolf extend across time and culture. We see them as monsters, of course, but also heroes. Or at least antiheroes, from Thiess of Kaltenbrun (a supposed werewolf of God) to the lupine eco-warriors of “Werewolf: The Apocalypse.”
Werewolves are protean, flexible; able to be the saviors we need and the savages we fear. In reinventing the monster, Eggers is being more traditional than we might realize.
