11 Werewolf Movies That Broke All The Rules
Werewolf movies aren't all the same, and some classics managed to break all the rules.
Werewolves are some of the most fascinating movie monsters, and they've been terrifying audiences for decades. In most depictions, they represent the primal rage of mankind and that rage is truly horrifying — especially when it transforms and rips someone's heart out.
Werewolves have been around since The Werewolf in 1913. Still, they weren't truly popularized until Universal Pictures' 1935 film Werewolf of London and The Wolf Man in 1941. Those movies introduced the world to many of the fundamental basics that werewolf movies had to follow, and the genre benefited for decades.
Like anything, werewolf movies evolved over time, and they don't always follow the same rules set in the early days. Originally, a werewolf could only come out during a full moon, and a new wolf could only be made following a bite or scratch the victim survived.
Various changes were made to the mythos over the years. Each film that added or altered something ended up breaking the well-established rules pertaining to werewolves. Of the dozens of excellent werewolf films that have been made over the years, these ten stand as the most important rule-breakers to the genre.
11. The Company Of Wolves (1984)
The Company of Wolves is a werewolf movie like no other, as it can best be described as an inception-esque dreamscape of gothic horror evoking the fairy tale adventures of the Brothers Grimm. The primary focus of the film is the tale of Little Red Riding Hood.
The movie focuses on Sarah Patterson's Rosaleen, a modern interpretation of 'Hood,' representing the female victim common in Grimm's fairy tales. Rosaleen dreams that she's living in a 17th-century gothic village surrounded by a bloodthirsty band of wolves found in the forest. The movie works as a revisionist fairy tale that explores the storytelling methods of female victimhood, and yes, there are werewolves.
Rosaleen's grandmother, as played by the inimitable Angela Lansbury, has filled her head with tales of werewolves, saying, "They're nice as pie until they've had their way with you, but once the bloom is gone, the beast comes out." The beast definitely does come out, and the film is filled with gore.
The Company of Wolves broke the rules of werewolf movies by restructuring them into a dream within a dream. This makes them into a gory nuance of the plot, which is less about werewolves and more about the way parables control female sexuality and victimhood.