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84 THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
film subgenre. Many of the characters were named after the directors
of earlier werewolf films, footage from The Wolf Man was included,
the silver bullet was required to kill a werewolf, and the icon of the
‘arcane book’ was important. The film, however, also infused the
werewolf theme with a contemporary flavour, particularly by exploring
the relationship between sexuality and lycanthropy more openly than
previous films.
The Howling begins with a surfeit of sexual imagery. Karen White
(Dee Wallace), a television news reporter, arranges to meet a suspected
rapist named Eddie at a sex shop, with the intention of getting a story
for her television programme. The man forces Karen to watch a video
of a violent gang rape and then transforms into a wolf. She escapes.
To help Karen recover from the trauma of her encounter, she and her
sensitive, vegetarian husband Bill visit a retreat called The Colony,
which is in fact a therapy centre for a pack of maladjusted werewolves,
including Eddie. Bill is soon bitten by Eddie and finds release for his
repressed instincts as he savours the flavour of barbecued meat, and
enjoys bestial sex under the stars with his new werewolf lover. It is
Bill’s transformation which underlines the film’s preoccupation with
the werewolf as a ‘figuration of lust’. 56 As Gregory Waller writes, ‘By
venturing into the moonlight and acting upon his desires, Bill becomes
a werewolf; in and through sex, the beast within emerges.’ 57
While The Howling addressed themes of adult sexuality, the transforming
werewolf body can also be understood (and is often presented
as) an analogy for adolescent sexuality. This perspective was articulated
as early as 1973 by Walter Evans, who argued with reference to The Wolf
Man that ‘[t]he key to monster movies and the adolescents who understandably
dote upon them is the theme of … the monstrous transformation
which is directly associated with secondary sexual characteristics
and with the onset of aggressive erotic behaviour.’ 58 The 1957 film I
Was a Teenage Werewolf made these connections with adolescence
overt and, as Badley observes, such 1950s films were ‘retrofitted for
the 1980s’, and new special-effects techniques now emphasized the
process of corporeal transformation that links the werewolf theme
with the experience of adolescence. 59 The comedies Full Moon High