The Howling and the modern Gothic

I watched Joe Dante's excellent 'The Howling' last night and what I liked especially about it was the way it portrayed intelligent werewolves. In 'An American Werewolf in London', the werewolf is very primal, only interested in feeding its hunger. In 'The Howling' and also 'Silver Bullet', the werewolf is intelligent and manipulative. There's a great shot in 'The Howling' when the journalist is looking through the doctor's files and the arm of the werewolf appears from the right of screen. It's a great shot, but also shows the intelligence of the beast - it didn't just want to feed, it wanted to hide important secrets.

It is interesting to note how different directors have approached the werewolf - for example, silver bullets kill the 'intelligent' werewolves of 'The Howling', but normal bullets kill the primal werewolf in Landis' 'An American Wereowolf'. The writer and directors seemingly take different aspects of Gothic tradition and work them into modern horror stories - in 'The Howling', we see humanistic elements within the beasts themselves who want to use the media for their own gain; in 'An American Werewolf' we see comedic value taken from Gothic tradition in that, for instance, when a human changes into a werewolf and his clothes are ripped off, what happens when he wakes up next morning , naked in a public zoo; and 'Teen Wolf' that allows its main character to use the fruits of an animals power - it's speed and strength - to become his school's best basketball player.

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