Werewolf Movies That Aren’t Really About Werewolves

There are werewolves aplenty to be found in Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves, adapted from the stories of Angela Carter by Jordan and Carter herself, even if they mostly occupy the realm of fairy tales and metaphors. Which isn't to say that the film doesn't feature werewolves front-and-center - in a number of different ways, depending on how each story is being told. The beasts always occupy a place somewhere in a story-within-a-story-within-a-story, as the film nestles narratives to pull from fairy tales and genre trappings the metaphoric and thematic meat of adolescence, womanhood, class struggle, and much more.

It's a heady cocktail that nonetheless never forgets to be gooily visceral, with memorably weird practical effects that stick in the mind long after the final frame has run. It's not a typical werewolf film - nor a run-of-the-mill fairy tale - but it's a bit of both and a lot of something else altogether.

In the middle part of the 18th century, a monster stalked the Gévaudan region of France. Described as a great wolf, the so-called Beast of Gévaudan may have claimed hundreds of lives, and has still not been conclusively identified. "The best and most likely explanation is Gévaudan had a serious wolf infestation" rather than one monstrous wolf, according to Jay M. Smith, historian and author of the book Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast.

The legends that have grown up around the Beast over the years have proved fertile ground for filmmakers and storytellers, with perhaps the best-known dramatization being Christophe Gans' 2001 historial drama/horror/martial arts mash-up film, Brotherhood of the Wolf, which combines real history, palace intrigue, conspiracy theories, and lots of unlikely martial arts battles - along with a Beast designed by Jim Henson's Creature Shop - to create a weird and heady cocktail.

For most of the movie, it seems like the hunters are after a werewolf, but the final reveal, while less supernatural, is actually quite a bit weirder than that would have been.

Richard Matheson (I Am Legend) wrote this made-for-TV movie starring Peter Graves and Clint Walker, directed by Dark Shadows' Dan Curtis. Matheson and Curtis had previously worked together on The Night Stalker, a 1972 TV movie that gave us the character of Carl Kolchak. In Scream of the Wolf, they set their sights on werewolves - or do they?

Peter Graves plays a retired hunter-turned-novelist who is called in to help the local police solve a series of mystifying slayings that seem to be the work of some unknown animal. Graves identifies the tracks as being similar to those of a wolf, but there's something odd about them. They seem to switch from running on four legs to walking on two, before disappearing entirely. Are they after a werewolf, or does Graves' sinister former hunting buddy Byron (Clint Walker) who was bitten by a wolf years ago have something to do with it?

The reveal isn't exactly shocking, but it is something different from your average werewolf flick.

Sure, we all know that being bitten by a werewolf can turn you into a werewolf - but did you know that longing can do it, too? At least, it can in the little Estonian village at the heart of November, where evil spirits and the personification of the Black Plague roam at will, and the inhabitants use folk magic to try to get what their hearts desire, or simply to survive the harsh winter. For Liina, her heart's desire is the love of a village boy, Hans, who is, himself, enamored with the daughter of a noble family.

Liina's longing for Hans transforms her into a werewolf, but no one gets what they really want in this dismal yet beautiful film, written and directed by Rainer Sarnet, from a novel by Andrus Kivirähk.

Starring actors from The Devil's Backbone, Shiver was part of a craze for Spanish-language horror that got kickstarted by the Stateside success of Guillermo Del Toro's Spanish-language chillers. Junio Valverde (Devil's Backbone) plays Santi, a young boy with a disorder that makes sunlight fatal to him. He also has sharp fangs, so people often think he's a vampire. But this isn't a vampire movie, not even one like George Romero's Martin.

Santi and his mom move to a secluded town in a valley where the sun hardly ever shines, and as soon as they arrive, a string of deaths lead locals to suspect the strange, photophobic newcomer of the crimes. We know it isn't Santi, though, so what is actually stalking the people of the town? Could it be a werewolf? Or a feral child, kept caged by vicious humans and used to commit nefarious deeds?

This movie is partially based on the story of real-life serial killer Manuel Blanco Romasanta, who became known as the Werewolf of Allariz after he claimed that he was not responsible for his deeds because he was under a curse that caused him to turn into a wolf. This 1970 Spanish film, released in its native country as El Bosque del Lobo or "The Forest of the Wolf," follows Benito Freire (José Luis López Vázquez), a peddler who suffers from epilepsy, which causes the people of the towns he passes through to believe that he is either a werewolf or possessed by evil spirits. In either event, the suspicions of the townspeople and his own confusion at his condition causes Benito to descend further and further into madness as the film unravels.