First of all, have a olie-bol. (A Dutch New Year’s tradition: a ball of deep-fried dough with raisins in it. It actually tastes much better than it sounds.)
Now, then! We are animals, you and I. There are very many people out there that tend to forget that, thinking that we humans somehow stand above or outside nature, as if that were even possible. That we are better and more holy than all the other beasties. (That we also slaughter each other on an industrial scale may seem somewhat at odds with that belief, I’ll admit. But no one said it should make any sense.) And what happens when one denies its own savage nature? When the beast is locked away in a cage called ‘civilization’? Well, the beast gets angry, of course. It starts gnawing at the bars. And then it escapes!
Stories about ‘the beast in man’ are as old as man himself. One of the very earliest mentions of the particular affliction of turning into a wolf and eating other people by the light of a full moon comes from something called the Satyricon, supposedly written by Petronius, a Roman writer from the first century. Then, in the Middle Ages, Christianity picked it up and turned it into another one of their ‘If you’re not obedient and docile, this is what happens to you‘-stories. And then, finally, Hollywood came along, of course, forever cementing this lavishly lingering Lycanthropian lore.
Right! Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, allow me to regale you with this story of a whole family of werewolves I once met! Talk about dysfunctional…
Wolf (1994)
First, meet the daddy: Jack Nicholson! In this nineties vehicle, he plays Will Randall, an aging and ailing editor for a big publishing house in New York. He gets demoted in favor of a younger, more ruthless and ambitious version of himself by the name of Stewart Swinton (James Spader). Then, one night, he runs over a wolf and gets bitten. After that all sorts of interesting things start happening: he feels rejuvenated, a new energy is pulsing through his veins… His senses sharpen to such a degree that he can hear people talk throughout his office building, and he can smell that his wife is having an affair with that Swinton douchebag. So he bites him, leaves his wife, and shacks up with the boss’s daughter (Michelle Pfeiffer).
The first half of this movie is actually pretty cool: watching Randall turn his newfound powers to good use is a treat. The second half, however, dives much more into the excessively hairy, growling, and jumping-over-stable-fences nonsense. And in the end, we learn that instead of biting, banging a chick also turns her into a werewolf. And that’s great, because that means:
Teen Wolf (1985)
Kiddy werewolves! Yeah, man! Once upon a time, way back in 1985, when the hills of Hollywood were covered in snowy, Colombian white, someone thought, “Hey, I know! We -snort- turn Michael J. Fox into a teenage werewolf! And we let him play basketball in high school as a werewolf! Because he’s all strong and can jump really high, you know? We cover him in lots of long, flowy hair! And then he becomes all cool and popular and humiliates the school jock and steals his girl! Snort!“
I wish there was something more to tell about this movie. I really do. Snort.
Ginger Snaps (2000)
If Fox was the cute, teeny wolf-son, now meet the not-so-cute, angry Goth-girls. Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) and her sister Brigitte (Emily Perkins) are obsessed with death, as good Goth girls are supposed to be. They live in the quiet suburb of Bailey Downs, Ontario, where a bunch of dogs get killed. One night, while stealing a dog from the school bully, Ginger gets her first period. The scent of blood attracts the creature responsible for the killings, and it bites her. She then grows a tail and gets all gnarly and gross, like a teenage girl is supposed to be. So, let’s put on some KoЯn and eat someone!
Dog Soldiers (2002)
“Werewolves ate my platoon!”
And then one of the kids joins the army. In Scotland, yes, but that’s beside the point. Wells (Sean Pertwee) and his army buddies investigate why an elite SAS unit is turned into chunks of dog food. They get attacked by werewolves and retreat into a house, and after a whole lot of shooting, stabbing, and exploding, a bunch of soldiers and werewolves are dead. Yay!
***
Well, there you have it: the Werewolf household. (Someone uttered the words “Twilight Saga”, but I shot him in the face.) I wonder what’s on their Thanksgiving menu… Oh, I know: it’s YOU!
So, to reiterate: we are all animals that slaughter each other in droves and, given the chance, will eat each other alive. Olie-bol or no olie-bol.
Happy New Year, Ruthless!
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