On Sat, 18 Jun 1994, Carmen Burton (LIS) wrote:
 
 I'm not sure of the history of the
> wolf man story, did it come from a text originally, like Dracula and
> Frankenstein?  Or a movie? . . . etc.
 
Carlos Clarens' _An Illustrated History of the Horror Film_ says,
"Lacking a substantial source of inspiration--there have been no literary
works dealing with werewolves that can compare to _Dracula_--Universal
[for such films as _The Werewolf of London_ and _The Wolf Man_] had to
assemble its own set of rules from the numerous folktales available."
Curt Siodmak, who wrote the screenplay for the 1941 _The Wolf Man_ says
in an interview included in Tom Weaver's _Interviews with B Science
Fiction and Horror Movie Makers_ that he did "a tremendous amount" of
research before writing it, "[b]ooks and books on lycanthropy," but he
doesn't specify which ones.  If you are interested in the folklore
sources, Harry A. Senn's _Were-Wolf and Vampire in Romania_ and Charlotte
F. Otten's _A Lycanthropy Reader:  Werewolves in Western Culture_ (which
includes documents as old as Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ and as current as
psychiatric and medical studies from the '70s and '80s) are a good place
to start.
 
If you would like full refs, please e-mail me privately.
 
Sylvia Swift
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