Well depending on where you get your folklore from, werewolves can change at will and are not vulnerable to silver, before the 19th century stories involving werewolves gave no mention to a vulnerability to silver. Almost all regions of the world have stories about shape-shifting beast and they vary in their abilities to change form as well as when they change.
La Bête du Gévaudan was the name given to a man-eating wolf like beast that allegedly terrorized a French province of Gévaudan from 1764 to 1767 by some estimates 210 attacks, resulted in 113 deaths and 50 injuries; 98 of the victims killed were partly eaten.
Some sources claim 25 women, 68 children, and 6 men were killed, with over 30 others injured. All the animals operated outside of ordinary wolf packs, which eventually lead the government to organize groups of hunters, noblemen, as well as conscripting ordinary citizens to go out and hunt the creatures down, the last creature being killed on June 19, 1767 by a local hunter.
It is the retelling of the attacks and killings in La Bête du Gévaudan which is a factual historical event, that inspired the fictional story about a wolf like creature being shot by a silver bullet, it's believed the novel that introduced the element of the silver bullet as a weapon, lead to silver being used in other stories and in Hollywood that werewolves had a vulnerability to silver.
There was a television movie made in France around 2003 about the events in La Bête du Gévaudan.
There is a pdf link that gives some background on the La Bête du Gévaudan attacks.: http://www.bonjourmagazine.com/articles/images/no17/18-31.pdf
Movies will make you famous; Television will make you rich; But theatre will make you good.
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shadowman1115824
14 years ago
I've never understood the concept of modern day werewolves in movies. Do they just go around biting their victims to add to the pack or do they eat the majority of their victims and only a few lucky ones survive?
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