Celebrate the return of The Wolfman with this menacing merchandise

Old school horror is given a 21st Century movie makeover.

Is 2010 the year of the werewolf? Could be. In recent times we’ve gorged on vampires, and zombies have well and truly come back from the dead, but werewolves have kinda been neglected. There’s one in Harry Potter and they’re given a fancy name in the Underworld movies, yet compared to those limelight-hogging bloodsuckers and undead, they’ve been shunted into the wings. However the moon could be rising on a new era for our hairy heroes and leading the pack is The Wolfman.

This creepy gothic slice of Victoriana stars Benicio del Toro as Lawrence Talbot, a prodigal son returning to his family’s grand ancestral pile after the unexplained and violent death of his brother. While back on familiar soil, he reunites with his estranged father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins doing the monster thing again after Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992) and connects with his dead brother’s fiancée, Gwen (Emily Blunt on corset duty once more after The Young Victoria) but wait, what’s that? He’s suffering from an ancient curse that see’s him sprout unsightly hair and bark at the moon? We’ve all been there.

Of course, to those of us with appreciation for vintage terror this tale of Lawrence’s is a little familiar being a remake of the 1941 Universal classic horror starring Lon Chaney Jr. as the bedeviled beastie. And it was this movie, The Wolf Man, that really defined cinematic werewolves for subsequent generations, almost laying down a magic formula of fuzz and frights that are still on display now.

It wasn’t the first stab at a werewolf story for Universal, the Hollywood studio famed for its horrors, as six years earlier they’d applied the latex and hair to character actor, Henry Hull in Werewolf of London. The movie flopped, many complaining that thanks to Hull’s less than hirsute appearance (he didn’t fancy spending all day in the make-up chair thank you very much) he resembled Fredric March’s Oscar-winning turn as the titular villain in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde a few years earlier. Rule one of building a frightening film franchise – make your lead distinctive and recognisable.

This box office failure meant the werewolf was ripe for another go on the Hollywood roundabout and with Lon Chaney Jr. happy to get familiar with yak hair (!), the legendary Wolf Man was born. It even proved so popular that like many of the other Universal monsters, he earned a number of sequels, going head to head with these other scary cinematic stalwarts in the likes of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945) and Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

Fast forward nearly 70 years and we’re back with Lawrence as he wrestles with his shyness to silver. This time the story’s been given some twists (Gwen was originally just a local girl working at an antique shop), but the old magic’s still there as The Wolfman (now one word, not two) promises to do for werewolves what The Twilight Saga and True Blood did for vampires.

And to toast the occasion, we’ve sniffed out some cool Wolfman merchandise that ties in with both versions of the tale. So whether you’re looking for a vintage collectible or more modern plaything, we’ve got something to howl about.