The Werewolf's Heart

By Kurt McCoy

In 1913 Universal released the first werewolf movie in the history of the cinema. That film, The Werewolf, introduced a half-breed Navajo wolf-witch named Watuma. Subsequently all prints of the film were destroyed in a fire and the movie is now a "Lost Film". There has not even been a reliable synopsis of the film, until now.
Included in this work is the full synopsis of the film from the "Universal Weekly".
After a hundred years, this is the first sequel to that film.
A posse of lawmen pursues a band of outlaws to a haunted mountain where both groups find themselves prey to supernatural evil that hungers for flesh. Their only hope is an ex-monk turned trapper who has a secret past with the Werewolf and the steel nerves of a U.S. Marshal who will stop at nothing to see justice done.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kurt McCoy
• Release date: Oct 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311827418

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THE WEREWOLF’S HEART

BY Kurt McCoy

(Based on the characters created by Ruth Ann Baldwin with inspiration from The Werewolves by Henri Beaugrand)

Copyright 2013 Kurt McCoy

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UNIVERSAL’S FIRST MONSTERS

The Universal Film Manufacturing Company began its existence in much the same way as one of its most famous later creations—stitched together from various parts and given life by the flickering lights of thousands of film projectors throughout the country and across the world. The production studios of the Powers Motion Picture Company, Champion Film Company, Rex Motion Picture Company, Nestor Film Company, Imperial, and Bison all merged into one entity united by a common distribution network. Each of these production studios created their own movies, much as they had before the merger, and Universal made them available to exhibitors. Each studio maintained its distinctive style and continued as sort of brand names under the Universal umbrella.

Universal would later become famous for its classic Monster movie canon, a shared movie universe in which iconic creatures would meet and confront each other to the delight of audiences everywhere. The names of those monsters are household words, fervently spoken on the lips of generations of Monster Kids with adoration, dread, and reverence. They do not need repeating here. Everyone knows Them already.

But they were not the first monsters Universal created. During the first ten years of its existence, the Universal Film Company brought a number of monsters and madmen to the screen. The first werewolf ever to grace the silver screen was unleashed in The Werewolf in 1913. The same year saw Universal’s release of its version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring King Baggot—who was the most famous actor in film at the time. The Phantom of the Violin stalked dark catacombs beneath a cabaret more than a decade before the Opera Ghost’s famous first appearance. Evil Hypnotists placed helpless innocent women beneath their spell, ghosts haunted abandoned houses, scientists of dubious mental stability took their first steps toward bringing the dead back to life with technology, devil-women turned men into animals through diverse means only some of which were truly supernatural. These were the first of Universal’s monsters. Most of their movies have been lost and they have all been almost forgotten by horror fans after over a hundred years.

But they are coming back! They are rising from their long slumber to stalk again!

The premise of this work and the others to follow is that in a World That is Not Our Own, these first monsters were not forgotten. Imagine, if you will, a world in which a canon of monster movies grew up twenty years before the one we know, a world where the First Monsters reigned supreme and brought nightmares to generations of movie-goers. In that world Edward Hyde is the King of Horror and the first Werewolf is still the queen of her kind! Ellis Zahring the Mad Violinist still plays his music among the crypts and Dr. Sevani’s evil eye makes slaves out of all who dare meet his gaze!

Come with me, if you will, take the first step into that world.

You must enter freely and of your own will…

THROUGH THE EYES OF ANOTHER TIME

When I first started working on this project, I had a strange and very vivid dream. I was sitting on a patio overlooking the sea, on wrought-iron furniture painted white. With me were the stars of the films I had been studying, all smiling and eager to see the project brought to life. We ate fruit-flavored Italian Ices and chatted about the particulars of the plan. Phyllis Gordon, who played Watuma, the first werewolf, was particularly excited, bouncing about and waving her hands as she talked. And she gave me the strangest bit of advice I’ve ever heard.

Don’t forget to write it in black and white!

It was such an odd thing to say that it stuck with me long after I woke up. So, when I started actually writing the stories I’d been thinking about, I followed that advice. They are all written in black and white. There are no color references anywhere in the story. Everything is black or white, gray, or dark and light. It was something of a challenge, to tell the truth.

That led to the central conceit of the work, one that I hope you will play along with. The story is presented as the prose adaptation of a Silent Movie that never existed! Imagine the action scenes as jerky and a little too fast—due to the camera being over-cranked. Nudity, where it occurs, is chastely filmed from the shoulders up, or from the mid-back, though maybe with a scandalous glimpse of hip and flank (such things did occur, though the censors protested vigorously!). Special effects are done with the technology and techniques of the time. The Werewolf is a large, well-trained gray