I guess that was probably an homage to a story about a were-poodle in one of the stories collected in Tales from Gavagan’s Bar by the great team of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. I’m certainly not going to read any more of Robinson’s nauseous Callahan stories to find out.
As far as I know, all that full-moon stuff originated with Universal Studios. I’m suprised so many writers would use it. (This being the Straight Dope, I hope somebody will correct me if I’m mistaken.)
Nope – you’re right. It originated with the Henry Hull flick “Werewolf of London”, which also promoted the notion of a “werewolf” as a hairy humanoid creature instead of a man that could change into a wolf… But Curt Siodmak and Lon Chaney Jr. and Fred Peirce are responsible for more of our impressions of Wrewolves/wolfmen
That movie looks spectacular! I just tried to add it to my Netflix queue, but it’s availibility is unknown 
It hasn’t even come out in theaters yet, so that’s why.
You can see the trailer here. I’m definitely looking forward to it 
The wolfweres were repelled or otherwise rendered harmless by iron pentagrams. Silver had no great effect on them.
“Black Sheep” is – as you might expect – gory, silly, and a lot of fun. But be that as it may.
I’m deeply impressed by Terrifel’s revelation that werewolves’ shapeshifting causes the moon to become full. So obvious, when you think about it. Presumably this means that at the new moon, all the werewolves are at home having a beer instead.
Do you suppose it would be possible to hire a group of werewolves to transform every night, in order to keep the moon full? This would obviously be useful the next time anyone launches a moon rocket, so that the astronauts would be able to aim at their target better. I really don’t understand why NASA hasn’t taken advantage of this already.
It would also be useful for the romantically-inclined, of course. You might charter the local pack to ensure that you could take long, romantic moonlit walks on the beach. As long as you didn’t mind, er, the strong possibilty that you might get torn to pieces by a pack of bloody werewolves.
And, of course, just as a Jewish werewolf can be warded off by a Mogen David, the proper tool for repelling an atheist werewolf is Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
That’s … er … vampires, isn’t it?
But there aren’t any goats to feed on for miles…