Werewolves And Vampires: An Analysis
It's a Dracula/The Wolf Man crossover!
Rivalry between werewolves and vampires is a kind of phenomenon in pop culture. It started with the 1948 movie Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, where The Wolf Man and Dracula (played by Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi, respectively), meet and have a fight that kills both of them. After that, antagonism between the two monsters was, if not at the forefront of pop culture, a recurring theme in it. Countless stories have capitalized on this rivalry, from Monster High to Twilight to Buffy The Vampire Slayer, so much so that it’s a pretty well known thing. So let’s look at some of the ways they compare.
The first difference between werewolves and vampires that I want to point out is the types of isolation each monster experiences. In my post about the original text of Dracula and its Universal adaptation, I mentioned how Dracula is a very isolated character, likely due to Bram Stoker’s own sense of isolation in society due to his sexuality. Dracula’s isolation is purposeful, he holes himself away up in that castle, hiding before he can be thrown out. Since Dracula set the standard, almost all vampires since have been portrayed as living in a similar type of isolation. Vampires are isolated by their own actions. Their isolation is a choice for their privacy. Werewolves, on the other hand, don’t choose their isolation. They are actively cast out by the people around them. Both vampires and werewolves are monsters that spend most of their time alone unless they’re on the hunt, but for very different reasons.
The different ways in which vampires and werewolves are isolated also speaks to different levels of class. Vampires can choose to isolate themselves before they are banished because they have the money and resources to do so. Dracula would’ve been forced to live in town if he didn’t have generational wealth that came with a giant castle. Most vampires are also nobility, a tradition that, once again, originated with our dear friend Count Dracula. This means that they have money, money enough to escape things like murder charges, and to spend on a big place to live that’s far away from people. By contrast, werewolves are usually blue collar workers without much money. They can’t afford to move out of the poor little villages they live in once they’re bitten, and so are either thrown out to die in the woods, or shot with a silver bullet made from someone’s grandma’s silverware. Vampires are extremely privileged monsters. They’re able to stay hidden most of the time, as lonely as their isolation can be. Werewolves don’t get that luxury, and instead are hunted by their friends, family, and neighbors. If they do manage to get away, they’re doomed to live wandering the woods, never able to escape persecution.
These particular differences between werewolves and vampires may not always be the reason for their rivalries in most media (read: Twilight). But they’re there, underlying all the myths and legends those creatures came from. Monster High uses vampires and werewolves fighting as an allegory for race, which is pretty easy to do, given how those monsters’ reputations contradict each other.
The vampires vs. werewolves phenomenon didn’t start with Twilight, nor will it end with Wolf Man (2025). The differences between vampires and werewolves that led to their various fictional rivalries began even before Albert & Costello Meet Frankenstein. The class, character, and social differences between them make for countless iterations of feuds between the groups of monsters. From rom-coms to gory horror movies, werewolves and vampires are both here to stay. And maybe do a little bickering along the way.