Horror Movie Monsters in a Furry World

[Zarpaulus]

I started thinking recently, what with Halloween coming up, right before NaNoWriMo, how would Furry universes use the traditional Hollywood movie monsters?

Zombies are kind of a no-brainer, they’re just mindless flesh-eating shambling corpses.

Werewolves might be a tad difficult to implement. Do they turn into wolves? Feral versions of the base species? “Wolfmen” wouldn’t really work I think unless they’re a lot more muscled.

Vampires I can see as sort of an atavism to a time when carnivorous anthros preyed on herbivorous anthros. Possibly for a pseudo-science bent they could have a condition that requires them to consume anthropomorphic animal protein, blood drinking simply a stealthier alternative to eating flesh.

A multi-species Frankenstein’s monster might be interesting too.

[Huskyteer]

Check out Watts Martin’s A Gift of Fire, A Gift of Blood for vampire bats in a furry world: http://cprints.ranea.org/gift-of-fire/

Macros - giant furries - would be pretty good Godzilla/King Kong style monsters, too. Macro stories always make me think of the old computer game Rampage

I love the idea of a monster sewn together from lots of species. I wonder if anyone’s done that?

[Greyflank]

There’s Ultra the multi-alien… but he’s not quite furry.

In Captain Carrot and The Amazing Zoo Crew, there’s WuzWolf. Peter Porkchop’s antagonist who changes from a wolf to a human with an obsession for bacon. I use him a bit in my Zoo Crew fan fiction…

[system]

You could have a werewolf who turns into a human. (see Ursula Le Guin’s “The Wife’s Story.”) You could also have a werewolf who turns into another animal, or just goes mad at the full moon. (The origin of the term “lunacy.”) Better yet, have something like a deer anthro turn into a werewolf and hunt its herd by the light of the full moon!

Vampiric furries I’d imagine wouldn’t be too different from vampire humans. Granted, it might be much more horrifying for an herbivorous furry to suddenly crave blood, but being furry doesn’t change the dynamic all that much.

Now, Mummy-furries would be a fun one. Feline furries from ancient Egypt!

A multi-species Frankenstein’s Monster is…no. Frankenstein is a story about the excesses of science, and a multi-species Monster isn’t scientifically possible UNLESS you’re introducing gene-splicing or some brand of Science Magic. (The movie “Splice” is a good example.) Heck, if you’ve read the original book, Frankenstein goes on for pages about the difficulty of his work, lamenting the lack of corpses that fit exactly what he needed, difficulty in matching up blood vessels and nerves, the need for large corpses because his tools were not fine enough for anything smaller. Matching up human parts is hard enough; doing that across species? I can’t see that working without shattering suspension of disbelief. It can be done, but not in the context of the original story. (Granted, the original story stretches believability today, but for the time it was written, Shelly’s fable wasn’t all that unbelievable. Science has come a long way since then.)

[Voice]

This is something I have mentioned on a few panels, mostly the Horror one at RF.

Basically look at your typical monster.
What makes it different than humans?
Vampires - Pale skin, pointy teeth (pointier than our normal canines anyway), sometimes red eyes, etc.
Werewolves - Turn into something larger, more bestial, etc.

So why not take those traits and apply them to animal-people?

Vampires would have longer canines, red eyes, etc. Maybe their fur would be lighter, as if their fur has been covered in a layer of grave dust.
Werewolves would turn into larger, more bestial versions of themselves, prone to eating other anthros, (which is taboo, or should be in this world).

Monsters are generally alterations of some form of human nature/trait, and it’s worth noting that’s why they succeed over the years. Applying that to the furry world not only enriches those stories, but also creates something fairly unique.

[Fred_Patten]

The first review that I wrote for Yarf!, back in January 1990, was of a novel about a wolf who turns into a human under a full moon:

http://anthrozine.com/site/lbry/yarf.reviews.1.html

There is also the short story “Wolves Don’t Cry” by Bruce Elliott, in “The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction”, April 1954.

[Indagare]

I think the key thing about some creatures is what makes them so dangerous to start with. Both werewolves and vampires are known for their predatory natures. Werewolves can get complicated on a multispecies furry world, though, since if you have some sort of anthropomorphic form it’s almost certainly going to resemble either another species (unless it’s a hybrid). On the other hand, if you’re going the horror route having a predator being turned into prey would work very well (see Actaeon for further details).

The Phantom of the Opera is pretty easy to do for this. The Creature of the Black Lagoon might work well too. Lovecraftian stuff could be an interesting twist (and furries are likely to imagine some interesting aliens).

While I know this is for movie monsters, there are a number of cryptids and creatures out there that could help to make a furry world unique. We have griffins, dragons, chimeras, bunyips, bigfeet and more! Certainly it would add a level of creepiness for anthro characters to encounter something that they deem mythical - though I’d leave humans for absolute last: it seems to me this sort of thing can be easily overdone.

You could also go the route of more obscure things, like vampire pumpkins and watermelons. The yara-ma-yha-who could work for a different type of vampire if you want one.

[Arara]

I recently read an anthology where the writer took it the other way, where a dog becomes a dog-were, and ends up dealing with his new human form (badly).