‘Werewolf by Night’ star reveals the unlikely inspirations behind the MCU’s hirsute horror

It’s blindingly obvious that classic monster movies, particularly those put out by Universal during the studio’s heyday for all things Gothic and terrifying, were the main aesthetic inspirations behind the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Werewolf by Night. However, star Gael García Bernal took his research down some more left-field avenues.

The Bela Lugosis and Boris Karloffs may have been seeping out of almost every frame, but the leading man revealed to Collider that he sought more offbeat, unusual, and altogether more unknown deep cuts from cinema’s scary past in order to try and get into the right mindset for headlining the MCU’s first major foray into full-blown supernatural territory.

“Yes, absolutely. I mean, apart from the most direct ones, which would be the English speaking films that were made in those days, there were also, I saw some crazy ones actually from the Bulgaria, Eastern Bloc area that were quite interesting as well, and also some comedies as well from Latin America in those days, with a werewolf. And so the whole world of monsters and definitely of werewolves is absolutely open, where the opportunity to engage into this project was a chance to really be free to interpret and to color this character the way we wanted.

And it’s very difficult in one hour to tell all this vast kind of biography, or let’s say the construction of this character, because it’s a character that has lived [for] 400 years, maybe. So there were many things that would set the tone and set the musical scale of what we wanted to do, there were many things that I was also interested in pondering around this, and I’m still incredibly curious and wanting to see where these characters’ lives go. Where does this kind of develop? And I love playing a monster, it’s fantastic. It’s great, it’s very free, and very daring and experimental as well.”

Bernal may have been apprehensive in trying to craft an in-canon backstory for Jack Russell, but based on the reception from fans and critics so far, we’d be confident in saying the consensus is in firm agreement that he’s managed to knock it out of the park. The only real question is where things go from here, with the Bloodstone introducing a new MacGuffin into the mix that could become increasingly important as more and more supernatural superheroes begin to emerge from the MCU’s woodwork.