Gay boys in the 1960s loved the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (1966-71), because cute werewolf Chris Jennings (Don Briscoe) was always getting ripped out of his clothes, revealing a firm hairy chest. David Collins, young heir to the family fortune, had a fairly obvious crush on him.
David Naughton played a gay-coded werewolf in American Werewolf in London (1981).
There were gay-coded werewolves in comics during the 1970s.
But the quintessential werewolf hunk appeared on the inaugural season of the Fox network, in a series aptly entitled Werewolf (1987-88). The physique of college student Eric Cord (John J. York) was on display throughout most of most episodes, the camera zooming in obsessively on his massive chest, biceps, and backside.
The future soap hunk knew that his body was the main draw of the program, and he worked it, obtrusively strutting and flexing like a male model in the middle of a story about fleeing deadly danger. Even when he hadn't just reverted from werewolf form, his shirt was usually off. His chest was hairy or smooth, depending on whether he'd shaved recently.
The plots were male-centered, too. In the first episode, he wolves out and attacks his college roommate. Fleeing from an obsessed bounty hunter, Eric gets involved with the personal problems of the people he meets along the way (usually men), but rarely if ever looks at a girl.
Actually as I remember in the first episode Eric Cord is actually attacked by his roommate (played by Raphael Sbarge, who did a fair number of gay-vague roles early in his career). He kills his roommate in self-defense and that's why he was on the run, at least originally. He ends up transforming into a werewolf later on, and his quest is to find the founding werewolf of his line -- if he kills this founder, he'll be cured of his curse. The 'founder' was played by Chuck Connors. I don't remember all the rest of the mythology, it's been decades since I saw any episodes. But John York was definitely a hottie.
ReplyDelete