The Anti-Barefoot Conspiracy

I wish I had remembered to relate this story before or on Halloween, but here goes -

On Sunday night, in an effort to build the Halloween mood and simultaneously infuse some cultural literacy into my 11 year-old son, I watched the DVD of the classic 1941 movie "Wolf Man", starring Lon Chaney, Jr.

In it, the not-yet-but-soon-to-be-werewolf Lon Chaney kills the gypsy-werewolf, played by Bela Lugosi, who then turns back into his human form. Of course, it is this encounter where Lon receives his fateful werewolf bite that carries him through the next 6 werewolf movies. When the constable investigates the apparent double murder, a big hubub is made about the Bella's BARE FEET. "..well how do you explain his bare feet..." he says suspiciously and almost sarcastically, for example. Moreover, when Lon (AKA Larry Talbot) makes his first transformation to werewolf, the directors chose to focus on his BARE FEET. This was probably easier for the overlapping takes to create the movie's groundbreaking yet primitive special effects. His feet are shown to grow hairy and finally change into something that works more like we run as non-heel strikers. I am sure most of you have seen this movie when you were a kid watching Creature Feature on Saturday night after Don Kircherner's Rock Concert.

What I am going for here, of course, is another anti-barefoot conspiracy theory (ABCT): the usage of BARE FEET as a symbol of the evil in humanity by the Hollywood status quo of the 1940's.