Larry Fessenden's deer-headed wendigo... was not actually deer-headed!

As Emily Zarka, Ph.D., helpfully informed us, the image of the windigo as a hideous satyr originates from the 2001 film Wendigo directed by Larry Fessenden. Fessenden also curated the book Sudden Storm: A Wendigo Reader, now sadly out-of-print.

(Technically, it was Matt Fox who seemingly invented the satyr motif in the 50s with an illustration of one for a printing of Blackwood’s story in a magazine. However, Fessenden seems to be responsible for popularizing the satyr motif outside the pages of that magazine.)

Although Fessenden popularized the satyr motif that now dominates Euro-American popular culture, his movie describes the windigo in an ironic manner. Take a gander:

Man: “A Wendigo is a mighty, powerful spirit. (...) It can take on many forms. Part wind, part tree, part man, part beast. Shapeshifting between them. (...) It can fly at you like a sudden storm, without warning, from nowhere and devour you – consume you with its ferocious appetite. (...) The Wendigo is hungry – always hungry. And its hunger is never satisfied. The more it eats, the bigger it gets. And the bigger it gets, the hungrier it gets. And we are hopeless in the face of it. We are devoured.”
Miles: “Is the Wendigo bad?”
Man: “Nothing between the earth and sky is bad. But there are spirits that should be feared, (...) that are angry. (...) Do you believe me? ”
Miles: “I guess.”
Man: “Go ahead and take it. Nobody believes in spirits anymore. Doesn’t mean they’re not there. He who hears the cry of the Wendigo is never the same again.”

The script is unambiguous. The windigo depicted therein was a shapeshifter. When it appeared as a satyr, that merely one of the countless forms it could assume. (It probably assumed that particular form since the cast was hunting a deer at the time.) It was never a satyr in truth, insofar as truth applies to trickster demons, but assuming the shape of one!

According to the back-of-the-book advertising blurb for Sudden Storm:

Between Algonquin mythology and field-noted cryptozoological points of view, the Wendigo is portrayed as a ferocious yeti-like monster, a half man-half stag creature, a troll, or even just the wind itself.

See that? Fessenden himself acknowledges that the windigo isn't really a satyr, but that stories depict however the storytellers please. Considering all the online chuckleheads who claim the satyr is the only "correct" depiction, it is the height of comedic irony that the guy who invented the satyr motif actually wrote the windigo as a shapeshifter.