An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Tagline: “Beware the Moon”
UK Running Time: 97 minutes

Film Quality: 5/5
Gore Content: 3/5
Entertainment Value: 5/5
Originality: 4/5

Introduction

So how do you follow cult comedy musical ‘The Blues Brothers’? By making a cult comedy horror of course! John Landis has had an eclectic career to say the least, directing monster movies, comedies, musicals, muppets and even a ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ film but this story about a couple of American tourists attacked by ‘some kind of madman’, killing one of them is, for me, his best. It introduced the world to horror that was both funny and scary, brought werewolves into the modern day arena and gave us one of the most stunning and memorable special effects sequences seen on film.

In a nutshell

Two American tourists are attacked by what appears to be a madman whilst lost on the Yorkshire Moors, killing one of them and leaving the other badly wounded. Convinced that it was a large animal rather than a man that attacked him, the ‘one that lived’ begins to suffer traumatic nightmares and receive visits from his dead friend, leading him to the conclusion that he must be a werewolf.

So what’s good about it?

You wouldn’t think it by reading the above, brief synopsis but this movie is side-splittingly funny. Much of that is due to the chemistry between our two American leads, Jack and David. Much of their dialogue was ad-libbed and Griffin Dunne, who plays Jack, had never acted before but they were clearly on the same wavelength and at ease in each other’s company. The way they play off each other is great to watch and it’s the sign of a great director that Landis, who clearly has a flair for comedy, allowed them to just go with it. David Naughton, who plays David, is excellent in the lead and plays the conflicted hero role brilliantly as he flicks from tortured soul to bright and breezy tourist effortlessly.

The gimmick of having Jack come back as an increasingly rotting corpse is inspired and takes us towards a wonderful scene in a porn cinema (more on that shortly!) where he’s forced to meet all of his victims as the undead. Although the overriding nature of these scenes is comic, there is a great deal of sadness running through them as David is forced to confront the fact that his friend his dead whilst Jack knows that the only way for his best friend to be redeemed is to join him. All of this whilst both being “well aware of how warm it is in Italy right now!”

The casting is excellent with some wonderful British characters, particularly Brian Glover who is memorable in his cameo role as a brash Yorkshireman torn between giving away his village’s secret and saving the lives of two innocent men and a very early screen appearance by the late Rik Mayall. John Woodvine is just the right side of stuffy as Dr Hirsch with a genuine interest in getting to the bottom of what he sees as David’s psychosis. And of course there’s the lovely Jenny Agutter.

As a child I knew her as Bobbie in ‘The Railway Children’ but after THAT shower scene she will always be Nurse Price…I would defy anyone not to admit that they had a massive crush on this amazing actress after watching this film as a high impressionable teenager!

I’ve already mentioned the special effects and I’m sure you’ll have guessed by now that I was talking about the transformation scene. It took months to set up and film, with Naughton spending hours in make-up, contorted into different positions and under floor boards to allow for a seamless blend of human and prosthetics. The end result is startling and the first time cinema audiences ever saw a full, on screen transformation of man into wolf. It looked painful, intriguing and majestic all at the same time and they even managed to cram in some humour by inserting a shot of a shocked looking Mickey Mouse figure and playing most of it out to ‘Blue Moon’ by Sam Cooke whilst still being utterly terrifying! It goes to show that, when done properly, prosthetic effects beat CGI hands-down and Rick Baker’s work on this was well deserving of the very first Oscar for Make-Up effects.

There’s so much to enjoy about this film including the choice to have a wolf on all fours instead of a wolfman, the location shots around London, the stunning bleakness of the Yorkshire Moors (it creates the same effect as the Nevada Desert in ‘The Hills Have Eyes’, as a place of great isolation and danger whilst eerily beautiful and enchanting at the same time) and the expertly filmed scares for the nightmare scenes – apparently the ‘hospital bed in the woods’ scene was the most painful special effect that Naughton had to endure, despite only being around three seconds on screen! But my one final word has to go to the porn film! It too was shot by Landis and titled ‘See You Next Wednesday’, a phrase Landis likes to get into all of his films. It is VERY funny and provides one of the most memorable lines of dialogue in the entire film that even Jack pauses to draw comment on…”Great movie!” Now a full feature of that would make a fantastic extra on a re-released special edition!

What about the bad?

I’m going to have to nitpick here and say that I’ve never been entirely convinced about the relationship between David and Nurse Price. Yes, I’ve heard of The Nightingale Effect where nurses fall in love with their patients but she seems too, well, sensible for that. And though highly admirable, would a doctor really travel the best part of 200 miles to the arse end of beyond just to check out a story about a werewolf? Like I said, nitpicking, but I really can’t think of anything truly bad about this exceptional film.

Any themes?

It goes pver some ground that Argento covers in some of his early films, most notably ‘Suspiria’, ‘Deep Red’ and ‘The Bird With the Crystal Plumage’, and that is the foreigner in peril. In Argento’s films the protagonists find themselves in danger in a country unknown to them without too much knowledge of how to get themselves out of it. Here we find two Americans ignoring the basic safety instructions and superstitions of a very foreign land (parts of Yorkshire are foreign and alien to other Brits!) and pay the price.

Other than that it’s a lot of loosely following Werewolf lore, such as the lunar cycle, wounded victims becoming werewolves and so on but strangely no mention of silver bullets! In fact guns and bullets seem to do the trick, silver or otherwise…there’s a fantastic group discussion amongst the undead regarding how David should ‘top himself’ suggesting various methods guaranteeing death. In fact the only mention of a silver bullet in the entire film is met with a swift “Oh, be serious will you!” from Jack!

Release history

Nazi Mutants!

No censorship issues in the UK, although an anniversary edition dvd was accidentally released with a scene of dialogue missing. In the US there were slight cuts to the infamous love scene and, strangely considering the gore in other scenes, to a shot showing toast coming out of Jack’s decomposing mouth whilst he was eating toast! Perhaps the censors were having breakfast at the time!

There is talk about a scene involving the killing of the tramps being cut and more blood during one of the nightmare scenes but this has never been verified as being in any final version. My guess is that it’s a mis-remembering of the scenes in question that has somehow become myth. Neither have surfaced as ‘deleted scenes’ on DVD extras.

Cultural Impact

Released at more or less the same time as ‘The Howling’ and the far more serious ‘Wolfen, it didn’t quite do for werewolves what ‘The Lost Boys’ did for vampires but it was a step away from the old wolfman films where the ‘change’ would simply involve a hairy facemask and the actor running around slightly bent over.

It did influence the use of comedy in horror which had never really been done to great effect before. There had been pastiches and parodies but they were always of the ‘Abbot and Costello’ variety which always removed any element of fear, a tone that was retained by Landis and which carried on with films such as ‘Vamp’, ‘Evil Dead 2’, ‘Return of the Living Dead’ and Landis’ own ‘Innocent Blood’.

It also gave us the big special effects set piece which John Carpenter took forward with ‘The Thing’ and David Cronenberg in ‘The Fly’. The notion that a gory effect could be so much more than just a decapitation or a death but rather usher in a change of being and represent a rebirth of sorts or reaffirmation of life rather than obliteration. Another example of the popular ‘body horror’ sub-genre.

Final thoughts

A great start to the 80s, this fairly mainstream film by a well-known director has become something of a cult. I’m not sure how he does it but Landis has this unnerving ability to be equally at home with big budgets and Hollywood stars as he is with low budgets and fledgling actors. He’s never really been an auteur, other than the ‘See You Next Wednesday’ I’ve never really noticed anything that uniquely defines a film as being typical of Landis. What he has done here is give us a wonderful film that is endlessly entertaining with that one scene that everybody remembers (no, I don’t mean the shower scene!) and looks as good now, if not better than it did 35 years ago.

Memorable Quotes

A good old Yorkshire welcome!

Chess player: “Beware the moon, lads.”

Dart Player: “You made me miss…I’ve never missed that board before.”

David: “I will not be threatened by a walking meatloaf.”

Dead Jack: “Have you ever talked to a corpse? It’s boring.”

Naked Man (bursting in on a couple having sex): “What are you doing here, you promised never to do this kind of thing again.”
Naked Man 2: “I promised no such thing.”
Naked Man: “Not you, you twit…her.”
Naked Woman: “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
Naked Man (shrugging his shoulders and leaving the room): “Oh.”

Little boy: “A naked man stole my balloons.”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘The Howling’, ‘Fright Night’, ‘The Lost Boys’