AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON
Rating: 
USA. 1981.
Director/Screenplay – John Landis, Producer – George Folsey Jr, Photography – Robert Paynter, Music – Elmer Bernstein, Makeup Effects – Rick Baker, Art Direction – Leslie Dilley. Production Company – Lycanthrope Productions/Polygram.
Cast:
David Naughton (David Kessler), Jenny Agutter (Alex Price), Griffin Dunne (Jack Goodman), John Woodvine (Dr Hirsch)
Plot: Two American friends, David Kessler and Jack Goodman, are attacked by a wolf while hiking across the English moors. David wakes up in hospital and learns that Jack was killed in the attack. David is soon plagued by nightmares where Jack appears to him to tell him that they were attacked by a werewolf and that he, David, was bitten and will become a werewolf too unless he kills himself before the full moon.
An American Werewolf in London was made by director/writer John Landis. Landis has since gone on to make a name as a comedy director with the likes of Trading Places (1983), Three Amigos (1986) and Coming to America (1988), although has faded considerably in the 1990s after several flops and he made nothing at all during the 00s. However, at the time that he made An American Werewolf in London, John Landis was at the peak of his popularity and riding on the success of hits like National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) and the cult The Blues Brothers (1980).
With An American Werewolf in London, John Landis takes the hoary old werewolf concept and gives it a new twist by dropping it tooth, nail and claw into a modern idiom. The film’s running joke centres around having its central character played by David Naughton suddenly forced to confront all the old B-movie cliches as real. There are some very funny scenes in the images of Naughton sitting with the decomposing corpse of Griffin Dunne as Dunne nonchalantly plays with a Mickey Mouse clock or sits in a porn cinema while holding everyday conversations. In one potent moment, David Naughton woefully tries to explain to his sister on an international phone call what is happening to him and then just gives up. Also rather drolly amusing is the outsider’s take on the banal ordinariness of British culture.
On the other hand, there are some moments that enter the decidedly bizarre – like several dream sequences, including one where machine-gun toting Nazi werewolves invade an average American household. It feels in these scenes that John Landis doesn’t have a complete hold on the material – you never quite know what the bizarre dream eruptions are doing there.
Rick Baker won an Academy Award for his makeup effects, which are exceptional. Here we see David Naughton lying on a bathroom floor, contorting and struggling as he transforms into a wolf creature. On the minus side, the four-footed wolf never looks particularly convincing and An American Werewolf in London had the edge taken off the effects by the The Howling (1980) released only six months earlier. Between the two of them, The Howling and An American Werewolf in London gave the old werewolf transformations a remarkable new vigour by allowing us to see the transformation occurring in real-time with limbs stretching, bones snapping and hair sprouting.
The only disappointment is the downbeat ending and the too tasteful cuts away from showing any blood during the actual attacks. There are good performances from particularly David Naughton and Jenny Agutter, although Griffin Dunne’s character becomes a little too broadly played.
An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) was a thoroughly disappointing sequel. A remake has been announced by Dimension Films for 2014.
John Landis did the same with vampires in the worthwhile Innocent Blood/A French Vampire in America (1992). Landis has had a number of other associations with fantastic cinema, including:- the monster movie parody Schlock (1973), the infamous first segment of Twilight Zone – The Movie (1983), the famous MTV video for Michael Jackson’s horror movie homage Thriller (1983), the lame spy comedy Spies Like Us (1985), episodes of Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), the gonzo comedy The Stupids (1996), Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) and a comedy about the true-life body snatchers Burke & Hare (2010). Landis has also produced various genre tv series such as Weird Science (1994-6), Honey I Shrunk the Kids (1997) and The Lost World (1999).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2012
