An American Werewolf in London (David Naughton, Griffin Dunne)
I think if one analyzes too much in 1981's An American Werewolf in London, one misses the point entirely. Perhaps the movie's hero David Naughton (David Kessler) says it best, when he quips at one point that he now finds himself in a porno movie theatre, talking to a decomposing corpse about suicide. There are a lot of off-kilter moments like that in the movie, which helps it rise above its often-lampooned subject matter. This is the stuff of Raimi or Craven, and yet here the source is writer/director John Landis (remember Michael Jackson's "Thriller"?), a filmmaker up to that point associated with light fare such as Animal House, providing a blend of horror and humor that is still fresh and innovative twenty years later.
The film opens as two friends, David and Jack (Griffin Dunne), are trekking through England. They stop at a local pub (called the Slaughtered Lamb, by the way) and are rudely urged to leave as they are not welcome. They do so, but not before they are warned to stay on the road at all times and not stray onto the moors. Every horror movie requires that the token sage rules of advice are to be ignored, and next thing David knows he is in a hospital and is informed that Jack has been -- or may have been -- killed.
The subsequent delusions David begins to experience alternate between chilling and hilarious. We start to suspect -- as does his new girlfriend Alex (Jenny Agutter) -- that he may be turning into a werewolf. What sets American Werewolf apart from most other creature features, though, is that the lead character may be in the process of becoming his own worst enemy. The first half of the movie has set David up so well, that we hope against hope he doesn't turn into a werewolf. Landis develops an involving screenplay by a strange kind of osmosis leaving us with an ending that is both dissatisfying yet perfectly appropriate at the same time.
It's impossible to think of this film without comparing it to the one that started it all, 1941's The Wolf Man. That version starred Lon Chaney Jr., Claude Rains, and Bela Lugosi, but it was all about mood and dialogue. Here, Landis accomplishes a balance between violence, comedy and terror that is perhaps most apparent in a scene where David's family is watching the Muppets on TV. They hear a ring at the door, and are then mercilessly slaughtered by grotesque creatures wearing masks. It has nothing to do with werewolves. It basically has nothing to do with anything. But it is both funny and scary all at once, and that's hard to pull off.
Some interesting points of fact include Landis specifically choosing songs with the word "moon" in the title: "Bad Moon Rising", "Blue Moon", and Van Morrison's "Moondance". Also, the creature effects won the Academy Award for best make-up in 1982, which was the inaugural year that category was introduced.
If you're like me and your previous werewolf movie experiences include Teen Wolf, Jack Nicholson's Wolf and *gasp* Teen Wolf Too, you'll probably enjoy An American Werewolf in London as a competent, tongue-and-cheek take on lycanthropes. Its hairy disposition is all in good fun.
