An American Werewolf In London (Review)
Thursday, 8th October 2009, 17:01

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John Landis was known as a comedy director when he set out to make this werewolf movie, having helmed Schlock, Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House and The Blues Brothers. Firmly embracing lycanthrope lore, the film begins in Yorkshire where a couple of American tourists have delayed their trip to Italy to travel around the UK. Finding themselves freezing cold and in the middle of nowhere, they find a tavern, The Slaughtered Lamb, where they annoy the locals by asking about the pentagram drawn on the wall and are met with such a frosty reaction that they decide to leave. Warned to ‘beware the moon and stick to the path’, they get lost on the misty moors and are tracked by a creature that attacks and kills one of them, Jack, and leaves the other, David, injured.
 
Waking up in a London hospital, David is confused that the official report cites that there were witnesses to him being attacked by an escaped lunatic and starts having vivid dreams of running through the woods and attacking wildlife. If this wasn’t bad enough, Jack appears and tells him that he is a werewolf and must kill himself to enable Jack to move on from his undead state. Convinced that he’s imagining all this, David starts a relationship with attractive nurse Alex and moves in to her flat when discharged.
 

However, when the full moon comes, Jack’s warnings prove all too accurate and David transforms into a werewolf, kills six people and wakes naked in the zoo without any memory of the night before. Meanwhile, the doctor at the hospital, who was suspicious of the police report, travels to Yorkshire to investigate.
 
1981 was a great year for werewolf movies and I say this with the utmost respect for Joe Dante’s The Howling, but An American Werewolf in London was the best. Primarily a horror film with incredible special effects by Rick Baker, it is also laced with jet-black humour and some great scenes that have been re-used so often that they are now cliché – I’m thinking specifically of the dream within a dream and the angled mirror to create a jump on the reveal. The main cast are terrific, with David Naughton and Griffin Dunne putting in fantastic performances in their first major roles and John Woodvine and Jenny Agutter brilliant, as you would expect. The British casting for the Yorkshire scenes (actually shot in Wales) is tremendous, with Brian Glover doing his professional Yorkshireman thing and even a young Rik Mayall appearing in a non-speaking role.
 

The Sunday Times said that ‘The gear changes of tone and pace make for a very jerkily driven vehicle’ and Roger Ebert, though impressed with the ‘spectacular set pieces’, though that the visual effects were to the detriment of ‘character development, or an ending’. How wrong they were. As with so many horror films, it’s a case of revisionist critics realising how good and groundbreaking the film was and that those who were in the cinemas at the time failed to grasp how good the film is that they were watching. John Landis was way ahead of the curve because, at the time, no-one had put comedy into horror films so critics were not expecting the humour and didn’t think the combination worked – though it seems that the trend has continued in a way that proves Landis was right and the critics were wrong.
 
When it needs to be, this is bloody and scary with other scenes lighter and humorous in a great blend of horror and comedy that has made it a fan favourite for nearly three decades and a film that picks up new admirers every year.
 

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