Featuring director John Landis at his creative best, An American Werewolf in London is a howling good horror comedy that continues to be the high standard in creature feature filmmaking.
There are scenes in horror movie history that have become iconic: Bela Lugosi descending a staircase in Dracula; Linda Blair spinning her head in The Exorcist; an axe wielding Jack Nicholson chopping down a door with madcap vigour in The Shining. For an American Werewolf in London, it is David Naughton transforming into a werewolf before our very eyes as “Blue Moon” plays in the background.
Yet An American Werewolf in London is so much more than this pivotal moment in horror filmmaking. As soon as we are introduced to our two travelling American’s David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dune) amongst sheep in the back of a cattle truck, we know Landis has more than a little something up his sleeve for these two Yanks across the pond and boy does he deliver, with An American Werewolf in London a horror comedy with bite.
The film begins with the before mentioned David and Jack lost in the moors in Yorkshire, England, when they are attacked by a werewolf on a full moon night. While Jack is slaughtered and subsequently cursed to roam the world as a rotting corpse, David has to deal with his own affliction as a werewolf that terrorises the rain-soaked streets of London.
Cue the now infamous transformation scene, in which visual and make up effects maestro Rick Baker transforms Naughton into a werewolf in a hair raising, bone rattling sequence that more than holds its own when compared to the CGI effects of today.
Landis adds much flavour to proceedings with multiple dream sequences that are as surreal as they are frightening, not to mention a wicked sense of dark comedy that fits right into the grizzly, supernatural nature of the films’ main plotline. There is a fine line when blending comedy with the violent and at times macabre nature of the violence in An American Werewolf in London, yet Landis strikes that right tone.
Performances wise the cast are solid. David Naughton brings a goofy charm, wit, and physicality to his role; Griffin Dune is a riot as the slowly decaying best friend who agonisingly decries his current existence as a “talking corpse”; and Jenny Agutter made generations of men’s hearts flutter with her blend of sweetness and sex appeal.
A great selection of on-theme music cuts, such as Van Morrison’s “Moondance” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising”, further adds to the case that An American Werewolf in London is one of the best crafted and executed horror films of the 1980s, a unique breed of werewolf movie that remains the best work of John Landis’ career.