AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON is one of those movies any film buff hears about again and again. It's on all kinds of lists. Best horror movies, essential cult films -- even greatest films of all time! I remember in the olden days of the Internet reading about AMERICAN WEREWOLF on film related newsgroups, the same newsgroups that got me to watch the films of Raimi, Romero and Jackson.But, I've just now gotten around to watching AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LOND and. . . it's great! Turns out everyone knows what they're talking about.
Before WEREWOLF, I'd seen lots of John Landis flicks, the most famous of which is probably ANIMAL HOUSE. So, I was prepared for his slant on college humor. Still, matched up with the horror element here, it becomes pretty irresistable, even if you know what you're in for.
WEREWOLF is the story of two college dudes who are backpacking through Europe. They start out in rainy England, much to their disappointment, dreaming of sunny Italy. This is the equally likable and affable David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne). After stopping in a creepy pub -- the kind where everyone stops what they're doing and stairs at you when you come in -- and ignoring some cryptic warnings about the full moon, David and Jack find themselves attacked by a werewolf in the English countryside. Jack dies; David finds himself in a London hospital, tended to by an alarmingly dismissive doctor (John Woodvine) and a cute nurse (Jenny Agutter) who has her eye on him.
As David convalesces, he suffers strange nightmares in which he stalks the countryside and kills deer with his bare hands (and teeth). Eventually these nightmares give way to day time visitations from the increasingly decayed corpse of his buddy Jack who shows up to let David know that being undead sucks.
Here's an interesting twist on the WEREWOLF mythos: in this flick, anyone killed by a werewolf (an unnatural death) is cursed to walk forever in limbo. That is, until the werewolf bloodline is destroyed. Then, the curse is lifted, and the victims can finally rest in peace. Because the werewolf who killed Jack and injured David was killed in the attack, David is now the last in the werewolf bloodline and Jack pleads with him to kill himself before the real trouble starts when the full moon rises in a few days.
David's understandably worried, but also not entirely convinced. After all, maybe he's just going insane. Or dreaming. Either way, he falls ass backwards into living in the cute nurse's flat and before you know it, the full moon rises.
That's when the kick ass transformation sequence begins. Rick Baker, arguably the greatest makeup artist of the last couple decades, provides the gruesome transformation which, unlike previous werewolf flicks, takes place under bright lights in excruciating detail. There's no cutting away here. Sure, once the werewolf is on the prowl, we get lots of snippets of shots and suggestions of carnage. But as David transforms, we get every painful moment of the process, as his hands and feet contort and twist and a snout protrudes uncomfortably from his face. This is preceded by a funny sequence in which David grows increasingly agitated, pacing the apartment set to the ironically upbeat "Bad Moon Rising" by CCR.
There are a few angles to the humor, here. The first angle is the friendly, joking tone of Jack and David's college age mentality. They're smart enough to crack wise but friendly enough to be gently bemused by everything. It's easy to see why the nurse would be into David -- he has an aloof, amused quality that just seems comfortable. This, contrasted with visits from the the like of the undead and werewolves, creates a consistently funny balance between the mundane and the fantastic.
Secondly, we've got the unflappable, stuffy British natives. With the exception of the denizens of the creepy pub, everyone from police to doctors seem to be fairly unimpressed by the increasingly supernatural events of the plot. The best sequence showcasing this attitude is on David's first night of werewolf attacks in which his victims are so busy being British they almost don't even have time to be proper murder victims. One of them marches to his death with a drink in one hand. Another, alone in a subway tunnel, attempts to speak rationally to David's growls and howls.
The whole thing reaches an exciting and expertly crafted climax in Piccadilly circus, where the crowd's panic causes more carnage than the actual werewolf does. Cars smash into each other, innocent bystanders launch through windows.
As the riot police converged on David and the nurse rushed to his rescue, the climax of the original KING KONG came to mind. Here's why: I cared about David. I didn't want to see him die. It's the way you feel about KONG at the end of the original film -- sure, he's tearing apart the city, but he's ultimately an innocent character who has been pushed into extraordinary circumstances. The thing that makes this movie work is that David is so likable, you really care about his situation. As ludicrous as it is, and as murderous as he becomes, you root for him. Indeed, a strength of the whole movie is that basically every character is totally likable. There's just this feeling of goodwill in the film, despite the gore. That's what's missing in a lot of horror movies today, especially these ones that are obsessed with torture. They forget about humans, they forget about good people. They think because it's a horror film, everyone has to be depraved and nasty. It's simply not true.
I like how David knows enough about classic horror films to compare his situation to the classic WOLF-MAN, even going so far as to describe the plot to his girlfriend in terms of the stars involved. "Bela Lugosi bites Lon Chaney, then Claude Rains kills Lon Chaney," he says.
Later, David has the best line of the movie, as he screams, "Be rational? I'm a fucking werewolf for Chrissakes!"
Like I said, as the climax came down, I didn't want to see David die and I wondered how the movie would possibly come to a satisfying conclusion. Then, it ended abruptly. At first I wondered if I had been cheated. But then, as yet another version of "Blue Moon" blared on the soundtrack and the credits rolled, I realized this was the movie's last laugh and I had to smile.
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