13 Nights of Shocktober: An American Werewolf in London (1981)

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night 11: Werewolf Party Night!

“Beware the moon.”

 An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Aside from the classic Universal Monsters movie The Wolf Man (1941), An American Werewolf in London is arguably the most well-known werewolf movie. It is famous for its prolonged transformation scene done in full light with incredible practical effects created by special makeup effects master Rick Baker and set to the song “Blue Moon.” Writer/director John Landis’s previous work as director had been the frenetic comedies The Blues Brothers (1980), National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), and Kentucky Fried Movie (1977). With his first horror movie, Landis combines his skills as a comedy director with his personal love of monster movies and created one of the most memorable modern monster movies.

The film begins with a classic horror movie scenario: young travelers fall victim to hidden local dangers. The travelers are two American college students, David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne), backpacking their way through Europe. Their plan is to start in England and finish in Italy. They are making their way through the North of England looking for a place to get dinner and stay the night. The locals at the pub are suspicious, shady characters. Some of them want David and Jack to leave, others beg that they stay. When David and Jack do leave they are told to “keep clear of the moors" and “beware the moon.” They don’t, and they are attacked on the moors by a large, vicious beast. Jack is killed and David is patched up and taken to a hospital in London. Jack returns as a bloody, mauled, mutilated corpse and tells David that they were attacked by a werewolf and now David is a werewolf. Jack and any others he kills will be in limbo until David ends the curse by killing himself.

Though Jack is an undead corpse, his personality is intact and he’s still very funny. Griffin Dunne does a great job of being both comic relief and an exposition source. He also decays more and more each time he appears. The makeup effects used on Dunne are gloriously gross. He’s still able to act naturally under the makeup and the juxtaposition of his bloody, gory condition with his still casual attitude (he talks to David about the girls that showed up to his own funeral) make for great, strange humor. The stereotype of British people as ever subdued and reserved people is used for maximum comic effect and makes for some great scenes. When the werewolf attacks a couple outside of an apartment building, someone inside looks out the window and calmly remarks, “I think something’s happening outside.”

There are plenty of laughs and silly moments in An American Werewolf in London, more so than you may expect. While it is usually classified as a horror-comedy, it leans heavily in favor of horror. Long before David transforms into a werewolf he has terrible, frightening nightmares which provide some intense scares. The infamous transformation scene is the centerpiece of the film. Landis wanted a werewolf transformation that could be shown in full light without having to hide anything in shadows. The result is one of the most memorable scenes in modern horror history. The transformation remains impressive to say the least. David does not just become hairy and grow fangs. His body morphs and grows into a giant wolf and it looks and sounds incredibly painful. While I nearly always prefer a half-wolf half-man werewolf, as opposed to someone that just turns into a wolf, the monster wolf in this movie is a happy exception. For his work in An American Werewolf in London, Rick Baker won the first Academy Award for makeup (making this movie part of the very small club of Oscar nominated and/or winning horror movies).

There’s more to An American Werewolf in London than cool special effects. Landis’s screenplay and the actors’ performances find a nice balance between the horror and comedy of the film. These characters live in a world of real history (David’s doctor fought Nazis in WWII) and real movies (references to the Universal classic The Wolf Man), so they are as aware as the audience of the absurd and bizarre nature of the situation in which they find themselves. This may not make the werewolf plot any more believable, but it allows us to easily follow these characters on the strange, wild ride that is An American Werewolf in London.