An American Werewolf in London (1981)

1981, 97 minutes

Director: John Landis

Writer: John Landis

Stars: David Naughton (David Kessler), Griffin Dunne (Jack Goodman),  Jenny Agutter (Nurse Alex Price)

John Landis’ An American Werewolf starts with two American college students, David Kessler and Jack Goodman, on a walking tour of Britain. Like any other clueless American students in a foreign country, they quite obviously have no real idea what they’re doing or where they’re going from the beginning of the film. They manage to lose the trail they’re on and become lost in the moors, despite being told to stay away from them, then stumble upon a pub in a small village of unfriendly locals. Being fully aware of a werewolf problem in their area, the locals let the boys travel back into the moors. Of course, this leads to Jack dying and David becoming a werewolf. The story is pretty simple and straightforward, but the portrayal of it is a bit more eccentric.

An American Werewolf in London is one of my favorite examples of a good 80’s horror movie. It’s full of cheese and horror, but manages to portray the two side by side really well. The movie doesn’t entirely lose its horror qualities despite its unusual soundtrack, which consists of Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” Creedance Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising,” and several different versions of “Blue Moon” by Richard Rogers– my favorite version of the song in the film being The Marcels’ doo-wop cover of the song at the end of the film. The end of the film, without spoiling anything, is the prime example of the unique but fitting soundtrack choices for the film– and is one of the many reasons you should watch this movie. Its effortless merging into a horror-comedy is much like what Sam Raimi captured with The Evil Dead.

David’s transformation into a Werewolf– easily one of the very best transformation scenes in the history of Horror movies

 

The movie still contains horrifying scenes though, the best being David’s first transformation into a lycanthrope. In a time before over-used CGI, Landis directed an excellent human to werewolf transformation scene using prosthetics and robotics; and despite being over thirty years old now, it remains as one of the best and one of my personal favorite scenes of transformation from human into monster. I’ll take Landis’ use of make-up as a means of presenting a monster over mere graphics any day.

Best Line &/or Scene: David’s transformation into a werewolf.
Or maybe… “Queen Elizabeth is a man! Prince Charles is a faggot! Winston Churchill was full of shit! Shakespeare’s French!” (David attempting to get arrested in Trafalgar Square)

Story: 5/10
Gore Factor: 7/10
Scare Factor: 7/10
Overall: 7.5/10

Sources (used for for dates, information on directors/ actors, and other factual, non-opinion based information):  imdb.com