I like me some good scares. And some comedy. And sometimes I like both of those things together. Hey, good that I finally got around to watching An American Werewolf in London!
John Landis' 1981 movie is an update on the age old formula of the werewolf movie. But don't be turned off, this is not your stuffy Lon Chaney Jr. version of it (and also not that apparently crappy Benicio Del Toro remake that nobody has seen). In this film we find American tourists David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) wandering the countryside somewhere in Northern England. They end up at a pub, cleverly named "The Slaughtered Lamb". Asking about a pentagram at the wall, both of them get shooed away by the townsfolk, only to be gorily attacked by a werewolf. Jack dies and David wakes up in a hospital in London weeks later. Officially both were attacked by an escaped lunatic but David keeps having dreams about attacking and eating deer, and roaming the woods (filmed in a style that is more than reminiscent of Sam Raimi's tracking shots from the Evil Dead movies). Thanks to the now undead Jack David finds out that he himself has been turned into a werewolf.
I don't know why it took me so long to get to this film. Director John Landis was The Man at the time. Directing the college film to end all college films Animal House in 1978 and with Blues Brothers in 1980 one of my all-time favorite films, I really have to ask myself why I didn't get around to An American Werewolf in London earlier. The film combines the scares with the laughs in equal measure and is directed tonally so perfectly well and with such ease, it makes you wonder how Landis has managed to only make shit movies since the late 80s (The Stupids, anyone? Or how about Beverly Hills Cop III?).
Really, I cannot overemphasize how positively surprised I was that the tone was nailed so exquisitely. The genre of the horror-comedy has seen many people try and many people fail at it. The problem is that often one part gets the upper hand over the other. Not rarely is it the case that the film you are watching is first and foremost a comedy that happens to have a horror backdrop (Shaun of the Dead, Ghostbusters and Young Frankenstein are all hilarious but are not really that scary), and sometimes the movie just plain sucks (remember Dan Aykroyd's terrible ego trip Nothing But Trouble?). You'll be actually disturbed when you see David's transformation into a ferocious beast and you'll laugh out loud when you see him waking up naked in the zoo and trying to make his way across town.
The real showstopper of the film are the make up effects by Rick Baker. I don't need to explain in detail how great those still look after more than 30 years (try a thousand times better than the CGI stuff that's replaced pretty much every practical effect in major motion pictures nowadays), you just need to know that An American Werewolf in London was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Makeup. Yes, the effects are so good that the Academy introduced a new category that year. Are you convinced yet?
I guess where the movie might disappoint some audiences is in its finale and its abrupt ending. I personally enjoyed it and understood it as a clever little wink from Landis who's poking fun at genre conventions. He's not afraid to namedrop and pay homage to other films in the dialogue scenes either, his script is full of elements that put their cinematic roots on a pedestal while turning them upside down. So what more could you want? An American Werewolf in London is funny, creepy, utterly atmospheric and overall a ton of fun.
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