Cinophile: An American Werewolf In London

Nothing puts a dent in your day like becoming a werewolf…

The special effects won Rick Baker and his team 1981’s Academy Award for special makeup effects. Looking back at it, Baker said he cringes at some of the effects: “It was thirty years ago and I was thirty years old and the average age of my crew was like nineteen. There were kids who had never worked on a film before.” He’s being modest – the Academy Award they won was the first of its kind.

If you want to bemoan Twilight, don’t get offended by sparkly vampires. Lament the fall of the werewolf, a hellish beast recast as My Little Lycan. Fortunately werewolf films have made steady appearances over the ages, so the savagery has not been entirely lost and it is surprisingly hard to pick out a favourite from the genre. 1981 alone had several legendary werewolf films, of which at least two would become big contenders for that top spot. The Howling is certainly a good pick, but many people would decide on John Landis’ An American Werewolf In London.

Landis is a strange candidate to direct a horror film – movies like Three Amigos and Blues Brothers is more his style. But this has made American Werewolf a rather unique contribution to scary movies. It’s a bit strange: you go from wolf attacks in backwater England to sexy nurses to Nazi wolves in dreams to the torn remains of our hero’s dead friend. In between you’ll laugh, cry and witness the world’s most random porno movie scene. That might seem like a bit of a mess, but this is the film’s charm: it pulls all of this and more together in a very slick and coherent experience – and arguably the first proto-comedy horror.

Though it is known today for its special effects, An American Werewolf In London is arguably also the first modern comedy horror. That is, it pulls off great punchlines without ever diluting the horror qualities. Landis wrote the script a dozen years before making the film, but nobody took it serious, saying it was either too funny to be scary or too scary to be funny. But Landis was right when he said it’s both. It would gross $30 million off a $10 million budget – in today’s terms that is $74 million off $24 million.

That’s why American Werewolf stands out so well – it’s not your usual horror, but still entirely that and then some more. Well, that and one other thing…

American Werewolf’s story and acting qualities is what makes it such an evergreen film. But it’s David, our protagonist, turning into a werewolf that sealed the deal 33 years ago. It introduced the world to the soon-to-be-legendary Rick Baker, whose creature transformation sequence remains one of the greatest moments in special effects history. This is just one of several special effects gems in the film, such as David’s continuously rotting undead friend – trapped in limbo due to the werewolf’s curse. This has helped make An American Werewolf In London the gold standard of the genre – practically everything since has aspired to match its mix of grim humour, human tragedy and brain-searing special effects.

John Landis would go on to direct the infamous music video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller, again collaborating with Rick Baker to create legendary special effects. Jackson hired the duo for his video after seeing American Werewolf. Initially the porno theatre scene was suppose to be showing a Roadrunner cartoon – when Landis wrote the script, that was the main type of show around Piccadilly Circus. But when he returned to London ten years later, those had turned into porno theatres.

Cinophile is a weekly feature showcasing films that are strange, brilliant, bizarre and explains why we love the movies.