Writer and director John Landis, primarily known for his comedies (The Blues Brothers, Animal House, The Kentucky Fried Movie, ¡Three Amigos!), presented the world with one of the greatest black horror comedies of all time with An American Werewolf in London. The work is a landmark, not only for crossing the genres of horror and comedy so succinctly, as well as being the impetus for the Academy Awards recognizing makeup as a separate category (artist Rick Baker won as a consequence), but also serves as another notch in the futility bedpost for would-be writers: Landis wrote the script in 1969 at the tender age of nineteen.
Two American students, David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) are backpacking across Europe when the are dropped of by a sheep farmer (carrying a flock of sheep presumably on their way to slaughter) in East Procter, a small village in Northern England. They enter a pub called “The Slaughtered Lamb” where the patrons, who are less than hospitable, warn the duo not to wonder off the main road and to be mindful of the moon. David and Jack depart, realize there is a full moon, and veer off into the nearby moors where Jack is killed and David is maimed by a large animal. After spending three weeks unconscious in a London hospital, David awakens and quickly begins suffering night terrors atop delusions when his late friend (in worse shape than after the attack due to decomposition) approaches him one morning, informing David he is a werewolf. He befriends a nurse, Alex Price (Jenny Agutter), who takes the American in as her own upon his release. In the middle of the night Jack appears again (rigor mortis now heavily setting in), reiterating his forebodings concerning David’s well-being and informing him that he must commit suicide, thus ending the werewolf’s bloodline, lest his undead victims remain in Limbo. A full moon appears and David transforms into a werewolf and kills six. The next day he is accosted, not only by Jack (now a borderline skeleton), but by all six of his previous night’s victims with the demand he kill himself. That night, as another full moon appears, David undergoes yet another metamorphosis as he enters the crowded streets of London’s Piccadilly Circus.
An American Werewolf in London is clever in the manner in which Joseph Heller’s masterpiece, Catch-22, is clever: while we are laughing, the artist is subtly sliding heavy meaning and content by us. Yes, the film is a comedy yet it is also a complex meditation upon sanity and alienation that implements the figure of the werewolf as a metaphor. After David regains consciousness, he fears, partly due to his night terrors, that his has lost his sanity because Scotland Yard refuses to consent to the fact that an animal killed his friend. Instead, Inspector Villiers (Don McKillop) states that witnesses reported that a madman committed the crime and that the case is subsequently closed. David’s doctor, J. S. Hirsch (John Woodvine) and Alex surmise that David’s mental instability is due to the psychological weight of his friend’s death resulting in trauma. To further exacerbate matters, David is victim to visions of his late friend Jack appearing before him. Also, while in the hospital, while he feared that his sanity was amiss, David’s memory begins to fade. After his first transformation, David has no recollection of the previous night’s affairs.
The theme of alienation is presented in a Henry Jamesian fashion in that an American finds himself friendless in a foreign country while his solstice, his mind, begins to slip away. His desperation culminates in a telephone call to his family in the States, whom he can no longer hold a meaningful conversation, before attempting to commit suicide (unable, perhaps, due to his love for Alex). The penultimate disassociation from the foreign people and culture in which David finds himself is symbolically represented in that David is no longer human, thus cannot relate to those around him (in the most populated city in England) even on a biological level. One could even argue that David isn’t actually a werewolf and that, signaled by his repeated sightings of a deceased friend atop night terrors, he is merely victim to xenophobia-induced neurosis.
Another, less poignant theme that runs throughout the film is the humanity’s desensitization and ready acceptance of violence. The local barflies at The Slaughtered Lamb coldly receive David and Jack in spite of the fact they are harmless tourists merely attempting to find a warm meal. They drive the two out into the night knowing what lies in wait. A subtler reinforcement of this theme is witnessed during one of David’s dreams in which he is watching television back home in America. Sesame Street is playing and Miss Piggy is discussing the British puppet show, Punch and Judy, to Kermit as a character utters, “I was going to bite you very badly.” Thus, violence has even permeated children’s programming.
Also, to continue on the previous strain of thought, television and film acts as lifeline for characters throughout the film. When David and Jack spot a pentagram (which David pronounces as “pent-angle”) on the wall of The Slaughtered Lamb, he recalls its meaning from George Waggner’s 1941 The Wolf Man. While alone in Alex’s apartment, David resorts to television as entertainment. During David’s final encounter with his undead companion, they meet at a local porn theater whose feature, See You Next Wednesday, is advertised throughout London’s subway tunnels.
Yet, for the heavy theory contained in the work, Landis counters, juxtaposes, and masterfully balances the weight of his script with cutting black humor. The director first introduces the theme of Lycanthropy during the opening credits, “Lycanthrope Films Limited Productions” as Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Moon” gently plays (a legal disclaimer at the close of the film reads, “Any resemblance to any persons living, dead, or undead is coincidental”). When Jack first appears to David, the former outlines his current dilemma, being the undead trapped in Limbo as a consequence of being killed by a werewolf, and ends with “I’m not havin’ a nice time here.” Ultimately, Jack’s quibble with Limbo is not that he is not permitted eternal rest, but that it is boring. When David meets Jack in a theater after the former killed six people the night before, the metaphysically stranded cadavers join Jack as they happily rattle off numerous methods by which David could end the werewolf bloodline. Nurse Susan Gallagher (Anne-Marie Davies), shortly before David awakens after being brought to the hospital, relates to Alex that the American is from New York and, she suspects, is Jewish because she “had a look.” Landis crosses hilarity with cultural criticism when David, realizing what he’d done as a werewolf, attempts to get arrested (to no avail) as the bobby (Peter Ellis) and a growing crowd are lambasted with what David believes to be offensive cultural slurs, “Queen Elizabeth is a man! Prince Charles is a pervert! Winston Churchill was full of shit! Shakespeare’s French!” Lastly, after David awakens after his first night as a werewolf, he finds himself naked in the local zoo. He coaxes a little boy (Rufus Deakin) with a handful of balloons over and steals them in order to cover himself. The boy returns to his mother and declares matter-of-factly, “A naked American man stole my balloons.”
Special effects artist Rick Baker (Star Wars, It’s Alive, The Ring, Videodrome, Men in Black) took what he’d done a year before with The Howling and improved upon it in what still stands as the definitive werewolf transformation onscreen (aided by the editing of Malcolm Campbell). Not only that, but during an early dream sequence, Baker and Landis take the viewer unaware with a demonic surprise which serves as a precursor to Fright Night and Night of the Demons. However, I would argue that his swansong in the film is Jack’s first appearance after his demise. The cadaver’s wounds are still moist while the weight of the torn flesh threatens to fall off with each passing word. Ultimately, Baker’s efforts paid off because, not only did he win the Academy Award for Makeup, the Academy had yet, to that point, given credit for such work and, based upon Baker’s efforts, generated a category for just that purpose.
The only notable downside to the film is its poor lighting which, at first I believed to be purposeful but, upon reflection and in contrast to other well-lit sequences followed by more pitch-black scenes, I understand why the role was left uncredited. Some may state that the relationship between David and Alex seems rushed but the mystique of a British female’s foreign accent crossed with an American male’s quirky personality (atop, perhaps, Alex liking what Nurse Gallagher later reported in detail once they went on break) is the cinematic breeding ground for, at least, infatuation if not more.
An American Werewolf in London is one of the finest werewolf films to date. The script is controlled, thoughtful, and entertaining while Landis’s direction is well-handled and articulate. The groundbreaking special effects are only rivaled by the black humor which compliments the masterfully orchestrated violence and theory behind the work. An American Werewolf in London is a remarkable effort and desires its place as a staple in the horror genre.
-Egregious Gurnow
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- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
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