An American Werewolf in London: Favourite Films Series

Welcome to a new C.C.C. feature: Favourite Films! 

This series is less a review series and more about just recalling some of my favourite movies of all-time; movies from all genres, decades, some that are well-known, others you might never have heard of (but should), and just why they are my favourites. 

Many film fans say they have no “favourite movie”, but just as many others can easily assemble a top ten list with reasons why each movie is in each slot. For me, I have a pretty solid top ten, and while I do have a default answer for my #1 favourite movie of all-time (stay tuned, I may discuss it!), I really could pick any of my top ten and call them my favourite. 

But I’m going beyond just my top ten. There’s no order in which I’m covering my favourites, it’s just a free-for-all! And the first one I’m covering, for no particular reason, is…

An American Werewolf in London (1981): Favourite Films Series 

I picked up a book many years ago called Scary Movies, which was just a thin, basic guide to, you guessed it, scary movies, and one of the movies it focused on was An American Werewolf in London. It showed an image of the iconic mid-transformation wolf face, and I instantly recognized it from a VHS cover I had seen in the video store many times. The face used to really creep me out—there was something in the expression that conveyed such inhuman pain, I couldn’t look at it. From what the book detailed, it sounded like an intriguing werewolf film, but it would be a couple more years before I’d get around to buying the blu ray and checking it out. 

When I first watched An American Werewolf in London, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. It started off a little slow, was kind of funny, kind of spooky, then the first werewolf attack comes, and it’s totally horrific and shocking. Then it starts getting fairly bizarre, and scarier, and funnier, and scarier yet, and funnier yet, and this just continues until the very end, and as the doo-wop version of “Blue Moon” played over the rolling credits, I was totally stupefied. 

I walked away, pondering what I had just seen. Was is a scary comedy or a funny horror movie? It was really quite disturbing and frightening, and yet, hilarious. I had never seen anything like it before, and still haven’t. An American Werewolf in London is, simply put, one of the greatest horror-comedy’s ever made.

I’ve already reviewed this movie in the past (link at the bottom of this page), but it was a very broad review and I didn’t get into too much detail. There will inevitably be some spoilers in the latter part of this article, so I recommend if you haven’t seen this movie and would like to, that you read my review and come back and read this after you’ve seen it. Seriously, just go watch it, the less you know the better. 

When it first came out in 1981, many people felt the same way I did at first. Like so many of the great movies of the past, An American Werewolf was ahead of its time, and it took some years before people recognized how ingenious it was. Every werewolf movie that has come since, owes something to it. 

The mark of a truly great horror movie is one that scares the pants off you when you first see it, and continues to be scary even upon repeat viewings. The mark of a truly great comedy is one that has you in stiches when you first see it, and continues to be funny even upon repeat viewings. An American Werewolf in London is, by those definitions, a truly great horror-comedy, because I’ve seen this movie numerous times, and it still makes me laugh and be unsettled at the same time, every time. Writer-director John Landis has said it’s not a comedy, it’s a horror movie that happens to be funny, and who could argue with the creator of this masterpiece? That’s right, I said it, An American Werewolf is a masterpiece. To me, it is the quintessential werewolf movie.

Horror movie purists would likely say the original 1941’s The Wolf Man is still the all-time greatest werewolf movie, and while I can totally understand that argument, to me, The Wolf Man hasn’t aged as well as An American Werewolf. John Landis himself said he had an issue with the way Lon Chaney Jr. just sat in a chair as he slowly became a wolf monster through lap dissolves; he always felt it should be a painful experience, and I always felt the same way, which is why the transformation in American Werewolf is still the best werewolf transformation in any movie ever. I’m not saying The Wolf Man isn’t a classic—it has, in its own right, stood the test of time—but American Werewolf has such convincing effects and is so well shot, even upon close inspection, I’ve found barely any flaws. 

Right out of the gate, Landis sets up viewers for an off-kilter experience. Eerie footage of the moors, coupled with Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Moon”, which is strangely upbeat and calming. The whole movie has this slightly distorted portrayal of the real world, but it’s so slight I couldn’t put my finger on it the first time I watched. It comes right down to the acting (all of the performances, by the way, are completely convincing and the characters feel real), with the way people say certain things. I guess it could be called acting nuances, but I’m probably not using that term correctly, so I’d just say it comes down to good acting. 

As I said, the werewolf transformation is the best ever, but beyond just that, all of the special effects makeup by Rick Baker is fantastic. The work on Jack’s (Griffin Dunne) decaying body alone is an extremely sophisticated series of prosthetics. It’s flawless, right down to the very smallest detail, like the tiny flap of skin that accidently came loose in the application process, but was left dangling because it looked purposefully disgusting. 

You could say the movie holds up as well as it does because of how good the effects hold up in particular, but it’s the effects combined with the well-written screenplay, that perfect combo that makes it so timeless. The conversations about the undead and werewolves and killing oneself are all spoken with increasing seriousness, but the audience buys right into them because this world that is uniquely John Landis’ is so believable in its depiction, you don’t question it. Landis said he wanted to take the mythical idea of werewolves and ground it in reality, and he did just that. 

I could go on about this movie for several more paragraphs, but I’ll wrap it up here. I love werewolf movies, and An American Werewolf in London is one of the major reasons why. It’s a tragic story, but it’s so funny and so well made, it’s a spectacle to behold. The characters are memorable and engaging, the situations are unique, the monster is menacing, and all the elements come together to make a one-of-a-kind horror movie experience everyone should have at least once, if not multiple times.

An American Werewolf in London Review: http://cccmovies.blogspot.ca/2014/10/an-american-werewolf-in-london-1981.html