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Reviewed by Ivana Redwine
Tagline: "From the director of Animal House -- a different kind of animal." Length: 97 minutes "An American Werewolf in London" (1981) is a chilling horror movie that is one of the smartest films ever made about werewolves. But even though the movie has many disturbing moments and ends tragically, writer-director John Landis cleverly injects lots of humor, and for good measure he throws in a love story involving a little nudity and sex. The pop music is fun, too, as we get three different renditions of "Blue Moon" plus one version each of "Bad Moon Rising" and "Moondance." The story in the movie is straightforward. David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) are two American college-age guys who are bumming around Europe. One night as they walk under a full moon on a moor in northern England, they are attacked by a werewolf. Jack is killed and David is badly mauled. Later, David awakes in a London hospital, where his nurse is the lovely Alex (Jenny Agutter). David and Alex start to fall in love, and when David is discharged from the hospital, he moves in with her. After they shower together, they climb into bed, where David starts kissing Alex’s beautiful bare abdomen. Soon there’s a full moon when David is alone, and he undergoes a painful transformation into a werewolf. He then goes out into the streets of London and brutally kills six people. David awakens next morning in the zoo, and by this time he has returned to human form, but he is naked and must use some ingenuity in finding a way to get back to Alex’s apartment. His hilarious antics involve such desperate measures as stealing balloons from a kid and swiping a woman’s coat off a park bench. The film goes on to show how all this works out, maintaining its successful mix of the gruesome and the comic. David’s buddy Jack is now one of the undead and comes back repeatedly, each time in a more advanced state of decay, to talk with David. At one point, David, Jack, and the six people David killed (who are now also among the undead) sit in a movie theater talking quietly while watching a porno film called "See You Next Wednesday." But when night falls, David is again transformed into a raging werewolf, and he creates chaos by running out into bustling Piccadilly Circus, setting up the movie’s tragic ending. The horror makeup in "An American Werewolf in London" was quite advanced for its day, and Rick Baker won the Academy Award for Best Makeup for his work on the movie. The transformation from human to werewolf looks realistic, and there are special features on the Collector’s Edition DVD that explain how the effect was achieved. But the werewolf itself doesn’t look too convincing, and as a result it’s given minimal screen time. This isn’t as important as you might think, though -- the movie does such a great job of making us like David that we find ourselves caught up in his tragedy anyway. It’s a hoot to watch the outtakes on the Collector’s Edition DVD, even though the soundtrack is missing. Watch for the footage of Landis talking to the camera as he sits outside some sort of facade. The facade eventually collapses over him to reveal two jolly naked couples simulating sex. Maybe these four nude people are from the cast of "See You Next Wednesday." Selected Special Features on the DVD:
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