Director: John Landis
Starring: David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne, John Woodbine, Brian Glover
Written by: John Landis
Makeup effects by: Rick Baker
Music by: Elmer Berstein
Taglines: “From the director of Animal House… A different kind of animal.”
“The Monster Movie”
“Beware the Moon”
STORY
Jack and David are two American tourists backpacking through England. They arrive at a remote Yorkshire pub named The Slaughtered Lamb, but are rejected by the locals. One of them warns not to stray from the road onto the Moors. They do stray however, and are attacked by a wild beast. Jack is killed, and David wakes up in a London hospital. Plagued by nightmares and visions of his dead friend, David has to face the truth – he was bitten by a werewolf and is now one himself. The only way to end the carnage if for him to die…
OPINION
So, on to something a bit more mainstream with quite simply one of the most perfect mixes of horror and comedy ever committed to film. To the uninitiated at the time, this probably sounded like a bad idea. Horror comedies rarely work, being either too horrific to be funny or too silly to be scary. Director John Landis had never done anything remotely scary before, having cut his teeth on the likes of The Blues Brothers and Animal House (although he did get picked to direct Michael Jackson’s Thriller on the strength of this movie before returning to comedy). The cast were mostly unknowns, as was the special effects team, and werewolf movies were considered a dead genre until this and The Howling (shot at almost the same time) were released.
But, it works and works well. The biggest asset is the way Landis directs. He always treats the horror scenes as though they’re in a horror movie, and the script nicely balances comedic elements with the gore. The best example is the scene where after his gruelling transformation and subsequent massacre, David wakes up in a cage in London Zoo. He has to steal some balloons from a child then a woman’s coat to make it back home – a nice touch of slapstick after some real horror. Early scenes with David in the hospital and beginning a romance with his nurse are also offset with some pretty disturbing dream sequences.
As for that transformation scene… well, that’s one of the greatest scenes in modern cinema. Rick Baker pulls out all the stops, creating a painful looking and utterly realistic transformation in a brightly lit room. It still holds up today for the most part, and is totally convincing. I also like the way that the end result is a kind of demonic-looking wolf. I find the “wolfman” creatures like the ones in The Wolf Man and The Howling rather silly, but this werewolf is very convincing. Baker also comes through with some excellent makeup for Griffin Dunne – his character gradually decomposes during the movie and is replaced by animatronics during the porno theatre scene, but even then it’s pretty good.
A final touch of praise has to go to the cast. David Naughton puts in an excellent performance as the doomed protagonist, while Jenny Agutter is a very nice love interest. Griffin Dunne is fantastic is the gradually decomposing Jack, and there’s some nice cameos – especially at the beginning with Brian Glover and even Rik Mayall as the Yorkshire locals. There’s a couple of plot holes (why is a man attacked in Yorkshire taken all the way to London?), but nothing that mars the film in any real way.
The sequel didn’t fare so well, however. After years of trying to get it made with a rough title of An American Werewolf In Paris, the mantle passed to Anthony Waller who finally directed it in 1997. While the movie isn’t as bad as people often say, it’s nowhere near as good as the original with some shoddy CGI and some bizarre subplots.
Rating: 
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