Top 25 Greatest Halloween Films: #17 – 'An American Werewolf In London' (1981)

#17: An American Werewolf In London (1981)

“Stay on the road. Keep clear of the moors.”

After delivering Animal House and The Blues Brothers, writer/director John Landis could pretty much make whatever film he wanted and what he wanted was to bring to life a decade old script that had suffered its share of rejection because no one thought pulling off very funny and very scary was possible. But pull it off Landis did, and quite brilliantly. Although it alternates between that now familiar (and much missed) early-eighties comic sensibility and outright gory chills and scares, Landis calibrates the film’s tone so well we hardly notice the continuing shift.

The best decision the director made, however, was in not forgetting the most important quality necessary to create a classic werewolf tale. The story must be a tragic one. An innocent victim bitten by a wolf who transforms into a murderous beast is an unimaginable fate to suffer, especially when the only cure is death. Lesser directors, especially a comedy director, would’ve found a way out for their protagonist. Not Landis, though. And had he, it’s doubtful you would be reading about his three-decade classic in my countdown today.

David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) are a couple of good-natured American college students out on a backpacking tour of England. Cocky, funny and a little unsure of their navigation abilities in this foreign land (but too young to worry about such things), one chilly evening the two friends decide to warm up at the Slaughtered Lamb, a local pub that doesn’t exactly welcome strangers. Icy stares, a pentagram on the wall… this is a town with a secret and it doesn’t take long for the boys take the hint and with only a warning to say on the road and off the moors, they head back out into a dark rural night lit only by a full moon.

Jack and David don’t take the warning seriously and predictably it isn’t long before they’re so lost in conversation that they stray right onto the moors. They should’ve listened. Before long, Jack is killed by a monster-sized wolf and just before the wounded David’s about to meet the same fate, his attacker’s killed by the locals. Maimed and bloody, David passes out and when he wakes it’s in a London hospital under the care of the capable Dr. Hirsch (John Woodvine) and the luscious Nurse Alex Price (Jenny Agutter). As a strong attraction develops between David and Alex, so do the intensity of his nightmares which culminate with a visit from his very dead friend Jack, who still looks freshly ripped apart by a werewolf.

Jack’s come to warn David that he must kill himself before the next full moon. Because he was bitten and managed to survive, David is now cursed and will turn into a werewolf that stalks and kills innocent people. Worse, his victims won’t be allowed to simply die. Until David is dead, they will suffer the same fate as Jack, wandering the Earth in some kind of terrible limbo.

All this foreboding mythology and entertaining backfill eventually brings us to the scene the film is remembered for, and for very good reason. David’s first transformation is a show-stopper, and so impressed was the Academy of Motion Pictures by Rick Baker’s jaw-dropping in-camera, Oscar-winning effects, that they decided to create the Oscar category of Outstanding Achievement in Make Up, which survives to this day. Just as impressive (and hilarious) is how the undead Jack has rotted out just a little bit more each time we see him.

Never lost beneath the prosthetics and spectacle is David Naughton, who’s nothing short of superb and believable as a sympathetic, charming, intelligent and always relatable American kid caught in a nightmare he didn’t deserve. Almost as good is a soundtrack packed with terrific interpretations of various songs that refer in some way to the moon.

Briskly told over a very well-paced 97 minutes (those were the days), “An American Werewolf in London” is a one-of-a-kind movie filled with wonderfully disparate pieces meticulously brought together by a confident director who had a unique vision and, most importantly, the talent to pull it off.

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What didn’t make the countdown: Procedurals

You were probably expecting me to list “An American Werewolf in Paris,” but in order for me to explain why that particular title didn’t make the countdown that particular title would have to exist. Unfortunately it doesn’t, which makes any further discussion of it a waste of time.

The reason “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” made the list and “Se7en,” the four Hannibal Lecter films, and similar type movies will not, has nothing to with my affection for them. “Se7en,” “Manhunter,” and “Silence of the Lambs” are big time favorites of mine (especially “Manhunter”), but they just don’t feel like Halloween films. They contain some of the right elements, but I mainly see them as psychological procedural thrillers. When the protagonists are competent and capable members of law enforcement and the thrust of the story involves the tick-tock showing how the bad guys get caught, something pure is lost when you’re talking about a horror film.