For this final segment of my special Halloween Edition of “Savage Cinema Revisits,” I am excited to shine my personal spotlight upon a film that has long earned a treasured place in my cinematic heart. In fact, I am so excited to share this title with you that I feel that this installment may be considered to be the debut feature of a new series I would like to begin on this site. Think of it like a “Pilot Episode” of a new series.
The great Roger Ebert has inspired me once again as I am happy to announce the arrival of “SAVAGE CINEMA’S FAVORITE MOVIES.” This is a self-explanatory series, which owes a most reverential nod to Mr. Ebert’s “Great Movies” series and book compilations.
The following posting is simply a love letter to a film that has enraptured and frightened me from the very first time I saw it, back when I was 13 years old. I grandly present this piece to you with the hopes you embrace it for this Halloween season and also, for all time!
“AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON” (1981)
Written and Directed by John Landis
“They killed Kermit!”
That cryptic statement was announced to me, at the age of 12, by my then 17-year-old cousin Adam some time after he saw “An American Werewolf In London” in the summer of 1981. To this statement, all I could utter was a bemused, “What?!” to which Adam again, dryly and slyly stated, “They killed Kermit.”
If filmmaker John Landis were only to have ever made the comedy classics “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978) and “The Blues Brothers” (1980), he would still exist as one of my favorite Directors as both of those films rank as my top two favorite comedies. Yet, as you all know, I give the genre of horror a wide berth and have no enjoyment in willingly placing myself into situations where I would become terribly frightened. So, it should be of no surprise to you that despite my love for the films of John Landis, there was no way at all that I was about to find a way to see “An American Werewolf In London,” Landis’ entry into the horror film genre. But…I had to admit that my curiosity was definitely piqued by Adam’s remark. What did he mean by “They killed Kermit!” anyway? Honestly, while Landis’ films had an anarchistic streak that I adored, I didn’t fathom that he would go so far as to actually commit Muppet homicide on screen! Even so, I stayed away…but I made myself a mental note to investigate in the future.
That future arrived the following summer when the film made its premiere upon a pay television channel called “ON TV.” Adam actually happened to be over at my house on the night of the premiere. I felt that within the safety of my own home, a much smaller screen combined with Adam’s company, viewing “An American Werewolf In London” would be an experience I could handle much more easily than within the confines of a large movie theater with 70mm screens and Dolby sound systems. So…emulating the experience of a movie theater, as I often did during those years, I dimmed the lights in the basement and we began to watch.
John Landis’ “An American Werewolf In London” begins with sights of the chilly Northern England countryside at dusk set to Bobby Vinton’s melancholy version of “Blue Moon.” The camera pans downwards as a sheep farmer’s truck, loaded with sheep, deposits two American backpackers on the road, and directs them to the town of East Proctor with the warning to stick to the road and stay clear of the moors. After the farmer drives away, we officially meet David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne), two college students on a walking/hitch hiking tour of Europe with hopes to complete their journey in Italy.
As night begins to fall and the air grows more frigid, David and Jack happen upon a small pub that carries the grotesque moniker, “The Slaughtered Lamb.” Ambling inside for warmth and possibly some nourishment, the locals instantly become unnerved by their presence signaling David and Jack to feel the same in return. During their brief stay, Jack notices a five pointed star drawn upon one of the tavern’s walls and easily identifies it as a pentangle, the mark of the Wolfman. When Jack makes a lighthearted inquiry as to the purpose of the pentangle’s existence in the pub, the once boisterous room grows ominously quiet. Sensing that they should simply leave the premises, David and Jack exit The Slaughtered Lamb with the grim reminder to stay away from the moors and “beware of the moon.”
David and Jack race away from the pub, get themselves caught in heavy rainfall and accidentally leave the main road. They soon find themselves lost upon the moors and are gripped with fright once they hear a disturbingly anguished howl. The young men are suddenly and savagely attacked, Jack Goodman is killed and their attacker is murdered by the townspeople who have come searching for the travelers.
Three weeks later, David awakens in a London hospital in the care of the kindly yet stern Dr. Hirsch (John Woodvine) and also finds himself instantly attracted to Nurse Alex Price (the husky voiced and eternally sexy Jenny Agutter) who soon reciprocates David’s affections. Yet, all is not well for David as he not only mourns the death of his best friend, his memories of the attack, which he believes to have been from a wolf, are not taken seriously. David is soon plagued with disturbing hallucinations and increasingly grisly nightmares. Everything culminates with the apparitional arrival of the dead (or “undead”) and decomposing Jack, who informs David that he was indeed bitten by a werewolf and that he must commit suicide before he becomes a werewolf within two days and embarks upon his own murder spree across London.
I sat and watched “An American Werewolf In London” completely mesmerized and pinned to my seat. Was I frightened? Absolutely, as John Landis consistently kept my sensibilities discombobulated with one shock after another. I was deeply involved with the overall story but there was no way to simply settle in and relax, which was made all the more difficult as John Landis created a horror film that also succeeded grandly as a comedy. The laughs allowed time to recover from the scares but the moment you settled into a laugh, Landis pulls the rug out from under you once again with another jolt to the system.
All of the werewolf attacks (including one virtuoso and beautifully filmed sequence set deep within London’s tube system) are treated with the appropriate level of terror and gore. The film’s love story between David and Alex, coupled with the inevitability of David’s fate, has a grounding sense of tragedy. Even the film’s dream sequences continue to impress and deliver more than their share of shivers. As David recuperates in the hospital and also when he moves into the flat of Nurse Alex Price, and begins his inevitable descent into becoming a werewolf, Landis thrusts us inside of his darkest paranoia. These are illustrated in the form of nasty, graphically violent nightmares that jarringly hide inside of other surprising nightmares.
Yet again, Landis somehow has figured out how to mine this material for comedy without ever sacrificing the horror elements. The continuing visitations from the decomposing Jack Goodman while illustrating David Kessler’s slippery grip upon his sanity and the mounting doom of his upcoming metamorphosis, simultaneously allows Jack’s sardonic wit to remain fully intact, even as his skin is falling from his skull. Landis even brilliantly sets one sequence between David and the six “undead” victims from his one night killing spree inside of a London porn movie theater that is screening “See You Next Wednesday,” Landis’ constant in-joke within his movies. In a sequence that is deliriously Monty Python-esque, Landis has these decomposing corpses offer a host of morbid suggestions as to how David could effectively commit suicide, thus ending the werewolf’s bloodline and allowing all of the undead to ascend onwards. It is a darkly funny sequence that supremely serves the story and again, keeps us unprepared for the horror that will soon return.
With “An American Werewolf In London,” John Landis created and mastered one of the most amazing cinematic balancing acts I have ever had the pleasure to witness. It is a film, that STILL makes me ask the question: “How did he do that????”
I loved how skillfully layered John Landis’ original screenplay is. It not only encompasses the suggested wit and concept of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court (which Nurse Alex is seen reading at one point), it also references the classic Hollywood horror films and iconography of Vincent Price, Lon Chaney and Bela Lugosi and somehow, Landis makes the experience of his film completely his own.
Landis’ usage of classic pop songs is particularly dazzling. This film was the exact place where and when I first heard Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” which is played during David and Alex’s love scene. But moreso, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising” serves to deepen the oncoming doom of David Kessler’s life while Landis uses no less than three versions of “Blue Moon” (performed by the aforementioned Bobby Vinton as well as Sam Cooke and The Marcels, respectively) to underscore the inherent tragedy of the story as a whole.
And how about the film’s controversial ending! While, of course, I certainly will not reveal the particulars here, Landis gives us an ending that is the definition of abrupt, and therefore yet another shock to keep us unbalanced. The movie just…stops and plunges straight into the end credit scroll without a moment to breathe or process anything that had just been witnessed. As Landis has unapologetically stated over the years, “The story’s over. The movie’s over.” And that’s that. There are no signals to the audience that we have arrived at a conclusion. No pulling back of the camera to reveal the carnage strewn streets of Piccadilly Circus. No fade to black. Just a smash cut from image to credits because the movie’s over. It was an audacious choice in a film that is filled front to back with audacious choices.
But there is absolutely no way to write about “An American Werewolf In London” and not mention the film’s most iconic sequence, David’s transformation into a werewolf. Believe me dear readers, if you have never seen this sequence before, it is a showstopper. If you have seen this sequence before, it holds up masterfully. The sequence features the revolutionary makeup effects of Rick Baker and in our age of CGI overkill, I truly believe that new filmmakers should be forced to watch, re-watch and re-watch this sequence over and over again to understand that sometimes, good old fashioned handmade techniques are indeed the best way to go and should never be threatened to become a lost art. Just watch at how the scene completely serves the entire story as well as the character of David Kessler. Watch how the makeup depicts the face elongating into a lupine shape, the hair bristling and growing into matted fur, how the bones crack as arms, legs and hands change into werewolf form, all the while hearing David’s pained, anguished screams and howls. It is outstanding work that just makes you want to sit even closer to the screen even as you are terrified.
“An American Werewolf In London” was a game changer for the genre of horror films in terms of its storytelling, direction and definitely its makeup effects. Face it, we would not even have Michael Jackson’s iconic music video for “Thriller” (which John Landis directed as Jackson’s request) if “An American Werewolf In London” did not exist. But, at its very best, the film does not just keep altering your perceptions and expectations. It upends them. In fact, the film possesses the same anarchistic spirit of Landis’ comedies by playing with the genre conventions so much that it transcends the horror genre to the point where it completely raises the bar for what a horror film can actually be.
So, for the uninitiated, did they really kill Kermit? Now, why would I ruin anything like that for you, dear readers? See “An American Werewolf In London” and find out for yourselves.
Happy Halloween to you and let us all celebrate this masterwork from John Landis, one of Savage Cinema’s favorite movies!
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