32 years ago today saw the release of a classic for all fans of things that howl at the full moon. Now Horror/Comedy as a genre can be tricky. You realise you have a campy, ridiculous script with a living doll or zombie strippers or whatever, that your actors are all sub-par and your special effects are so fake looking you’d be better off holding children’s drawings in front of the camera instead. In situations such as these, all a director can do is throw their hands in the air and say ‘Oh, it was meant to look bad. It’s a comedy horror!” In the right hands however, it can produce something really entertaining and a fine example is a film back in 1981, An American Werewolf in London.
Like many a classic horror, much of the plot of An American Werewolf in London can be gleamed from the title. Don’t be surprised to learn it isn’t about a Hungarian Mummy in Newcastle. Two American backpackers, David (David Kessler) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) are travelling through the north of England. For some reason unnerved by the poor reception they receive in the local pub or the pentagram carved into its wall, they go walking through the moors, whereupon they are attacked by a werewolf. Jack is brutally killed, while David wakes up in a hospital in London, where he begins to get close with his nurse, Alex (Jennifer Agutter). But his death scene is not the last we see of Jack in the film, and the scarred David starts to go through some changes…
Director John Landis (whose son Max currently bounds around Hollywood, writing movies like Chronicle and behaving like an excited child who’s just inhaled a whole bag of sugar) is more known for his comedy work but here demonstrates an adept sensibility for horror. He understands that less is more and that fleeting glimpses of your monster allow audiences to fill in the blanks and do your work for you as they scare themselves. Interestingly, he occasionally lets us see victims from the werewolf’s eyes, using the same shaky POV camera technique that would be made famous by Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead, released in the same year as An American Werewolf in London. The dream sequences of the film are surreal and shocking enough to create a real feeling of unease. The comedy that occasionally creeps into the film helps to alleviate tension and makes the film a more accessible movie-going experience (or rather, movie-watching-at-home-on-Netflix experience for us in the modern day).
The light touch of the comedy prevents it from damaging the tone. Humour arises from the strange circumstances that pop up in horror films and the natural chemistry that exists between the actors. The male leads Kessler and Dunne come across like wisecracking sitcom buddies, the kind you see on DVD boxes standing back to back and making “Get a load of this guy!” faces. Possibly one will be pointing at the other with his thumb. While the film doesn’t take itself entirely seriously, the comedy never overpowers to the point that it treats itself as a total joke either.
The film won an Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling and you can see why. Werewolves are notoriously difficult to put on-screen without them looking ridiculous, especially when compared to showing vampires, where all you need to do is put out a casting call for a sexy actor and break out some pale make-up. The little we see of the werewolf looks good. The gore effects look real enough to make them slightly uncomfortable to look at. Not to give away too much, but there are other creepy things to see in the film besides werewolves and the effects there are striking too. I really recommend that you have a look for An American Werewolf in London. It’s got some good scares, the occasional laugh and a soundtrack that manages to be enjoyable despite being on-the-nose enough to feature what seems like every song in history with the word ‘moon’ in the title. So go on, watch it. Sure do you have anything better to be doing? Didn’t think so.
How do I convince her?