Halloween Horrors- AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON  (1981)
Written/Directed by John Landis
Starring: David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, Jenny Agutter
R for unspecified reasons (contains strong horror violence/gore, some strong sexual content, nudity and language.)
SCAREmeter: 6.5/10
GOREmeter: 9/10
OVERALL: 3.5 stars out of 4 

Horror-genre films of the New Hollywood (1967 through the early 1980s) tend to have a distinct feeling that I can best describe as a "free-falling" atmosphere.  They lack a sense of solidity, and possess a rawness in which they meander their way through the terrors.  One of the few detractors in the film critic community's opinion of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, Roger Ebert, described the film as, "[seeming] curiously unfinished," and suggested that the director, John Landis, "didn't want to bother with things like transitions, character development, or an ending."  Ebert's claims are not without merit, but I disagree that the film is not satisfying regardless.  In fact, these "problems" do not seem to be to the detriment of the film, and the severely minimized ending and transitions could be argued as beneficial, thanks to the disconcerting, discorded feeling that results.
The film opens later into the story than more traditional horror films would, where the protagonist has already entered the main setting of England, rather than offering a contrasting and familiar prologue, such as is the case in most interpretations of Dracula.  The film's protagonist is young American college student, David Kessler (David Naughton), who is backpacking through Yorkshire with his best friend Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne), and as night falls over the fog-wrapped moors, David and Jack seek food and shelter at an ominous pub, The Slaughtered Lamb, the name declared upon a gory sign that hangs outside the door.  The hostile local patrons shun the Americans, but as David and Jack opt to head out, they are warned, "Beware the moon," and, "Keep to the road."  Shortly after venturing back onto the moors, the pair is attacked a ferocious and large beast that fatally mangles Jack, but leaves David alive and mauled just as the men from the pub appear and shoot the monster dead.

Bad Moon Rising

Awakened from a coma in a London hospital a few weeks later, David becomes acquainted with Alex Price, a warmhearted young nurse who takes a fancy to him and offers to let him share her apartment after he's discharged.  But David begins to get visits from a severely mutilated and progressively decaying Jack who warns David that the beast that attacked them was a werewolf, and having been bitten, David will turn into a monster at the next full moon.
AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON was a major shift in tone for its writer/director, John
Landis, who was one of the most prominent directors at the time, thanks to frat comedies like ANIMAL HOUSE and THE BLUES BROTHERS, but he was also a devotee of horror, especially the exploitative B-movies of filmmakers like Roger Corman.  He reportedly originated the concept for the film while working as a production assistant in Yugoslavia for KELLY'S HEROES, and after the blockbuster success of ANIMAL HOUSE and THE BLUES BROTHERS, he had acquired the needed clout to make his werewolf movie.  It isn't purely a horror movie though, and while most of its devoted fans would probably argue that it is equal part horror and comedy, I still think horror has an edge here.  Regardless, this is the werewolf movie wherein the horrific transformation showcase includes the line,"Jack..., I'm sorry I called you a meatloaf."  AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON was probably the first really successful "horror-comedy," paving the way for directors like Joe Dante and Sam Raimi.  A few years later, Landis' career and his cocksure, bombastic style would take a severe blow after an accident on the set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE where he was directing resulted in the death of three actors, two of whom were illegally-hired children.

Meatloaf.

To most reckonings, the true star of the film is Rick Baker, whose seven-time Academy Award-winning career got its first big break on AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, and has since gone on to become arguably the most illustrious career in movie makeup ever.  The 54th Academy Awards, to honor the best in film in 1981, was the first year in which "Outstanding Achievement in Makeup" was offered as an official competitive category, and Baker's revolutionary makeup effects won him his first Oscar (his seventh and most recent Academy Award was also for a werewolf movie, the 2010 remake, THE WOLFMAN).  The most famous sequence in the film is the first horrific transformation of David into the werewolf, led up to by Creedence Clearwater Revival's foot-tapping "Bad Moon Rising" and then accompanied by "Blue Moon" by Sam Cooke.  The scene is prolonged, perhaps unreasonably so, but showcases the incredible effects of David's legs painfully elongating into those of a wolf, claws tearing bloodily through the ends of his fingers, and his face inflating forward into a wolf-like snout, all through the science of animatronic prosthetics and innovative makeup techniques.  The film was also a surge forward in gore special effects, especially in the form of Jack's ghostly visits, the first of which shows him still fresh, with large portions of his neck and face torn away, exposing his innards, and bits of flesh gruesomely dangling, and in later visits, he appears progressively more decayed.
It's a peculiar film, both meandering and direct, sometimes displaying a strong sense of purpose as it begins and ends with startling efficiency, but also taking odd tangents, such as a nightmare involving undead Nazi stormtroopers.  Although Landis was a golden child of Hollywood for a few years in the 70s and 80s, his best films have largely been more accepted as 'cult classics,' rather than genuine classics (probably with the exception of ANIMAL HOUSE), as they've failed to transcend their own time.  Even so, his work carries a hefty entertainment factor, and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON maintains a great deal of entertainment value, while having also gained interest as a product of its time in the realm of cinema and horror, and as an artistic curiosity.