An American Werewolf In London

Year: 1981 Director: John Landis

The film commences with two American backpackers, David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne), trudging along the Yorkshire moors. Hungry and cold they decide to go to the local pub in a remote village. They enter The Slaughtered Lamb public house and everyone stops. The locals are decidedly unfriendly to non-locals and are keen to get rid of them, and are quietly arguing with themselves about whether the pair should be allowed to go out into the night. With an air of unease the pair leave the pub with the some friendly advice ringing in their ears "Stay on the road. Keep clear of the moors" and "Beware the full moon". Only slightly daunted the pair strike out on the chilly evening lit by the full moon, and too late realise they have strayed from the road and are now in fact on the moors. They are attacked by what appears to be a big dog, Jack is killed whilst David is savaged. David wakes up in hospital and starts to recuperate. The trauma of the incident begins to make David have nightmares. The friendly Nurse Price (Jenny Agutter) is always on hand to calm him down. One morning Jack appears by his bedside (looking like Meatloaf - the foodstuff rather than the big boned pomp rock star). Jack explains they were attacked by a werewolf and he is now undead and will be until the wolf's bloodline is severed. This can only be achieved with David's death and he urges David to kill himself. David persuades himself he is simply going mad and is discharged from hospital and goes to live with Nurse Price and they fall for each other. All is going well until Jack appears again to David (looking rotten) and again begs David to end his life before he turns into a Werewolf. David again blocks this from his mind but the full moon is due soon.

John Landis took 10 years from writing the story to actually getting a studio interested in making this movie? and then only because he'd had three box office smashes to prove his credentials - Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House and Blues Brothers. Where this film truly excels is the way it skips along quite beautifully between moments of humour and horror. There are so many nice little touches in the movie like the soundtrack made up exclusively of songs which contain the word moon in the title. The make up and special effects on the film are also absolutely stunning (the stretching transformation from human to werewolf is an amazing piece of cinema magic). It is little wonder that the film scooped the inaugural Academy Award for the make up. A rather good cast obviously had the measure of film with some fine British character actors contributing some nice cameos (notably Brian Glover) . The two leads are suitably well chosen too as innocent "American abroad's" - one dreads to think what the film would have turned out like if John Landis had relented to the studio bosses wishes and cast Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in the lead roles (how wrong they would have been for the roles). All in all a great movie that requires little thought but is always absolutely entertaining.

And remember, "Stay on the road, keep clear of the moors" - probably best to avoid Piccadilly Circus too if the final scene is anything to go by.

An American Werewolf in London features in our Interactive Haunted House of Horror guide to horror films and scary movies.

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