The Friday Night Horror Movie: An American Werewolf In London (1981)

There are certain movies that evoke a particular time and place in your memories. An American Werewolf in London is one such movie for me. I don’t remember the first time I ever watched it. I know I owned a copy of the VHS tape in college. My collection was pretty small back then, so the movies I owned made it into rotation regularly.

I’d pop this film on during a lazy Sunday afternoon, or after school on a Tuesday night. Me and my roommates would sit and watch it and laugh. We’d marvel at the special effects or how every song in it contained lyrics about the moon. I’m pretty sure its placement of “Moondance” began my journey into Van Morrison super fandom.

It became background noise in a sense. We’d put it on casually, not really paying much attention to it. This was before smartphones so we didn’t have social media or whatever to distract us so movies like this became something to do.

But at some point, I kind of turned on it. Sure the special effects were great and the needle drops, while super obvious, were on point, but it also felt very shallow. There wasn’t any depth to it.

That opinion stayed with me for decades. I don’t think I’ve watched the film since I left college, certainly, I haven’t seen it in a couple of decades. But for some reason, it crept into my thoughts this past week. Probably someone mentioned it on social media and I decided to give it another show.

My opinion didn’t change that much with this viewing. It is a shallow film. There isn’t much to it. But, also, I find I don’t care. Not every film needs to be deep. Not every movie has to carry with it layers of meaning and symbolism.

This movie is such fun to watch. And at 90 minutes it gets in, gets out, and leaves you satisfied.

The plot is quite simple. Two Americans, David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne), are backpacking across Europe. While Jack would really prefer to be in sun-soaked Italy they begin their travels in the North of England. We are introduced to them riding in the back of a sheep-filled truck.

They walk along the moors for a bit then stop at a pub for a hot beverage and a bite to eat. They are greeted like a stranger in one of those old Western movies. The entire pub stares at them quietly. But then one of them mentions Texas and one of the punters tells a joke about the Alamao and everybody laughs. Then David mentions the pentangle on the wall and the bar goes quiet again. They are told to get out. To get lost. Oh, and be mindful of the full moon and stay on the road.

Naturally, there is a full moon out and the boys wander off the road. Jack is killed by a werewolf and David is pretty good and mangled. He awakes in London in a hospital with a pretty nurse named Alex (Jenny Agutter). David keeps having terrible dreams and one day Jack appears to him. As a corpse. His face all torn to shreds. He tells David that he will turn into a werewolf at the next full moon and that he is now forced to wander the Earth as the living dead unless David, the last in the werewolf line kills himself.

David and Alex get cozy. David turns into a werewolf and kills a bunch of people. Can Alex save him? The end.

There really is nothing to it. But writer/director John Landis fills it with a real feeling of time and place. It isn’t the real England, but rather the England of movies. That pub (wonderfully called The Slaughtered Lamb) feels like it comes straight out of one of those old Hammer Horror movies I so love. Most of the English characters are like characters Americans have of English people.

It wonderfully blends horror and comedy. The murders are gruesome and the camera lingers on the gore. There are some nice scenes of suspense from when the boys are in the moors and something keeps howling at them to a late scene when the werewolf stalks a man through the underground. There are good gags and the editing often strikes a wonderfully jarring juxtaposition between the horror and the humor.

The special effects really are the gold standard for this sort of thing. There is a long scene where we watch David turn into a werewolf and it is fantastic. An absolutely brilliant use of practical effects. Every time Jack shows up after he’s dead, his body deteriorates even more. I can’t imagine how long Griffin Dunne had to sit in makeup to get all his flesh to look like it was hanging off of him, but it was time well spent.

So maybe not the greatest movie ever made. Certainly, it doesn’t have much to say about the state of humanity, but it is a completely entertaining 90 minutes to spend at the movies.