Two American students, David Kessler and Jack Goodman, (David Naughton, Griffin Dunne) are attacked by a werewolf while walking through the English moors. David survives, but starts having violent dreams and hallucinations of the mutilated Jack, warning him that he is a werewolf.
Comedy is almost always a good idea, and it’s so hard to do right. It is particularly important in horror, to give the audience a sensation other than fear, yet is closer to fear than most believe (ever notice how people giggle when uneasy?). John Landis understands this better than any director. He mixes the gruesome with a few jokes and hits the perfect atmosphere. And to make sure he’s got every primitive synapse firing, he adds in a bit of sex (with the help of the always-charming Jenny Agutter). Perhaps the film is best represented by a scene in a porn theater, where David has a fairly normal conversation with a group of mangled and bloody ghosts who suggest ways for him to kill himself. Gore, sex, and humor.
Much acclaim was rained upon the werewolf transition makeup and effects. Unfortunately, they don’t hold up over time (and didn’t look that good back in the ’80s, with a shot of the half-changed David on his back looking more like he’s sunk in the floor and having sex with a Muppet than becoming a wolf). What was innovative was showing the change without stop motion, darkness, or cutaways. But being better than what’s in almost every other shape changing film doesn’t make it good (since most of those were laughable) and while cutting edge for 1981, it would be another ten years before any monster transitions looked good enough for bright lights.
Though not a flawless story (the end is far too sudden and lacking in impact), An American Werewolf in London is still the standard for horror comedies, and a high point for werewolf films after the non-memorable lycanthropes of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.
Followed by American Werewolf in Paris.