An American Werewolf in London

An American Werewolf in London is a 1981 horror comedy film written and directed by John Landis, and starring David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, and Griffin Dunne.

The film starts with two young American men, David Kessler (played by Naughton) and Jack Goodman (played by Dunne), on a backpacking holiday in England. Following an awkwardly tense visit to a village pub, the two men venture deep into the moors at night. They are attacked by a werewolf, which results in Jack's death and David being taken to a London hospital. Through apparitions of his dead friend and disturbing dream sequences, David becomes informed that he is a werewolf and will transform at the next full moon.

Shooting took place mostly in London but also in Surrey and Wales. It was released in the United States August 21, 1981, and grossed $30.56 million at the box office. Critics generally gave the film favourable reviews. The film won the 1981 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and an Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup. The film was one of three high-profile wolf-themed horror films released in 1981, alongside The Howling and Wolfen. Over the years, the film has accumulated a cult following and is a cult classic.

The film was followed by a 1997 sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris, which featured a completely different cast and none of the original crew, and is distributed by Disney's Hollywood Pictures. A Hindi film, Junoon, was also inspired by this movie.

Empire magazine named An American Werewolf in London as the 107th greatest film of all time in September 2008. August 15, 2013, the Universal Orlando Resort announced it would use the film as the basis for its seventh maze during that year's annual Halloween Horror Nights event. The maze was so popular, it became part of the 2014 Halloween Horror Nights event at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Plot

Two American college students, David Kessler and Jack Goodman, are backpacking across the Yorkshire moors. As darkness falls, they decide to stop for the night at a pub called "The Slaughtered Lamb". Jack notices a five-pointed star on the wall. When he asks about it, the pub becomes very quiet and the pubgoers start acting very strange and hostile. The pair decide to leave, but not before the others offer them pieces of advice such as "Beware the moon, lads" and "Keep to the road." Whilst conversing with each other and wondering what they meant, they wander off the road, onto the moors.

Back at the pub, the owner gets very distressed and suggests that they go after the pair. As she says this, a sinister howling is heard. The rest of the pubgoers, having barricaded the door, decline. Back out on the moors, Jack and David have also heard the howls, and they seem to be steadily getting closer. They start back to the Slaughtered Lamb when they realize that they have left the road and are now lost on the moors. A full moon comes out from behind the clouds, and they remember the advice they were given earlier. The noises get steadily closer until the boys are stopped by a supernaturally large animal. The animal attacks both of them, and kills Jack. The animal is then shot and killed by the pubgoers, who have finally emerged. The beast changes into the dying body of a naked man. David survives the mauling and is taken to a hospital in London.

When David wakes up three weeks later, he does not remember what happened and is told of his friend's death. David is questioned by the arrogant Inspector Villiers and the bumbling, but more understanding Sergeant McManus and learns that he and Jack were supposedly attacked by an escaped lunatic. David insists that they were actually attacked by a large wolf. But Villiers had already been told there were witnesses and an autopsy report of the maniac, so they deduce that David is suffering from shock.

David begins to have a series of bizarre nightmares. In the first, he runs through the woods, then decapitates and eats a deer. In the second, he is in a hospital bed with a monstrous, fanged face. In the final dream, he is at home with his family when they are attacked by Nazis with monstrous faces and wielding machine guns.

While David is awake, Jack appears to him as a reanimated corpse, and explains that the pair of them were attacked by a werewolf, and that David himself is now a werewolf. Jack urges David to kill himself before the next full moon, not only because Jack is cursed to exist in a state of living death for as long as the bloodline of the werewolf that attacked them survives, but also to prevent David from inflicting the same fate on his eventual victims.

Trying to see if David is telling the truth, his doctor, Hirsch, takes a trip to the Slaughtered Lamb. When asked about the incident, the pubgoers deny any knowledge of David, Jack or their attacker. But one distraught pubgoer speaks to Dr. Hirsch outside the pub and says that David should not have been taken away, and that he and everyone else will be in danger when he changes. He's interrupted by another pubgoer, who remains silent. After more investigation, Dr. Hirsch finds out that the police report was "misplaced", and that David's wounds were cleaned and dressed before the authorities attended to him. The doctor is convinced that the whole town was lying, and that David was indeed attacked by some sort of animal, though he is not convinced it was a werewolf.

Upon his release from the hospital, David moves in with Alex Price, the pretty young nurse who grew infatuated with him in the hospital. He stays in Alex's London apartment, where they later make love for the first time. Jack (in an advanced stage of decay) suddenly appears to David again and tells him that he will turn into a werewolf the next day. Jack again advises David to take his own life; otherwise he is doomed to kill innocent people.

When the full moon rises, as Jack had warned, David, who is alone in the apartment, begins to feel excruciating pain before stripping naked upon "burning up" and turning into a werewolf. He prowls the streets and the London Underground and slaughters six Londoners. When he wakes in the morning, he is naked on the floor of the wolf cage at London Zoo with no memory of his activities, but unharmed by the resident wolves.

Later that day, David realizes that Jack was right about everything and that he is responsible for the murders of the night before. After failing to get himself arrested and running from Alex, David calls his family in New York to say good-bye, though he only speaks to his little sister. Walking out of the phone booth after failing to slit his wrists with his pocket knife, David sees Jack (in a more advanced stage of decay) outside an adult cinema in Piccadilly Circus. Inside, Jack is accompanied by David's victims from the previous night. They all insist that he must commit suicide before turning into a werewolf again. While talking with them, night falls and, consequently, David turns into a werewolf again and goes on another killing spree. After bursting out of the cinema (biting off Inspector Villiers' head in the process), a horrific melee ensues. David is ultimately cornered in an alley by police. Alex arrives to calm him down by telling him that she loves him. Though he is apparently temporarily softened, he is shot and killed when he lunges forward, returning to human form in front of a grieving Alex as he dies.

Cast

David Naughton as David Kessler
Jenny Agutter as Nurse Alex Price
Griffin Dunne as Jack Goodman
John Woodvine as Dr. J.S. Hirsch
Lila Kaye as Barmaid
Frank Oz as Mr. Collins
John Landis as Man smashed in window
David Schofield as Dart Player
Brian Glover as Chess Player
Rik Mayall as 2nd Chess Player
Don McKillop as Inspector Villiers
Paul Kember as Sergeant McManus
Michael Carter as Gerald Bringsley
Will Leighton as Joseph
Frank Singuineau as Ted
Sydney Bromley as Alf
Albert Moses as Hospital Porter
Elizabeth Bradley as Woman at Zoo
Alan Ford as Taxi Driver
Christine Hargreaves as Ticket Lady
Linzi Drew as Brenda Bristols

Cameos and bit parts

In the Piccadilly Circus sequence, the man hit by a car and thrown through a store window is Landis himself.

As in most of the director's movies, Frank Oz makes an appearance: first as Mr. Collins from the American embassy in the hospital scene, and later as Miss Piggy in a dream sequence, when David's younger siblings watch a scene from The Muppet Show.

Actors in bit parts who were alreadyâ€"or would becomeâ€"more well-known include the two chess players David and Jack meet in the pub, played by the character actor Brian Glover and then-rising comedian and actor Rik Mayall, star and co-writer of The Young Ones and Bottom. One of the policemen helping to chase and kill the werewolf is John Altman, who would later achieve fame as "Nasty" Nick Cotton in EastEnders. Alan Fordâ€"later to appear in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatchâ€"plays a taxi driver. The policeman in the cinema is played by John Salthouse and the policeman in Trafalgar Square is played by Peter Ellis. Both Salthouse and Ellis appeared in police drama The Bill. David Schofield, known as Mercer from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, plays the dart player at The Slaughtered Lamb and assists Dr. Hirsch in his investigation of David's attack.

The player throwing darts in the match on TV in Agutter's apartment is Rab Smith. Smith's opponent is Cliff Lazarenko.

Production notes

John Landis came up with the story while he worked in Yugoslavia as a production assistant on the film Kelly's Heroes (1970). He and a Yugoslavian member of the crew were driving in the back of a car on location when they came across a group of gypsies. The gypsies appeared to be performing rituals on a man being buried so that he would not "rise from the grave." This made Landis realize that he would never be able to confront the undead and gave him the idea for a film in which a man would go through the same thing.

Landis wrote the first draft of An American Werewolf in London in 1969 and shelved it for over a decade. Two years later, Landis wrote, directed, and starred in his debut film, Schlock, which developed a cult following. Landis developed box-office status in Hollywood through the successful comedy films The Kentucky Fried Movie, National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers before securing $10 million financing for his werewolf film. Financiers believed that Landis' script was too frightening to be a comedy and too funny to be a horror film.

Makeup effects

According to Entertainment Weekly, the real star of this film is the Oscar-winning transformation effects by Rick Baker, which changed the face of horror makeup in the 1980s.

The various prosthetics and robotic body parts used during the film's extended werewolf transformation scenes and on Griffin Dunne when his character returns as a bloody, mangled ghost impressed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences so much that the film won the Outstanding Achievement in Makeup in the category's inaugural year.

During the body casting sessions, the crew danced around David Naughton singing, "I'm a werewolf, you're a werewolf ... wouldn't you like to be a werewolf, too?" in reference to his days as a pitchman for Dr Pepper.

Credits

The end credits, which congratulate Prince Charles and Diana Spencer on their marriage, end with a promo card for Universal Studios urging viewers to "Ask for Babs", a reference to National Lampoon's Animal House.

Locations

The moors were filmed around the Black Mountains in Wales, and 'East Proctor' is in reality the tiny village of Crickadarn, about six miles southeast of Builth Wells off the A479. The â€˜Angel of Deathâ€™ statue was a prop added for the film, but the red phone box is real enough â€" though the Welsh road signs were covered by a fake tree.

Some scenes from the film were shot on Hampstead Heath, Well Walk and Haverstock Hill, London. St. Stephen's Church, Rosslyn Hill is featured. Harry and Judith are killed in Hampstead Heath, behind The Pryors on East Heath Road. Before David kills them, Harry and Judith get out of the taxi on East Heath Road at Well Walk.

The inn shown in the film known as "The Slaughtered Lamb" was actually a cottage located in Crickadarn, and the interior scenes were filmed in the Black Swan, Old Lane, Martyr's Green in Surrey.

Soundtrack

The film's ironically upbeat soundtrack consists of songs which refer to the moon. Bobby Vinton's slow and soothing version of "Blue Moon" plays during the opening credits, Van Morrison's "Moondance" as David and Alex make love for the first time, Creedence Clearwater Revival's Bad Moon Rising as David nears the moment of changing to the werewolf, a soft, bittersweet ballad version of "Blue Moon" by Sam Cooke during the agonizing wolf transformation and The Marcels' doo-wop version of "Blue Moon" over the end credits. Landis failed to get permission to use Cat Stevens' "Moonshadow" and Bob Dylan's "Moonshiner", both artists feeling the film to be inappropriate. On the DVD commentary, David Naughton and Griffin Dunne said they were unsure why Landis did not obtain rights to Warren Zevon's Werewolves of London as they felt the song would have been more appropriate for the film.

Reception

The budget of An American Werewolf in London was reportedly $10 million. The US box office totaled $30,565,292.

The film was also met with critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 89% based on reviews from 44 critics, compiled retrospectively. Kim Newman of Empire magazine praised the film, saying "Carnivorous lunar activities rarely come any more entertaining than this". Tom Huddlestone from Time Out also gave the film a positive review, saying the film was "Not just gory but actually frightening, not just funny but clever".

Halliwell's Film Guide described the film as a "curious but oddly endearing mixture of horror film and spoof, of comedy and shock, with everything grist to its mill including tourist Britain and the wedding of Prince Charles. The special effects are notable, and signalled new developments in this field."

Roger Ebert's review was less favourable; he stated that "An American Werewolf in London seems curiously unfinished, as if director John Landis spent all his energy on spectacular set pieces and then didn't want to bother with things like transitions, character development, or an ending."

The American Film Institute nominated it for ranking on its 100 Laughs list.

Radio adaptation

A radio adaptation of the film was broadcast on BBC Radio 1 in 1997, written and directed by Dirk Maggs and with Jenny Agutter, Brian Glover, and John Woodvine reprising the roles of Alex Price, the chess player (now named George Hackett, and with a more significant role as East Proctor's special constable) and Dr. Hirsch. The roles of David and Jack were played by Eric Meyers and William Dufris. Maggs's script added a back-story that some people in East Proctor are settlers from Eastern Europe and brought lycanthropy with them. The werewolf who bites David is revealed to be related to Hackett, and has escaped from an asylum where he is held under the name "Larry Talbot", the name of the title character in The Wolf Man.

Sequel

The film was followed by a sequel 16 years later, An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), which featured a completely different cast and crew, and was distributed by Disney's Hollywood Pictures. According to An American Werewolf in Paris, David impregnated Alex during their sex scene and soon after the events of An American Werewolf in London, Alex gave birth to Serafine, a main character in the sequel. This is directly stated in a deleted scene of An American Werewolf in Paris and also suggests that the werewolf who bit David was a survivor of the same society of which the antagonists are a part.

Remake

In June 2009, it was announced that Dimension Films was working with producers Sean and Bryan Furst on a remake of the film. This has since been delayed due to other commitments.

Home media

The film was first released on DVD in January 1998 by LIVE Entertainment according to a LIVE DVD Advertisement. Universal released a 20th anniversary "Collector's Edition" DVD on September 18, 2001. The high-definition version of the film was first released on HD DVD by Universal on November 28, 2006. A high-definition Blu-ray Disc and 2-disc standard-definition Region 1 DVD release of the film titled "An American Werewolf in London - Full Moon Edition" was released by Universal on September 15, 2009. The Region 2 DVDs and Blu-ray were released on September 28 and are known as "An American Werewolf in London - Special Edition" No DVD or Blu-ray version at present contains the film's original mono audio track.

The region 2 DVD release does not include a scene that is fully intact on the Region 1 release and all previous region 1 and 2 releases. The scene takes place near the end of the film where the character of David phones his parents from a public telephone box. All but the end of this scene had been cut from the Region 2 release because the distributors felt that use of a public phone box, as opposed to a mobile phone, would date the film.

As of October 2009 Universal said that they were scrapping all existing faulty stock and issuing replacement DVDs. All Blu-ray releases, however, are intact.

References

External links

An American Werewolf in London at the Internet Movie Database
An American Werewolf in London at AllMovie
An American Werewolf in London at Box Office Mojo
An American Werewolf in London at Rotten Tomatoes
An American Werewolf in London at Metacritic
Site dedicated to the film, including extensive location details(defunct)
The London Underground in Films & Television
Movie Script

An American Werewolf in London

Thursday, March 5, 2015