American Werewolf in London [VHS]

I recieved this DVD last weekend and watched it right away. I have not seen this film for years and had forgotten how good it is. I love the englishness of it, David is brilliant and funny and sad as he tries to understand what is happening to him. The music is great and the transformation from man to wolf still looks good. The picture was a little grainy but I did not mind this. It added to the sense of nostalgia! John Landis is a genius!!

David Kessler and his best friend Jack Goodman are on summer vacation from college and decide to backpack in Europe, making a start in the cold and damp moors of Northern England; in the middle of what seems like nowhere they stumble upon a tiny village and a pub known as The Slaughtered Lamb where some very peculiar and somewhat aggitated locals are less than enthusiastic about their company. Before they leave, they're warned to "beware the moon" and "keep to the road", both notes of advice they unfortunately ignore.

Soon, a fierce howling begins to pitch the night, and David and his friend Jack are attacked savagely by some kind of wild beast roaming the moors; David awakens in a hospital in London to discover his friend has died from the attack, and he has been there some time. David is suddenly plagued with frightning and vivid dreams; his friend Jack visits him in a decomposing and bloody state telling him that they were attacked by a werewolf, and that David must "break the curse" he was infected with by the attack.

At first, he dismisses this as hallucations, even when his dreams are becoming even more violent as some carnal entity inside struggles to make itself known.

The film itself is considered today to be THE epitome of the werewolf movie genre. An American Werewolf in London paved the way for makeup and special effects in modern horror as we know it; John Landis' gutsy use of bright lighting and lack of cutaway combined with Rick Baker's real-time physical effects and state-of-the-art prosthetic makeup made this film revolutionary for the horror genre so much that the Academy Awards began to celebrate special effects and makeup. Even seeing the magic of digital effects and special effects in modern movies, I still can't help but be impressed when watching the full transformation scene.

While the film is gory and somewhat frightening (although somewhat tame by today's standards), Landis used a somewhat "Hitchcockian" approach to direction of the movie, giving it some "laugh out loud" moments in black comedic style to ease the audience in before the real suspense or terror is due to come along - tactics that are still widely used today by horror directors (Sam Raimi being a good example). While not strictly a comedy in a sense, the movie has a good entertainment value. A MUST for all werewolf fans.

This film is one of those that everybody likes. It's funny, it's scary, it's got special effects that were way ahead of its time, and it's British. The two stars may be American, but everybody else in the film is English, it is all filmed in England, and it feels English. John Landis included some very un-American ploys in the making of this movie - for instance, the music includes three different versions of Blue Moon, plus Bad Moon Rising and Moondance. It's all set in current time (well, 1980), unlike the Hammer Horror and Lon Chaney werewolf films that people were used to. The hero ends up running around London zoo, naked, after waking up in the wolf's cage the morning after a night of rampage and violence. And that's another point - the hero is the bad guy. He's the werewolf in the story, but you're on his side. Nobody is on Freddy Krueger's side, or Michael Myer's side, in the American horror films that have been released over the last 20 years.
This is one of those films where you notice something different each time you watch. Be it Rik Mayall playing chess with Brian Glover in "The Slaughtered Lamb", the further decomposition of Jack each time he comes back to visit David, the inclusion of the Muppet Show in one of David's most horrendous dreams (plus Frank Oz, the voice of Miss Piggy and Fozzy Bear, as the man from the American Embassy), the really bad acting on the porno movie that's playing in Piccadily circus, the fact that Landis plays one of the London crowd who gets run over when the werewolf escapes from the cinema at the end, the offer of congratulations to Charles and Diana on the announcement of their engagement that rolls past as the end credits roll.
This 21st anniversary release contains a second disc showing how the movie was made, how the special effects were created, trailers, and loads more besides. And the commentary by the two lead actors as the movie is playing reveals just how much in awe of Jenny Agutter they were.