‘Beware the moon, lads...’
As someone who watches hundreds of films a year, I inevitably imbibe a fair amount of slop. I watch even more movies that are pleasant enough but forgettable. Occasionally, something comes along that reminds me why I feel in love with cinema so much in the first place. I saw An American Werewolf in London once as a kid, but as I sat down at Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema to catch a late night viewing of John Landis’ classic horror/comedy screened as part of their annual Celluloid Screams festival, I wasn’t expecting a bona fide horror masterpiece, but that is undoubtedly what I got…
David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne), a pair of American college students backpacking across Europe, find themselves alone on the Yorkshire Moors one fateful night following an odd experience in a remote and insular pub. After being attacked by a werewolf, David starts to… change. The wonderful supporting cast boasts Jenny Agutter as a sympathetic nurse, John Woodvine as her attending doctor and Brian Glover as an uncompromising Yorkshire drinker.
I knew from the moment that David and Jack arrived at the Slaughtered Lamb pub on the Yorkshire Moors (actually a cottage in the Welsh village of Crickadarn) that I was going to love this movie. Landis was, by all accounts, an absolutely terrible person, but credit has to be given here to his depiction of a rural English pub. He captures the juxtaposition of distrust and reluctant hospitality beautifully, and Naughton and Dunne, both unknowns at the time, sell their fish-out-of-water curiosity perfectly.
This is an example of several different elements coming together to create something perfect, not only the stacked cast and Landis’ assured direction, but also an incredible lycanthrope themed soundtrack, Rick Baker’s impossibly ingenious special effects (the transformation scene here is rightly lauded as one of the best ever), and Landis’ sparkling script (that somehow succeeds in making a horror/comedy that is both darkly terrifying and genuinely hilarious) combine to produce not just the greatest werewolf film bar none (it’s not even close), but one of the best horror films ever made generally.
An American Werewolf in London perhaps doesn’t get the flowers it deserves because of Landis’ reputation and because of the comedic elements of the film, but make no mistake, this one is a stone cold classic.
