An American Werewolf in London ***** (1981, David Naughton, Jenny Agutter, Griffin Dunne) – Classic Movie Review 2518

Writer-director John Landis dazzlingly mixes full-out humour with full-on horror for this brilliant Oscar-winning 1981 classic tale of two naive young American college student tourists (David Naughton and Griffin Dunne) back-pack hiking in northern England on a walking tour of Britain.

They make the mistake of stopping off at the peculiar Slaughtered Lamb pub, where they encounter a bunch of weird locals (barmaid Lila Kaye, chess players Brian Glover and Rik Mayall, and dart players David Schofield and Sean Baker). But then they find far, far more than they bargain for on the misty Yorkshire moors when they make the worse mistake of  straying from the path.

[Spoiler alert] Given the film’s title, it’s hardly a spoiler to say that they are then attacked by a werewolf that none of the locals admits exists. But it is a spoiler that  one of the students is mauled and the werewolf is killed, reverting to its human form, and the mauled student begins to have nightmares… There’s a bad moon rising!

Landis avoids making a jokey horror spoof and instead comes up with something far more attractive – an homage to all the werewolf movies of old – that boldly switches between being grisly and funny, managing both things effortlessly.

Considered daring and boundary-pushing in its time, with gore, swearing and nudity, it was X rated in the cinema and had an 18 certificate, though that is 15 now after a re-rating in 2009.

There’s a charming lead performance by Naughton, though Dunne unfortunately has less to do, plus a good role for Jenny Agutter as Alex Price, the nurse who befriends him and, yes, even a fleeting appearance by the late British comic Rik Mayall (as second chess player), who died of a heart attack on June 9 2014, aged 56.

Landis’s screenplay and direction are outstandingly sharp and witty, and we award top marks to movie FX legend Rick Baker’s Oscar-winning man-to-wolf transformation Best Makeup effects. Some films you just want to see over and over again, and this is one of them.

Follow-up, but not a sequel: An American Werewolf in Paris (1997). A remake is in development.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2518

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