An American Werewolf in London
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An American Werewolf in London is a comedy/horror film released in 1981, written and directed by John Landis. It stars David Naughton, Griffin Dunne and Jenny Agutter. Although there are several straightforward horror elements to the plot, it is also knowingly funny and ironic, an example of a tongue-in-cheek humour.
The film was followed by a 1997 semi-sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris, which featured a completely different cast.
Plot summary
Two American college students, David Kessler (Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Dunne), are backpacking across the Yorkshire moors when they are attacked by a large animal. Jack is killed, but David survives the mauling and is taken to a London hospital. When he wakes up some time later, he does not remember what happened and is told of his friend's death. Things get stranger when he is visited by Jack's reanimated corpse, who explains that they had been attacked by a werewolf, meaning that David himself is now a werewolf. Jack urges him to kill himself before the next full moon, not only because he 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 cursing others when he transforms.Upon his release from the hospital, David moves in with his pretty young nurse, Alex Price (Agutter). He is in Alex's London apartment when the full moon rises and, per Jack's warnings, he is turned into a werewolf. The painful, extended transformation sequence, designed by Rick Baker, is often held by special effects enthusiasts as the greatest special effect of its kind. In the form of a werewolf, David prowls the street and subways of the city, and slaughters a handful of innocent Londoners. When he wakes in the morning, he is naked on the floor of the wolf cage at the zoo, with no memory of his nocturnal lupine adventures. His trip home provides some much-needed comic relief.
David eventually realizes that Jack was right about everything and that he is responsible for the murders of the night before. Despite being in an advanced stage of decay, Jack returns for another visit, this time accompanied by David's victims from the previous night. They all insist that he commit suicide before turning into a werewolf again. This David fails to do and consequently he turns into a werewolf again and goes on another killing spree. Following a chase through London, he is cornered in an alley by the police when Alex arrives to calm him down by telling him that she loves him. Though apparently temporarily softened, he is shot to death when he lunges forward, returning to human form as he dies.
In-jokes and cameos
The film was produced by Lycanthrope Productions, a lycanthrope being a person with the power to turn himself into a wolf.The film's ironically upbeat songs all refer in some way to the moon: Van Morrison's "Moondance", Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising" and particularly "Blue Moon", which plays both during the film's signature agonizing wolf transformation (as a soft, bittersweet ballad by Sam Cooke) and over the end credits (The Marcels' doo-wop version, lying uneasily over the film's ending). Landis failed to get permission to use Cat Stevens's "Moonshadow" and Bob Dylan's "Blue Moon", both artists feeling the film to be inappropriate.
The two chess players among the locals David and Jack meet in the pub "The Slaughtered Lamb" are the well-known British actors Brian Glover and Rik Mayall who would appear again together in the episode "Gas" for the first season of TV comedy Bottom, in 1991. One of the London policemen helping to chase and kill the werewolf is John Altman, who would later achieve fame as "Nasty" Nick Cotton in EastEnders. Landis' signature in-joke can be seen when the werewolf runs riot in Piccadilly Circus, where the porn cinema is playing See You Next Wednesday. In this sequence, the man hit by a car and thrown through a store window, is Landis himself. A poster for See You Next Wednesday can also be seen in the tube station where Gerald Brinsley is attacked by the werewolf.
As in most of the director's movies, Frank Oz makes a cameo: first as the ambassador 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 that was never shown in the United States.
The credits congratulate Prince Charles and Diana Spencer for their wedding and contain the disclaimer "Any resemblance to any persons living, dead, or undead is coincidental". At the end of the credits is a promo card for Universal Studios urging viewers to "Ask for Babs". This is a reference to Landis' 1978 college film National Lampoon's Animal House where the credits list the future occupations of the students, including Babs, who became a tour guide at Universal Studios. This same card appears in Landis' other films.
References to American Werewolf have appeared in many of Landis' other films.
Locations
The opening shots of the moors are actually in and around Hay Bluff, a mountain in Herefordshire, near the Welsh border. The scene where David and Jack get dropped off by the sheep farmer is by the stone circles, the same location where, later in the film, Dr Hirsch stops and looks at the sign for East Proctor. The same road provides the scenery for the next two shots, where David and Jack talk about Debbie Klein.East Proctor is a small hamlet not far from Hay Bluff called Crickadarn. It is featured from the shot where David and Jack walk down a hill towards East Proctor. Because it is so small, all of Crickadarn features in the film, in the scenes where David and Jack walk to the Slaughtered Lamb (actually a house) and later when the Doctor pays a visit. The church featured in the scene between Dr Hirsch and the local is next to the "Slaughtered Lamb".
The interior of the Slaughtered Lamb is the Black Swan pub at Effingham, Surrey, near London.
Alex's flat is at Redcliffe Square, South Kensington, London, close to Earls Court tube station.
External links
- [}}}] at Rotten Tomatoes
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