An American Werewolf in London Rating: Release Date: 02 September, 2003 Retail Price: $9.99 OUR Price: $9.99 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: David Naughton Jenny Agutter Joe Don Baker Frank Oz Complete Cast (11 total)

An American Werewolf in London Reviews

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Lycanthropy; Landis Style!
The Werewolf sub-genre is one that has suffered over the years from poverty row production values and destructive self mockery. Like the Zombie, the Werewolf is the poor relation to the endless tales of vampirism and Frankenstein. This is mainly due to a lack of generic tradition in literature and art, but Hollywood has done little to redress the balance over the years. However for a short time in the early 1980's the Werewolf enjoyed the fullest of moons with both Joe Dante's HOWLING and John Landis' AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON thrilling audiences and winning important critical notices. Landis had scored with ANIMAL HOUSE and THE BLUES BROTHERS, and deftly combines the ribald humour of those films with all the horror clichés that had undone Universal's output in the 1940's. Importantly Landis's humour is not mocking, instead he gives us an affectionate parody, overflowing with enthusiasm. He is also very aware of the conventions and limitations of the genre itself. The scares and violence come in abundance as does the nonsensical narrative twists. England is both beautiful and eerie, a space in which the age old battle between science and superstition continues to be played out. The film works because of its lack of originality, through its post-modern appropriation of Universal's themes and iconography we have an early example of a horror homage. Wonderful special make up effects by Rick Baker however firmly anchors the film in modern horror seas. Full of excellent British character actors, the nostalgia of the film is pitched perfectly and represents the high watermark of Hollywood horror films for the 1980's.

Universal's 2 disc DVD is misleading. The supplementary features amount to little more than 45 minutes, and the DVD could have easily been presented on a single disc.

Still holds up
This movie was originally lauded for Rick Baker's special effects makeup. Although when compared directly to today's CGI it is klunky, the transformation scene is nonetheless startling.

But this movie is about more than special effects. It is directed and edited in a way that keeps you off-balance. You find yourself laughing at talking, decaying corpses. You find yourself on the edge of your seat while following a businessman through the narrow passages of the London tube. You find yourself pulling for a protagonist who ultimately can only have one solution to his problem.

It is among my favorite of the monster genre.

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