By the early eighties, the werewolf genre had essentially
been dead since Lon Chaney Jr. last wore the fur. There was AIP’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Hammer’s Curse of the Werewolf, and Paul Naschy’s
low-budget wolf cycle, but not much else happening in the way of lycanthropes. The
time must have been right for things that bark and scratch in 1981, though,
because that year saw a small new wave of werewolf pictures.
Without a doubt, John Landis’s An American Werewolf in
London stands out in a pack that also included the more bluntly satirical The Howling and the self-serious Wolfen. Landis’s vengefully imaginative
script, inventive direction, freewheeling sense of humor, and geeky awareness
of monster movies past made for a film that almost seemed too much of a tonal hybrid
to call horror, yet as funny as it often is, An American Werewolf in
London is a true horror movie. It’s just an audaciously original one. And
with its killer cast (David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, and Jenny Agutter’s
magnetic likability ramps up the emotional impact when bad things happen to
them), a neat moon-centric pop soundtrack, and Rick Baker’s
groundbreaking special effects (still the very best werewolf effects on film as
far as I’m concerned), I contend that An
American Werewolf in London is not just the best werewolf movie but also the
best movie of the 1980s.
Yet for a film with such an impressive reputation, An American Werewolf in London has never
been very well served on home video, at least in terms of picture quality. Past
DVD and Blu-ray editions disappointed many fans, which is why it’s such a
massive Halloween treat that Arrow Video is now subjecting the movie to a 4K
transformation. The 2019 restoration finally brings An American Werewolf in London up to date with a sharper, slightly
brighter, more organically filmic image than the previous Universal edition. Colors
once muted vibrantly pop from this decidedly misty film.
New bonus content is plentiful. Mark of the Beast: The Legacy of the Universal Werewolf is a decent
feature-length documentary tracing the studio’s furry freaks from Werewolf of London through American Werewolf, but devoting most of
its energy to the Chaney films. Paul Davis, director of the older doc Beware the Moon, provides a new audio
commentary. A new interview with John Landis finds him discussing the filming
of the porno film-within-a-film and his general fondness for British cinema
that so influenced American Werewolf.
In what may be the most enlightening new bonus, filmmaker Jon Spira (Elstree 1976) discusses the relationship
between Judaism and werewolf mythology and film. We also get close up with a
Nazi zombie mask, Naughton’s iconic red coat, and one of the ingenious
mechanical heads used in the first transformation sequence in a featurette on
the film’s props. There’s also a chat between director Corin Hardy (The Nun) and writer Simon Ward, who geek
out over the feature.
The bonus content from previous editions of the
movie (Beware the Moon, audio
commentary with Naughton and Dunne, outtakes, and various interviews, etc.) has
also been ported over to Arrow’s new edition. Like many Arrow discs, the
packaging is also luxurious. This one includes a 60-page booklet with essays, period reviews, and photos, a set of six lobby cards, a reversible movie poster,
and a reversible sleeve for the case inside the outer box.
