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.
