An American Werewolf in London…Does it Hold Up?

For most fans of the werewolf subgenre of horror films, if you asked them “What’s the best werewolf movie ever made?” they would shoot back with one of two answers: “The Howling” or “An American Werewolf in London”.

Now, the latter of those two is highly regarded in werewolf movies, more so, actually than “The Howling”.  This, from what I can tell, is because the character of David in AWiL is more relatable than the protagonists of “The Howling.”

I was thinking about this the other day, as friends of mine have set up a Google + page that is devoted to werewolves, along with other fantasy creatures, and I was wondering to myself “Does An American Werewolf in London still hold up today?”

Given that the film came out in 1981 and is likely older than many of those reading this blog, I don’t think I need to worry about spoiling the film for anyone, however, in the spirit of fair play, please take a moment to view the film before you continue if you haven’t seen it yet.  I’ll wait.

Done?  Good.

So our film opens with David and Jack, best friends, who are back packing through the English country side and stopping off in a pub called the “Slaughtered Lamb” because it is the only establishment within walking distance.  Why else would you stop at a place called the Slaughtered Lamb unless it was literally the only place around?  They ask about some quasi-satanic art deco pieces in the pub and are promptly met with hostility.  Because if someone asks you about a protective sigil that wards off an actual mythical beast made flesh you should immediately treat them like an asshole and make them leave the only place they would be safe for the next twelve hours.  How dare they ask questions about stuff they know nothing about?

Well, treated like assholes, Jack and David decide to leave, despite the land lady asking the patrons to be less dickish and let them stay the night.  But no, they are kicked to the curb and told only “Stick to the roads, stay away from the moors.”

Because that’s easy when there is no physical difference between the two in the fog and dark.
Sure enough they find themselves wan

dering the dark moors in the fog and, if you read the title of the movie you went to see, you know what comes next.  Out of the night comes a monster that rips Jack apart and bites the ever-loving crap out of David.  Well not everyone in the pub is a dick because some of them come out and drop the monster with a few well-placed bullets.  I’m going to loop back around to this in a little bit because there is a BIG damn question here.

Three weeks later David wakes up and has only fuzzy memories of what happened, insisting that he was attacked by a large dog or wolf, which is true from his perspective.  Then Jack comes back, looking a little more…shredded than he used to. 

Ghost Jack explains that he’s “undead” (which…he’s not.  He’s a ghost.  Only David can see him, he can’t interact with anyone or anything…he’s a ghost) cursed to exist unless David dies because he’s carrying “the bloodline of the werewolf” what killed him.  Ghost Jack explains that if David doesn’t kill himself before the next full moon he’s going to turn into a werewolf and mindlessly kill people.  David passes this off as a hallucination…which from his perspective makes total sense.

While David’s doctor checks out “The Slaughtered Lamb” and tries to validate this “big dog” story, he’s stonewalled by the pub goers except one guy who actively tires to tell him about the werewolf and David’s horrific future, but is cut off because the notion of a transforming blood born ailment shouldn’t be general knowledge.

David puts the moves on, and succeeds in getting in with a pretty nurse who lets him crash at her place after he’s released from the hospital.  Is that a thing that happens?  Was it just the late 70’s to early 80’s where you could take home someone you knew for a handful of days?  Anyway, Ghost Jack comes back, looking deader than ever, and continues the warnings.  David brushes off the ghost and goes on with his life while Alex (said nurse) goes to work.

What comes next is probably the most famous scene of the whole damn movie.  This has been considered the benchmark of werewolf effects for the last 30+ years and has been done and re-done so many times.  David painfully transforms into a werewolf and frankly whether you watch the movie proper or not, go to YouTube and check out the transformation sequence because damn is it intense.

This results in the deaths of six people, and David waking up naked in wolf enclosure.  David is now convinced of his curse and does start to try and kill himself, but chickens out.  He’s then lured into an adult theatre (sure, he was “lured” there) by Ghost Jack who, holy cow he is decomposing fast.  Anyway, Ghost Jack and now the ghosts of his victims all try to convince him he needs to die, but nobody owns a watch and David transforms again, this time unleashing furry fury into a densely populated area and even biting the head off the detective from earlier in the film in the process.  He’s then riddled with bullets and dies after Alex briefly calms him because Beauty and the Beast is a thing.  We end the picture on a shot of David’s naked and bloodied body.

And that’s it.  No end credits scene, not stingers, nothing…just dead werewolf man.  Nobody got “bitten but survived”.  This was intended to be a standalone film, but because it was so popular and a landmark in the genre, it did get a spiritual sequel by way of “An American Werewolf in Paris” in 1997 which was just garbage.

So after 30 odd years, how does the film hold up?  Well, the transformation sequence is what almost everyone remembers from the film and, it stands to reason.  It was a really well done, visually arresting sequence.  We’d never seen anything like it before and frankly we haven’t seen anything that matches it since then, so there is a lot of nostalgia tied into the movie based entirely on this one sequence.  The film does have more than its fair share of plot holes, though.

Let’s start back at the Slaughtered Lamb” where we find out that 1) Werewolves are a thing in this universe that people know about.  2) There are apparently ways to ward them off.  3) They are no harder to kill than say a particularly large dog.  They don’t use any special bullets to kill it, just regular old ammunition.  This is established because, at first I thought they went after the first werewolf with silver rounds, but at the climax of the film police gun down David-wolf with regular ammunition.  So these folks who were living in fear of this monster for quite some time could have just busted out with their guns earlier and ended the whole cycle before David and Jack blundered into their pub.  Basically the whole start of the movie hinges on the fact that these pub goers are lazy as hell.

Let’s talk about poor old Jack on this one.  He explicitly states that he has to walk the earth until the werewolf’s bloodline is ended.  Okay, but if that bloodline is carried from the previous werewolf into David, shouldn’t David be getting visits from the left over victims of the first werewolf?  The curse, as Jack explains it, hinges on the bloodline being active.  Where are the previous ghosts?  Did they rot away?  Was Jack the one person the previous werewolf killed?  My peeve here is that the curse on Jack is actually woefully under-defined.

But those are nit-picks, and they don’t make it a good or bad movie.  As I was writing this review I wanted to actually kind of pull this movie apart.  I recalled that the final monster effects didn’t match up to the quality of the original transformation effects, or that the look of the final monster didn’t mesh with the elements we saw during said transformation.  I remembered a lot of black hair during the transformation and the final beast being mostly gray.  I also remember that there wasn’t a lot of expression in the monster’s face and that his movements looked a lot like a guy in a suit.

Then I had to remember that 1) Memory is never perfect and 2) this was 1981.  The latter allowed me to cut some slack on say the guy in the suit or the constant rage face and stone still lips, but the former really came into play because as I researched I found that there was a lot more gray hair during the end of the transformation than I remembered.  Elements of the transformation did in fact match up to the final monster and while the effects weren’t perfect, they were far better than they had any right to be.

So…does it hold up?  Yeah, as well as any 80’s era movie holds up.  Not as good as some, but better than most.  If you haven’t seen it, I’d highly recommend checking it out.  It adds some stuff to the werewolf mythos and doesn’t play strictly by old movie rules (silver bullets were strictly a movie creation, never in old lore).

Should you check out the sequel?  Absolutely not, it’s terrible and not in a so-bad-its-good way.

Thanks for reading