It was considered newsworthy when Zach Cregger revealed he’d cut jokes from Resident Evil after test screenings, even though the film’s final version isn’t exactly lacking for gags. Horror and comedy are natural bedfellows, and their relationship has become so committed that it’s unusual to see horror in theaters without at least a couple of lighter moments easing the tension.
Horror has always been ripe for parody; Frankenstein became the subject of Victorian burlesque shows decades before the monster famously met Abbott and Costello, and we’ve been awash in winking, self-referential horror since Scream arrived in 1996. But Cregger’s school of gory tension and ridiculous relief traces back to the 1980s, when horror was getting more extreme and more ridiculous. Evil Dead is the quintessential example, but An American Werewolf in London was a landmark too, and it just received a 45th-anniversary 4K UHD Blu-ray release.
How Was An American Werewolf in London Received Upon Release?
With some confusion over its tone. The movie was directed by John Landis, who was known for comedies like Animal House and The Blues Brothers, and critics weren’t quite sure how much they were supposed to be laughing. Roger Ebert, for example, wrote, “Landis never seems very sure whether he’s making a comedy or a horror film, so he winds up with genuinely funny moments acting as counterpoint to the gruesome undead.” It’s not that Ebert was unfamiliar with the idea of horror-comedy — his next sentence lauds Bride of Frankenstein — but in his view, “the laughs and the blood coexist very uneasily in this film.” Other critics expressed similar bafflement, although Ebert and everyone else had effusive praise for the film’s special effects.
Ebert wasn’t wrong, but in decades of retrospective reviews, critics increasingly came to see that tension as the point. The gags distract you from the gore; the gore jolts you out of comedic complacency. Writing for RogerEbert.com 40 years after the site’s namesake first weighed in, Peter Sobczynski called the movie “a masterful negotiation of the horror and comedy genres.” As Sobczynski’s lengthy write-up observes, older horror-comedies like Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein were really just comedies with some horror trappings. Sobczynski notes that unlike The Howling, which also came out in 1981 and softened its bloodshed with some humor, Landis makes his horror brutal and his comedy funny. And in rarely allowing them to meet, he created a film that’s become a cult classic.
Another fictional character’s attempt to backpack across Europe ends in tragedy.
Why Is An American Werewolf in London Worth Watching Today?
Because it’s a skeleton key to modern horror, and because, if you’ve already forgotten how the last paragraph ended, it’s a cult classic. The story is simple to the point of cliché: grad students David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) are backpacking across rural England, where the creepy regulars of a creepy pub warn them to stay on the road during the full moon. They fail to do so, and are attacked by a monster that murders Jack and wounds David. As David recovers in hospital, an undead Jack appears to give him the skinny: he was bitten by a werewolf, and he’ll become one himself at the next full moon unless he does the honorable thing and takes his own life.
David instead tries to forget the whole affair and start a romance with his nurse (Jenny Agutter), leading to something like a pitch-black sitcom where a young dilettante's life is interrupted by nasty dreams and his increasingly putrescent bestie. By the time David creates his own victims, and those rotting victims rally to harangue him in the porno theatre where he’s hiding out, any fear of cliché will be long gone.
Not every tonal shift works, and viewers will forever be split on the movie’s abrupt, brutal ending. But the special effects remain impressive (Rick Baker’s work earned him the first Oscar for Best Makeup), and watching An American Werewolf in London will help you understand how we ended up with films like Resident Evil and Shaun of the Dead. Besides, it’s October, and you might as well watch a classic instead of another Insidious sequel no one asked for.
During a full moon, of course.
What New Features Does The American Werewolf in London 4K Blu-ray Have?
The big highlight here is the 4K restoration and Dolby Atmos soundtrack, if you have the setup to take advantage of them. The 4K Blu-ray is out now, with a SteelBook release dropping on October 20. Both include over three hours of legacy special features, from making-of segments to outtakes. Here’s the full slate:
- Audio Commentary by cast members Naughton and Griffin Dune
- Beware the Moon - Paul Davis’ acclaimed, feature-length exploration of Landis’ film which boasts extensive cast and crew interviews
- I Walked with a Werewolf - An archival interview with Rick Baker about Universal horror and its legacy of Wolf Man films
- Making An American Werewolf in London
- An Interview with John Landis
- Make Up Artist Rick Baker on An American Werewolf in London
- Casting of the Hand - Archival footage from Rick Baker’s workshop showing the casting of David Naughton’s hand
- Outtakes
- Storyboards
- Photograph Montage
- Monster by Moonlight! The Immortal Saga of The Wolf Man - Hosted by John Landis
