The MoFo Movie Club Discussion: An American Werewolf in London

It's been a long time since I've seen this one. 20 years ago or so I had it on VHS and watched it nearly every weekend. I eventually tired of it and never watched it again though this thread may serve as impetus to do just that.

One thing I was fascinated by were the movie theater scenes where, in each one, Jack was in a further state of decomposition. I thought that an interesting way to underscore the idea that there was a clock ticking on David before his next change(s).

I'll watch it again and come back... lots of cobwebs right now.

Thanks to this one, I'll always think of "Bad Moon Rising" as a song about werewolves.

I enjoy Griffin Dunn as the comic relief. (He's also great in the often-dismissed Who's that Girl?)
I remember people talking at the time about how amazing the Rick Baker transformation effects were, especially compared to the older time-lapse effects of the classics. I think they do hold up compared to modern (but not necessarily better) CGI. Of course, he re-did the same thing for Thriller, which became even more iconic than Werewolf. This film always makes me think of Thriller, but Thriller doesn't make me think of this movie. But that's just me.

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I'm watching it tonight. Will chime in tomorrow!

Oh, no contest--definitely sexy! Except maybe for those weirdos into s&m who want love to hurt, but I don't play that game.

Must be yours--I've never heard of it.

Every song has the word moon in it.....coincidence?

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You talk like a textbook my friend. I tell ya it's a turn on. Ruff!!!

But certainly anyone can see the sexuality in vampire films. Ghoulish men looming over supine beauties. C'mon it doesn't get any hotter. Whether it's subversive like Kinski's Nosferatu or blatantly obvious like Langella's Dracula the blood sucking vamp is always a kind of a turn on.

The new werewolf movie with Benicio Del Toro definitely has an obvious sexual and romantic plot. Love saves his immortal soul.

I haven't seen An American Werewolf in London in years but I remember it as a solid among horror movies. That dream sequence is nerve wracking and I always like my horror laced with humor whether intentional or not.

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Thinking about this a little more, I like how it ties into my previous point about the film being a tragedy and how basically everybody loses. You say that David starts "getting lucky" after he's attacked by a monster and imagines himself turning into one. He does see himself hunting as a wolf before he sees himself as a monster in bed in the forest. Jack comes back before David actually gets any from Alex. I'm using these flippant terms for love now because at this point in the movie you don't realize that it's a tragic love story. Jack wants him to kill himself before he leaves the hospital. Later, Jack turns up in Alex's flat after David and Alex have made love, and Jack again wants David to sever the wolf's bloodline. David cannot accept that he's actually going to become a bloodthirsty werewolf who will repeatedly kill to satiate his bloodlust. After all, he only eats once a month as a werewolf as a rule.

I suppose Jack could be jealous that his friend now has a steady while he's undead and incapable of ever getting anymore. He's not having a nice time, at least that's what Jack claims. As the film progresses, it becomes more and more clear that David and Alex love each other. In fact, David eventually realizes that he's going to die. He does phone home to say goodbye to his family although he only gets to talk to his little sister. At least, his family didn't really die from the Nazi ghouls. David also tells Alex that he believes that a werewolf could only be killed by someone who loves him, referring back to Universal Studio's 1941 The Wolf Man. It's no coincidence that Alex is there at the end, in the alley, almost inviting David to "attack" her so that he will be shot. Alex is obviously crying, and if you look close enough, that horrible monster of a werewolf is crying too.

Darn, much of that last paragraph is due to the "intervention" of David's doctor. What do you think about his character? He seems very important to me. I love this flick.

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I just rewatched it and the carnage at Piccadilly Circus was hilarious.

I've watched this one a couple of days ago and I've got some mixed feelings.

I liked the overall atmosphere of the film, but I think the first 15 minutes are the best of the entire film. There's this kind of eerie atmosphere to the moors and that village where David and Jack end up. When they're finally attacked by the werewolf, that was a definite scare for me.

The following storyline (Jack being an undead until David, who is now a werewolf, kills himself) that emerged I thought was ok. I didn't think it was anything special, but enough to keep me interested. When he finally transforms into a werewolf, I thought the transformation was impressive, especially considering the time when this film was made.

I liked the tone of the horror scenes, i.e. when David is actually the werewolf. They didn't scare me, but I really liked how they were build up, rather suggesting the presence of the wolf than actually showing it, except on a few occassions and even then, only for a brief moment. The suggestion of something being there is always scarier than actually showing it.

I'm also a fan of the subtle humor. The comical moments didn't crack me up, but I did appreciate them thoroughly. I liked how Jack described his funeral; David snatching a kid's balloons and that inspector and his strange assistant.

So far the things I liked. What I did not like is the relationship between Alex and David and how that was built up. It felt very forced to me. David just kisses her and the next thing you know Alex asks him if he has a place to stay in London. Come on, that's just so forced and unnatural that it really bothered me.

Also, I'm confused as to what the Nazi ghouls had to add to the story. Did I miss something there? To me, it seems like that scene doesn't add anything to the story and is thus superfluous.

Finally, I have to add that I was a bit dissapointed as to the scare factor of the film. I only had 2 scare moments, namely when the wolf first attacks Jack and David and when the Nazi ghouls attack David and his family. Though I have to add that this dissapointment was compensated by the way in which the later horror scenes were built up. Like I said, although they didn't scare me, I thought they were very well set up.

I rate this one .

@ Mark: I don't think Alex invited David to attack her in that final scene. She screamed that she could help him if he let her. Those policemen would've shot the wolf anyway, whether Alex intervened or not. Also, unlike you, I couldn't read any emotion on the werewolf's face, except anger (but its face always looked like that, so...). I think that at that point, David was just an animal that couldn't think anymore. Much like a predator, he just saw food instead of a human being.

I have a couple of comments. The first few times I watched the film, it never really occurred to me that the relationship between David and Alex was so important or so genuine. I just figured it was an excuse to have a good sex scene in the flick. But now that I've seen it over 20 times and I notice all the looks the two characters/actors give each other, I really do find it a serious, loving relationship. Maybe it had to be caused by a traumatic experience and maybe they had to "meet cute" in the hospital, but I find nothing forced and unnatural about it. At the end, Alex does go and say that she can help him, but at that point, it basically means that she can help put him out of his misery. It's true that he would have been shot anyway, but it was significant for her to be present at the death of the werewolf and her love David.

Secondly, concerning the Nazis. These are two college-age Jewish boys who are probably visiting their families' European homeland. Even if they never actually make it to the continent, they have certainly heard horror stories about the Holocaust and have probably even wondered what they might encounter concerning it. When he's attacked by a strange, powerful monster, I can see David having nightmares connected to the Holocaust concerning it. The Nazis kill his entire family and make him watch. It's only then that they slice his throat. At this point, he wakes up and Alex tells him that she has something to help him. What happens next basically ties Alex to his family in David's mind. Maybe someone will find it to make more sense if it was in a film called An American Werewolf in Munich, but the original The Wolf Man takes place in Wales. I just find it to be a personalized nightmare relating to what the characters may have subconsciously feared about "vacationing" in the land of the Holocaust and tying it into their actual frightful encounter.

As always very insightful stuff, Mark. Your explanation about the Nazi ghouls is definitely plausible for me. I've gotta get to school now, but I'll try and come up with some more points of discussion for tonight or tomorrow.

mark's explanation of the dreams makes sense but i also like to view them as an irrational and over-the-top nonsequitur to surprise or jar the audience, kind of like the guy who walks in just to interrupt the porn-within-a-film.

has anyone else mentioned the fact that An American Werewolf in London employs a dream within a dream within a film structure? I just always found that amusing as well.

I think the romantic and horror passages used to do more for me than they did the last time I saw it, not sure why though, and I may be mis-remembering.

About the doctor...

I like how he tried to rationalize what happened to David. When Dr. Hirsch first sees David he explains to him how lucky he was to have made it out alive. Hirsch claims David was attacked by a madman with the strength of 10. A bit later, that weird assitant of the inspector made a comment about the possibility that David and Jack were in fact attacked by some kind of animal, saying that two strong boys would normally be able to defend themselves against one man. He said this because the inspector said that David and Jack were attacked by a man and that it was going to be reported that way.

Now, the thing is, WHY didn't Dr. Hirsch comment on what the sergeant said? He said so himself that David and Jack were attacked by a madman with the strength of 10 men. So, if he had said this, the sergeant's argument would've be nullified.

Of course, one can now speculate why Dr. Hirsch didn't mention this. I personally have no clue. It just strked me as odd that he mentioned it to David, but didn't bring it up as an argument against what the sergeant said.

Even after Dr. Hirsch visited the Slaughtered Lamb pub and after he read about the first killings in London (due to David's first transformation), he kept on believing David was suffering from some neuro-psychotic trauma following his attack which led him to believe that he was a werewolf at full moon.

He then told this to Alex. When he read about the killings, he rang Alex and told her to bring David to him. I think that at that point, he was still convinced that he could help David. And as a result, I think Alex also believed that Dr. Hirsch could help him. Perhaps this is why she said to David in the alley at Piccadilly that she could help him. Perhaps she meant that Dr. Hirsch could help him...

What's your take on this, guys?

The doctor is basically just quoting the "eyewitness" accounts and the police report when he says that they were attacked by a strong madman. That's what the doctor has to go on, and he doesn't see any reason for people to lie. The doctor does seem to wonder how David's wounds could have been cleaned and dressed so quickly at the scene though. Just by looking at the huge rip from a giant claw on David's chest would make someone at least consider that he had been attacked by an animal, but since the attacker was shot and is a dead human, that, along with the witnesses, is supposed to rule out David's "memory" that he was attacked by something resembling a wolf.

I would think that a blood test might bring up some strange results if someone was bitten by a "werewolf" but I'm not sure how you go about testing for something like this since werewolves are not believed to exist, at least not in most communities. After he visits there, Dr. Hirsch does seem convinced that East Proctor is populated by people who believe in things such as werewolves and that there is a cover-up involving the town and the boys. He also fears for David. I think that Dr. Hirsch is trying to help David but he's a little too far behind the power curve because he doesn't seem to take what he says seriously until it's too late (too close to the full moon).

Then again, most of the people in London will not believe there was a werewolf terrorizing the city unless they were eyewitnesses, and even then, when they see David's dead body at the end, they may decide not to believe what their own eyes saw previously. It will probably be reported that what seemed to be an animal was causing mayhem and now we have a naked dead man, shot by the police. I'd like to see how the police report reads in this case, but at least we know that Inspector Villiers won't be filing it since his head is still bouncing around Piccadilly Circus.

Yeah, unlike werewolves and zombies, there is a romantic element to vampires. I myself have nibbled on many ladies' necks over the years. Of course, a "real" vampire likely would look more like Nosferatu, a gruesome dead thing with the odor of the grave, rather than the well-groomed and handsome Langella.

Brings to mind a funny film I recently saw on TV, I Sell the Dead (or something like that] about the adventures of a young grave robber in Edwardian England. Unfortunately, he and his partner don't know much about the burial of vampires or else they wouldn't have dug up the grave in the middle of a remote crossroads where they find a corpse in the early stages of rot with a stake in its heart. They're in for a big surprise when they pull out the stake in an effort to tidy up the body for sale. In a few harrowing but funny trials-by-error, they finally figure out that the body is dead when the stake is in place, but annimated (I wouldn't say "alive") when it's removed. Opens up a whole new line of trade with them digging up zombies and other undead including a grey space alien.

A hundred years ago when I was a little boy prone to nightmares after watching Wolfman and Dracula films, I rationalized my fears away by reminding myself that I had never ever seen anything in the newspapers about someone being even attacked much less killed by a vampire or a werewolf. Therefore, werewolves and vampires and other monsters couldn't be real and couldn't be hunting down folks or else such incidents would be reported in newspapers that wrote up even "misdemeanor" murders. So I quit believing in those things and the nightmares went away.

The doctor and police in the film are motivated in the same way--no one has ever reported a werewolf or a vampire, so they're not going to the first and be ridculed right out of their jobs. Denial of the cause of deaths in horror movies is based on the real life fact no one believes in such things. Folks are more likely to believe in ghosts and spacemen or Bigfoot because they sometimes read accounts of people who say they saw such things. But no one ever claims they've been nibbled on by a vampire or chased by a werewolf. It would be more likely that it was a vicious dog such as Sherlock Holmes found in the Hound of the Baskervilles, or some human using a weapon so it looks like the victim has been clawed to death. Even if the movie facts point to a possible monster, people just don't believe in those things--unless it was supposed to be Bigfoot or Mothman or that thing down in Mexico that eats goats.

Instead of claiming he was attacked by some wolf-like animal, if the kid had said he was attacked by Bigfoot, the local papers would have printed the story, the wire services would have picked it up, and the next day they would have been hip-deep in believers from around the world searching the area and positioning cameras and sound devices to help track down the creature. But no one ever goes out hunting a werewolf or a vampire.

Not only is this a great flick, but the soundtrack is awesome! Still love catching this werewolf flick!

Awesome make-up effects for their time! Top Notch!

I thoroughly enjoyed this one and I would say as far as horror goes this was done very well. I don't think it was made to be scary as much as it was made to be fun. But who says you can't do both? Any of the parts when they are in the country I think are a bit spooky since you really do get the impression that they are isolated but in the city where there are millions of people around I just can't get into the mode. Btw, the reason they don't make movies like this anymore is people are satisfied with whatever drivel is produced. If viewers would raise the bar a little and stop endorsing bad writing, acting, directing, etc., I bet they would start "making them like they used to". Another fun but not so scary werewolf movie was Silver Bullet.