Disc:

Product Description: Re-discover one of the most gripping horror films of all-time with the cult classic An American Werewolf in London. Blending the macabre with a wicked sense of humor, director John Landis (National Lampoon’s Animal House) delivers a contemporary take on the classic werewolf tale in this story of two American tourists who, while traveling in London, find their lives changed forever when a viscious wolf attacks them during a full moon. Featuring groundbreaking, Academy Award-winning make-up by Rick Baker (The Wolfman), this digitally remastered Full Moon Edition also includes the new feature-length documentary Beware the Moon.

Comment:

The Movie: 6
Arggghh -The Ugly American Strikes Again! Not only does writer/director John Landis nail the thoughtless, self-centered American abroad, but eviscerates him in the process – though this may not have been foremost on his mind at the time. David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) are backpacking across the Yorkshire moors, against all the usual local admonishments not to – at least not this night when the full moon is nigh. They are determined to make dog food of themselves. Aye, attacked they are by a huge, vicious wolflike creature that pretty much leaves poor Jack a bloody mess and David rescued by the locals, but not before he's sliced up a bit.

He wakes up three weeks later in a London hospital, only to learn that the hospital staff and the police are under the impression that David was attacked by an escaped lunatic – and they have the corpse to prove it. Jack, on the other hand, is re-animated (In one of his best turns, here or anywhere else, Landis has Jack reappear throughout the movie in increasing states of disrepair), visible only to David, and warns him of really has happened and what will happen to David at the next full moon. Jack urges suicide (minus the silver bullet) to avoid further bloodshed. Jack is unconvinced – and who would be! Nurse Price (Jenny Agutter) takes quite a shine to this sad case for a man and takes him home with her for further convalescence. This does not bode well.

Landis alternates humor, gruesome effects and a little romance to create quite a goulash of gore, mayhem, and comedy. Naughton is believable as the quintessential foolhardy American, if not as Jenny Agutter's lover. (The more Jenny comments on how sad he is, yet finds him attractive, the less convinced I was.) Naughton, who always puts me in mind of a cross between Al Pacino and my cousin Arnold at his Bar Mitzvah, is a terrific physical actor, and his scenes darting about London nude are a hoot. He takes quite a beating, makeup-wise, however the resultant wolf is not seen to full advantage – deliberately, I imagine.

Even within its own universe, Landis makes several judgment calls that take me out of the film – the first being when our hitchhiking, backpacking duo first leave the road across the moors. The light of the full moon is abundant. They aren't drunk, and they didn't seem to mind sticking to the road during the daylight, so it's hard to imagine what they were thinking, warnings notwithstanding. Another is the final scene in the alley with the police shooting into complete darkness. I can never sort out what they thought were shooting at, or how did they expected to miss the innocent? There were others. Two is enough.

However well the movie holds up after nearly 30 years – and I think it does quite well on that score – it holds a special place in film history for being the first movie to be honored with an Oscar for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup, thanks to the work of Rick Baker, who had previously worked as assistant to Dick Smith for The Exorcist (1973) and had been working with Lucasfilm before Landis brought him on to command the grisly makeup conversion from human to werewolf for the hapless David Naughton.

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