An American Werewolf in London: Sympathy for the Wolf Man
It’s time! Ittt’s TIME! It’s WEREWOLF TIME!
Today is the start of Werewolf Week on the Spooktacular. Why am I committing a full seven days out of 31 to this specific horror? Well, it’s my favorite monster and, even though I won’t be exclusively discussing film this week, I think the werewolf and the medium have a rocky history. Frankly, there just aren’t that many good ones. So, it’s worth picking out the stories that work — and maybe discussing some that don’t.
As a kid, I was terrified of the werewolf. I remember watching TV one night when I was very young and seeing the (very tame) transformation scene from the original The Wolf Man and it shocked me. It triggered a primal fear in me: man becoming beast. I can’t say if it came before or after this incident, but I also remember having a terrible nightmare where I wandered away from a campfire and was brutally savaged by a large wolf. I woke with a pain in my guts so severe it created a bridge between dream and my reality that was difficult to shake. So, the wolf (or wolf man) haunted me to an extent and I avoided it as much as I could.
At a grade school book fair, a dictionary of monsters put me in a cold sweat when I flipped to a page containing stills from the transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London. It frightened me, but it also generated another emotion that my previous brief experience with Lon Chaney Jr. didn’t: pity. The man here wasn’t just becoming a killer, he too was a victim of the wolf’s curse, suffering unimaginable pain on his way to committing acts he never would dream of as a man. This is not to say that the original 1941 film isn’t a sympathetic portrayal. It absolutely is. I just didn’t know it at the time and needed the extra brutality of Rick Baker’s effects to drive the point home. It would be awhile before I mustered up the courage to watch the film itself, but I believe I started dipping my toe into werewolf fiction around this time, its tragic nature drawing my melancholy spirit to it.
An American Werewolf in London begins with two college buddies, David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne), on a backpacking trip of Europe. We find them hiking through the English countryside before escaping a storm in a local pub — The Slaughtered Lamb. The townsfolk aren’t exactly friendly and when one of the friends, David, inquires about the five-pointed star painted on the wall, they are thrown back out into the night with a single warning: stay off the moors. Of course, they do not, and they are attacked by a werewolf before being saved by regretful bar patrons. The whole scene is terrifying. The wolf is not so much seen, but the increasing fear of the hikers as the monster circles really sells it. Jack is attacked first and screams like someone being torn apart. Naturally, David runs for his life before regaining his senses and going back to save his friend, but he’s too late and gets mauled for his trouble. The locals’ guns put an end to the attack and, before David can pass out, he sees that his monster has been replaced by the bullet-ridden corpse of a man.
David wakes in a London hospital, unclear exactly who or what attacked him, but he is plagued by dreams and visions. This is another place that American Werewolf sets itself apart from the pack. What does having a nightmare about monstrous Nazis killing your entire family before slitting your throat have to do with David’s newly-acquired affliction? I don’t know. I’m sure other people have deconstructed it extensively, but it’s disturbing and, in any case, it’s another way that the curse is torturing him. Perhaps even more disturbing for David is that he’s now being visited by his maimed and increasingly-decomposed friend Jack. Jack has all the answers David doesn’t. It was a werewolf that attacked him and if David doesn’t take his life before the next full moon, he’ll turn and kill as well. I suppose this could be read as the creation of a grieving mind, but I choose to believe Jack is a real ghost haunting David. If werewolves are real, why not ghosts? It’s another way to allow the hidden world of the supernatural to creep in.
During his convalescence, David strikes up a passionate romance with a nurse named Alex (Jenny Agutter). When he is discharged, Alex takes him home to continue his recuperation. While she is working, David transforms for the very first time — in the scene that mere images from had such a profound effect on me. The transformation looks excruciating and we see, through unparalleled movie magic, every detail of it under the bright light’s of Alex’s apartment. David doesn’t just sprout hair and fangs. His face and body stretch and contort in tortuous ways and claws burst through the skin of his fingers. What Rick Baker accomplishes here is mind-boggling and he was rightfully recognized with the first ever Academy Award for Best Makeup. But it isn’t only the transformation that stands alone among werewolf effects. The werewolf itself is one of the best you’re going to see on film. I’ll discuss this more later in the week, but this can be incredibly difficult to get right and, most of the time, you just have to settle for something that looks kinda crummy. Not here though. You get a quadrupedal hellhound capable of violence and expression.
After David wreaks havoc during his first night as a beast, he wakes up in the wolf pen of the London Zoo. It’s a scene that’s played for laughs, but it’s a nice detail nonetheless. Despite his confusion, David feels quite well, but his mood shifts when he hears about the murders the previous night. He tries to tell Alex. He tries to get arrested. But to no avail. He’s finally starting to consider Jack’s advice: “Kill yourself, David, before you kill others.”
Ultimately, he does not take his own life, even after being confronted by Jack again, now accompanied by the pissed off ghosts of David’s victims. He’s run out of time. While out in public, he ends up transforming again (mercifully offscreen) before terrorizing London. This is another thing I appreciate about this film. If the werewolf is such a mindless savage, how has it stayed a myth in modern times? A werewolf set loose in a such a large city would hardly go unnoticed for very long. David’s rampage certainly attracts an appropriate response and it isn’t long before a SWAT team (or whatever the British equivalent is) has him cornered in an alley.
Finally believing what David was telling her, Alex arrives on the scene and we are treated to one of the most heartbreaking endings to any film I’ve ever seen. She pushes past the crowds and police and approaches David, begging him to let her help him. She confesses the depth of her feelings to the monster: “I love you, David.” For a moment, the red snarl of the wolf softens and we can almost see something human in its eyes, but the curse is too strong and it lunges for her. The police open fire and it is stopped in its tracks. When we cut back to Alex’s vantage point, we see a naked David laying bloodied and dead. Alex’s horror turns to a deep sadness and sobs (a brilliant performance by Agutter) as we cut to credits and a surprisingly cheery rendition of “Blue Moon”. To me, the sharp contrast only heightens the tragedy by forcing the viewer to linger on what they’ve just seen in spite of the upbeat music. On top of seeing her lover gunned down, Alex was witness to evidence of the supernatural, with no room for denial. On top of his death, she is privy to the horror of his curse and suffering.
Is it scary? Yes, the initial attack, the Nazi dream, the transformation, and David’s first night of mayhem would all qualify.
Streaming: An American Werewolf in London is available on The Roku Channel and Amazon Prime. Don’t confuse it with the more widely-available sequel An American Werewolf in Paris. I’ve never seen it, but it’s apparently not very good.
Addendum: Yes, An American Werewolf in London has it all. When people discuss the need to separate art from the artist (in the case that the artist has done something rotten), I typically don’t get it, but I have to here. The film’s director, John Landis, isn’t a monster in the same vein as Harvey Weinstein, but, by most accounts, he’s a rotten SOB and his carelessness on the set of The Twilight Zone lead to the deaths of three actors (two of them children). Landis also produced a son, hack screenwriter and scum of the earth Max Landis. Max was in line to write and direct a remake of An American Werewolf when long-simmering rumors of his reprehensible behavior boiled over into outright accusations of rape and psychological abuse during the height of the Me Too movement. So, John Landis has a lot to answer for, but his horror bonafides are unimpeachable.
