Day 13

An American Werewolf In London

Directed by John Landis

Firmly established in the canon of horror comedies, An American Werewolf in London is the story of two young American backpackers who encounter a werewolf while traipsing through the English countryside on vacation. The survivor of this brutal attack is sent to London for recovery, where he becomes an American Werewolf…in London. Speaking of the werewolf effects, they were by far our favorite part of the movie, the transformation scenes are incredible and the general look of the werewolf is also really cool. In that same vein, this movie is full of awesome practical gore effects, the kind you don’t really see in movies anymore, which does help the horror aspects of the film. There’s also a pretty neat storyline about the small rural community that seems to know more than they let on about what happened to the two travelers, which adds some intrigue and atmosphere.. Where the movie kind of loses itself for us was in the comedic department.

There are certainly many funny moments, one near the end in a seedy movie theater stands head and shoulders above the rest of the film, but generally we didn’t find the movie that funny. Maybe it’s because we found the character dynamics so weird, we were really confused by the eponymous werewolf in London’s relationship with a nurse he meets at the hospital, and that kind of threw us. We weren’t sure if this nurse falling for a clearly mentally disturbed patient was supposed to be a joke or if this lady just had really bad taste in men. Maybe we’re just not that into 80s comedy? Regardless of that, this is a good movie and one we would recommend to people looking for a more old-school monster movie. It deserves a recommendation for its fun use of songs featuring the word ‘moon’ alone!