Review: John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London on Arrow Video 4K UHD

Blending horror and comedy is tantamount to walking a tightrope. In the wrong hands, the disparate elements tend to undercut—thereby nullifying—each other. On the heels of the ticklesome trifecta of Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House, and The Blues Brothers, no one would have doubted that writer-director John Landis could bring the funny. But that he could also terrify audiences with a canny updating of Universal’s 1940s monster movies would be demonstrated definitively by An American Werewolf in London.

The film pithily outlines the relationship between two American backpackers, David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne), as they make their way across the bleak, fog-shrouded Yorkshire moors. And their status as strangers in an increasingly strange land is rendered laughably evident when they enter a pub bearing the charming soubriquet of The Slaughtered Lamb. Inside, Landis ramps up the awkward comedy as the locals do their best to engage the interlopers, until Jack makes the mistake of inquiring about a pentagram daubed on the wall. The aftermath is equal parts menace and mirth. The way one dart player (David Schofield) intones, “You made me miss,” indicates just how easily the whole encounter could erupt into violence.

That explosion is delayed, however, until our boys have done an admirable job of losing themselves on the moors. Landis stages the sequence brilliantly, the tension steadily mounting as a terrible howling (accomplished by playing of a reverb-heavy elephant’s roar backwards) seems to come from all directions at once. You almost think that their camaraderie might get them through, until an act of proffered aid is interrupted by wanton slaughter. When David resumes consciousness, he finds himself in a London hospital.

An American Werewolf in London’s middle section effectively alternates between some delightfully surreal, if increasingly violent, dream sequences and a number of encounters with a progressively decomposing Jack, who advises David to take his own life before he can harm anyone else. Though the film’s interspersed with subdued moments of humor, the predominant mood throughout is one of impending doom and lingering melancholy, offset somewhat by David’s growing infatuation with a nurse (Jenny Agutter). Their relationship isn’t particularly convincing, since the characters aren’t really developed beyond their archetypal functions, but it’s appealingly conveyed through Naughton and Agutter’s performances.

The film’s indisputable centerpiece is the protracted werewolf transformation sequence. Earlier werewolf movies were content to get the transformation over with as painlessly as possible with a series of simple lap dissolves, wherein each shot finds the metamorphosing main character covered with more hair and other makeup applications, such as increasingly longer ears and teeth. But with An American Werewolf in London, special effects guru Rick Baker concocts excruciatingly realistic visuals (a lengthening hand, a growing snout) that occur more or less in real time, and by seamlessly combining makeup and practical effects. The trend Baker inaugurated here would continue throughout the 1980s in films like John Carpenter’s The Thing and David Cronenberg’s The Fly, where audiences turned out to gasp at the latest FX wizardry as much as (or even more than) the film’s narrative.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the transformation sequence is that, because it’s set to Sam Cooke’s plaintive rendition of “Blue Moon,” it taps into the same aura of sadness and regret as the film’s middle section. But An American Werewolf in London’s final act again doubles down on the gruesome humor. The werewolf’s nocturnal rampages sit alongside endlessly quotable lines like “A naked American man just stole my balloons!” At one point, Jack beckons David into a porno theater (Landis also shot See You Next Wednesday, the titillating title on display) where he meets the victims of his carnage, their wounds still bloody. It’s a consummately eerie sequence, leavened with some blithe comedy, that culminates with David’s final transition into the bestial. One can only wonder how it would have played out if it had been set in a “cartoon cinema” full of children, as Landis had originally scripted it.

When the beast gets loose in Piccadilly Circus, Landis indulges in some of the same Keystone Cops-refracted demolition-derby action that peppered The Blue Brothers, played here for a maximum of mayhem: bodies smashing through windshields, bodies being repeatedly run over, double-decker buses toppling sideways. The scene moves dexterously from actual location shooting to a mockup of the locale without missing a beat. But the sobering finale takes place in a back alley, where Agutter gets to play an emotional farewell opposite a slavering wolf. That she manages to come across as genuinely affecting is some of most impressive movie magic to be found in An American Werewolf in London.

Image/Sound

Arrow Video’s new 4K HDR disc improves somewhat on their already impressive 2019 Blu-ray in terms of color richness, grain management, and contrast levels. Overall, the image looks a bit darker, which serves to make those bold primary colors really pop. There’s also the anticipated upgrade when it comes to the fine details of costume and set design. The new disc has both the repurposed 5.1 surround as well as the original mono track, and while the mono is obviously more limited in its dynamic range and channeling of effects, it’s nonetheless truer to the theatrical experience. It’s certainly nice to have it here as an option. Either way, the soundtrack’s needle drops sound crisp and clear, as do the snatches of Elmer Bernstein’s atmospheric score that crop up over the course of the film.

Extras

The roster of extras is exactly the same as on the stacked 2019 Blu-ray edition. The best of the archival material is Paul Davis’s 2009 making-of documentary Beware the Moon, which seemingly covers every aspect of American Werewolf in London from its conception in 1969 to its release and reception in 1981. There are talking-head contributions from practically the entire cast and crew. The documentary is so comprehensive that it renders some of the other archival extras a little redundant, though it’s good to have them here for the sake of completion, especially those involving special makeup effects guru Rick Baker.

Elsewhere, Davis provides an audio commentary track that miraculously contains little in the way of overlap with his making-of documentary. Throughout, David culls anecdotes that were uncovered during research for his book on the film, including some fascinating information about deleted and extended scenes whose original elements have been lost.

Also of note is the documentary Mark of the Beast, a deep dive into the figure of the wolf man from a well-selected roster of film historians and technicians, beginning with the ubiquity of the lycanthrope or shapeshifter archetype across human cultures, laying out how screenwriter Curt Siodmak singlehandedly concocted the “lore” of the werewolf (pentagrams, silver bullets, wolf’s bane) for 1941’s The Wolf Man. The doc systematically then touches on practically every iteration of the werewolf film from The Werewolf of London through An American Werewolf in London, with particular emphasis on the films’ makeup and transformation effects.

Among the other standout extras is a recently filmed interview with John Landis, who reminisces about his time in London in the late ’60s and his love of British cinema; the intriguing video essay “I Think He’s a Jew,” which examines the ways Wolf Man screenwriter Curt Siodmak encoded elements of the Jewish experience into his script; and the featurette “Wares of the Wolf,” which offers a nifty glimpse at some of the remaining artifacts from An American Werewolf in London, including David’s puffy red North Face jacket.

Arrow also includes a wealth of swag in their packaging: a double-sided fold-out poster; six double-sided, postcard-sized lobby card reproductions; and a 60-page booklet featuring new essays from Travis Crawford and Simon Ward, as well as archival articles and original reviews. Altogether this is one of Arrow’s most impressive recent releases.

Overall

John Landis’s landmark horror-comedy takes another bite out of Blu-ray, this time with a colorful new 4K HDR transfer that improves on Arrow’s 2019 release.