An American Werewolf in London

 

          January was my first time experiencing a John Landis movie in, the Blues brothers with Dan Akroyd and John Belushi. While back in June I took the time and watched what maybe one of the greatest comedies in Animal House in fact it was so amazing I watched it multiple times till I had to stop watching it back in August also Landis's greatest achievement. Now in the month of Halloween, I decided to sit down and watch John Landis's first ever script he's written long before he made a name for himself. An American Werewolf in London, is again one of the many movies I have never seen but is one of those many movies I personally felt that I needed to watch to be a true cinema fan.

          David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne), two American college students, are backpacking through Britain when a large wolf attacks them. David survives with a bite, but Jack is brutally killed. As David heals in the hospital, he's plagued by violent nightmares of his mutilated friend, who warns David that he's becoming a werewolf. When David discovers the horrible truth, he contemplates committing suicide before the next full moon causes him to transform from man to murderous beast. 

          John Landis came up with the story of American Werewolf in London while he worked in former Yugoslavia as a production assistant on the film Kelly's Heroes (1970). According to Landis, he and a Yugoslav member of the crew were driving on location, while driving came across a group of Romani people. The Romani people took them to see this grave site of a person buried in the strangest way possible, and although they thought it was funny they begin to ask questions for which leads the idea of American Werewolf. To the movies credit the film has does deliver a lot of new ways in making a werewolf movie, but more importantly brings some realistic tone of how would a person being bitten by a werewolf, would change into a werewolf moreover it brings some interesting ideas that we as an audience member have never seen and this movie really brings a creepy feeling of how a man would change into a werewolf and you'd see how painfully and scary it would be. The other thing I also like about the movie is seeing your latest victims who are still alive in the werewolf's mind but are dead but are fatally wounded. Almost like a person being bitten by a werewolf is slowly losing his mind and the victims he's killed are coming back to haunt him, for which brings in interesting aspect in what it means to be a werewolf as well as how much of your humanity is slowly going away. Yes, this is for sure your typical average werewolf movie and if you've seen many werewolf movies like I have you would slowly realize that this movie is a little on the average side, though in all fairness this film does deliver some interesting ideas, and if I were making a Werewolf I would take the approach of the victim seeing his victims everywhere he goes as well as they either are lying down or sitting down and are just looking at him for which give a haunting aspect to being a werewolf. At times I wish this movie didn't have a comedic tone to the movie because then you'd slowly get confused as to whether the film is serious at being scary or is funny. Or you can always turn this into a scary dark comedy, either way the movie does have those moments of meh to really good ideas to approach in a werewolf movie. And An American Werewolf in London, has all of those elements you'd want in a werewolf movie and the best thing is that it was on Tubi and for me Tubi does deliver in finding some really good movies to watch on the month of Halloween so, if you’re looking for a decent horror movie I would highly recommend watching this movie and really you sometimes have to try new things because you never know when you'll find a perfect scary movie to watch on Halloween night.