An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Horror comedies have long been questioned and disputed by fans and critics. Levels of horror and levels of comedy can, of course, vary wildly. At the comedy end we have the likes of Scary Movie, and up at the horror end we have Hatchet. Somewhere just short of this end of the spectrum lies John Landis's milestone movie An American Werewolf in London. I mean, where do we even start with this unquestionable classic? I can't even remember where I first heard of it, but I know that my household was cool enough to have the video on the shelf. So I indulged when I was about 12, and loved it. This wasn't a movie you need maturity to enjoy, which is surprising given its 18 certificate that has never been changed, despite movies like The Wicker Man and Don't Look Now being recertified in recent years.

The welcoming committee is in full swing

David (David Naughton) and Jack (the gorgeous Griffin Dunne, brother of the late Dominique), are two American college students hiking through the Yorkshire Moors (for whatever reason - I speak as a native Brit when I say there are better places for tourists) and stop in at a rural pub pleasantly named The Slaughtered Lamb. My Pop, sister and I have used the Slaughtered Lamb analogy to describe many a fenland pub inhabited by weirdo hicks, of which we have plenty in the countrysides of England. In this pub, they are quickly made to feel most unwelcome and hasten to leave, with the locals' warnings about bewaring the moon ringing in their ears.

The fellas are soon set about by some evasive menace, which kills Jack and savages David, which the locals from the pub arrive a little too late to shoot dead. There is no trace of the aggressor but a naked bloody stranger lying dead beside them. David wakes up several weeks later in a hospital in London. I'll elaborate for non-UK-based readers: London is - at the closest - just under 180 miles from the border of Yorkshire, and on the most direct route, there are no fewer than five main cities that lie between London and Yorkshire, all of which have large hospitals, and that's not to mention the many other major hospitals within the radius of Yorkshire. So exactly why David ends up in London, I'm not really sure, but it probably wouldn't be such fun to watch him wreak were-havoc just outside of Doncaster.

When David comes around, he insists that he and Jack had not been attacked by a man, but by some beast. He begins to receive beyond-the-grave visits from Jack - whose physical state deteriorates throughout the movie from a freshly hacked up corpse to a sinewy skeleton - who warns David that they were attacked by a werewolf, and as he survived his injuries, he is now one too. And waddaya know? The full moon is coming! In the meantime, David has attracted the advances of Nurse Alex
(the lovely Jenny Agutter), who brings him back to her flat when he is discharged from the hospital.

I'll have you know I'll report this to the authorities!

Highlights of David's antics include a rampage in a Covent Garden grindhouse showing a movie called See You Next Wednesday, a multi-bus-and-car pile-up, stalking toffs on the Underground and stealing a child's balloons while stark naked. As Roger Ebert reviewed back in the day, and as struck me the first time I watched this movie, the ending is abrupt, or as Ebert put it, 'unfinished', but when you consider the alternative that a lot of more modern horrors go for, with an often anticlimactic 'six months later' sketch, it seems appropriate. The original Amityville Horror went the same sort of way, in which time was called at what seemed the midpoint of the horror climax. I don't believe any snippet of an ending could have improved this awesome movie, and its direct cut to credits and an upbeat '50s rock'n'roll cover of Blue Moon serves as a slyly amusing juxtaposition to the last few seconds of the footage. Even its money shot is horror-comedy.

An American Werewolf in London is probably best known for its paramount special effects by the legendary Rick Baker. In the era just before even the cheapest of CGI, if you wanted your crazy visuals you had to make them physically, and Baker did such a phenomenal job of it, that the Academy created the Award for Best Make Up in 1982 in order to honour his work. Hammer's old Wolfman movies are all well and good, but had you ever considered the physical implications of a person morphing into an animal before this movie? To hear David's bones crunching and his skin stretching takes a lot of the romanticism out of being a werewolf, especially when his new love ultimately loses him in the wee hours of their relationship because of it.

American Werewolf remains one of my favourite horror comedies of all time. Although it demonstrates a few deviations from the theory on horror comedy that Adam Green professes - that horror comedy works as long as you don't do them simultaneously - this movie is probably about the best example of the subgenre out there, and deserves every second of cult fame that it garners.