‘An American Werewolf in London’.
In 1981, director John Landis released one of the greatest British horror movies ever. It was called, ‘An American Werewolf in London’ and it quickly became enormously popular amongst cinemagoers.
It was an unfortunate fact that werewolves had always looked rather naff in movies. The first attempt at the subject had been 1941’s, ‘The Wolf Man’ (great for its time) and most subsequent hairy-lunatic films had been created by the Hammer/Amicus studios. The werewolf was a great movie monster, but presenting it in a believable and properly scary manner was quite a big challenge. Even if you could get away with not showing audiences the actual transformation, then the beast itself could all too easily end up looking like a rabid poodle that had been rather cruely put through a round of cheap liposuction…
However, ‘An American Werewolf in London’ completely changed the cinemagraphic image of the werewolf. By making use of Oscar-winning special effects and make-up, John Landis managed to scare the pants off horror fans. Things had progressed in the world of film and ‘An American Werewolf in London’ showed us just how credible a creature such as a werewolf could be.
The film is just as popular with horror fans today and it has gained a large cult following since the year of its release. There was a brief wave of excitement back in the nineties when it emerged that a sequel was being planned, but it all proved to be a massive disappointment. None of the original crew were involved and the subsequent film turned out to be a bit of a shaggy dog story. Instead of using clever make-up and special effects, ‘An American Werewolf in Paris’ resorted to boring old CGI’s for its action and transformation scenes. When will filmmakers ever learn? It is best to see ‘An American Werewolf in London’ as a fantastic stand-alone movie and to forget about the inferior sequel altogether.