Classic Movie Review: 'An American Werewolf in London' Does Not Hold Up

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Directed by John Landis

Written by John Landis

Starring David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, Jenny Agutter

Release Date August 21st, 1981

Published February 27th, 2023

An American Werewolf in London is this week's Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast 'Classic.'

I don't get it. Well, I understand what people see in An American Werewolf in London, but I don't get why it has lasted in people's memories for over 40 years. An American Werewolf in London has some terrific practical effects and makeup. It has several memorable visuals, mostly in the makeup effects by the iconic Rick Baker. That's a solid legacy but beyond that, there is not much of a movie here. Thin characters, a horror comedy tone that is never funny, and disconnected scenes that linger rather than move things along, left me rather bored by a movie with a reputation as a horror classic.

An American Werewolf in London stars blandly handsome commercial pitchman, David Naughton as David and Griffin Dunne as David's best friend Jack. Somehow, David has convinced Jack to go backpacking across England, specifically in the cold and rainy Yorkshire Moors, even as Jack greatly preferred going to the warmer and more welcoming environments of Greece or Italy. The two are miserable and cold and when they find a pub in a small town and things don't get any better.

The locals are rude and stand-offish, they send the American visitors away without so much as a warm beverage. The only thing the locals tell the two young men is to stay out of the Moors. Naturally, they don't listen and end up walking in the bright light of a full moon across the empty Moors. In the distance, they hear what sounds like a dog or a wolf. Indeed, it's a werewolf, one the locals were fully aware of but failed to keep the young men from encountering.

Subsequently, Jack is brutally mutilated while David runs away like a coward. He does turn back for Jack but only so that we in the audience can be shown Jack's brutally desiccated corpse. David himself is then attacked but survives when several of the guilt-ridden pub patrons come to rescue him and kill the werewolf. Unfortunately for both David and Jack, David has been bitten before he was rescued and the Werewolf curse was transferred to him.

The curse also effects poor Jack who cannot rest in peace until the Werewolf bloodline is ended. That means that David needs to die or Jack will live on as a member of the living dead. In the best part of the movie, Rick Baker's makeup turns Griffin Dunne into an ever rotting corpse whose decay is more and more present the more we see him. Dunne, unfortunately for the rest of the movie, is far more charming and engaging than star David Naughton and the movie suffers when Dunne isn't on screen.

Put it simply, David Naughton is completely overmatched when challenged with carrying the movie. He's blandly handsome but there is nothing much more too him. So much of the movie is spent in his company and because of that, the movie never gains any charm or momentum. Naughton is a giant void at the center of the movie, sucking in all that might be interesting about writer-director John Landis' homage to classic MGM monster movies.

The other major issue with An American Werewolf in London is tone. The film clearly wants to evoke a tone of affable horror comedy. Griffin Dunne's performance is exhibit A. Dunne is so casual in his zombie form that it comes off kind of funny. It's the only moment where the tone of horror comedy is achieved as Rick Baker's gory makeup plays as a comic counterpoint to Dunne's casual reporting of life among the undead. But, as I mentioned, when Dunne isn't onscreen, the movie completely falls off. Even when Dunne is onscreen, it's not so much funny as mildly amusing.

Naughton plays sweaty and desperate but he's such a thin character, such a cypher, that the movie appears to slow to a halt waiting for him to arrive at a performance choice in any given scene. Naughton's default mode is a deep confusion and that translates to the movie as a whole as we in the audience are left confused as to what we are supposed to be feeling from one scene to the next. Is the movie supposed to be funny? Scary? Dramatic? Romantic? It's really none of those things for most of the near 100 minute runtime.

The middle portion of the movie diverts into dream sequences as David is mostly confined to a hospital bed. One dream has him running naked through the woods and hunting down a deer to devour. It's neither funny or scary, it's just sort of there. In the weirdest and most disconnected sequence, David imagines himself at home with his family when wolf-monster-Nazis(?) break into the home and force him to watch as his family is murdered before they cut his throat. Why? I have no idea. This sequence adds nothing to the movie.

In the end, with charisma void David Naughton as the star and writer-director John Landis struggling to find an incident from one scene to the next, An American Werewolf in London lingers in a place of mundane existence. Rick Baker's makeup effects remain impressive but the rest of the movie is just sort of there. It's breezy and casual in many scenes which works only to remove the tension of what is intended to be a monster movie. The movies that Landis name checks as influences on his Werewolf movie, are movies that understand the need for melodrama, dramatics, big emotions and stakes, above all, something needs to be at stake.

The stakes in An American Werewolf in London boil down to whether or not David should survive and since David is this empty chasm of a character whose fate did not matter to me in the least, the rest of An American Werewolf in London did not matter. I simply did not care about David. He's not interesting, funny, or sympathetic beyond his basic existence as a person. I liked his love interest, Alex, played by Jenny Agutter, but she can only do so much with a very rushed love story that has these two professing to love each other within days of meeting each other and with little actual evidence of their chemistry or compatibility.

An example of why An American Werewolf in London simply doesn't work beyond an appreciation for gore and creature effects comes from singer Warren Zevon. Three years prior to the release of An American Werewolf in London, Zevon released the iconic song, Werewolves of London. In just three and a half minutes of music and lyrics, Zevon achieves a tone of horror comedy that An American Werewolf in London can't achieve in nearly 100 minutes. Zevon is all casual charm while talking about a Werewolf who "he'll rip your lungs out" but he's also stylish enough that "I'd like to meet his tailor." Werewolves of London in a 3 and a half minute song is everything An American Werewolf in London strives for and fails at.

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