Review of An American Werewolf in London (1981) by Ryan H — 18 Oct 2012

If you go to a place called The Slaughtered Lamb where everyone acts strangely like they're keeping a secret AND there's a 5-point star on the wall then you should probably do anything they tell you to do.

Unfortunately David and Jack appear to have balls of steal. They're backpacking in Europe and come across a small town miles away from London and they have no clue where they are. This would be enough to scare me.

But these two guys just enjoy their drinks and leave, even though they were hoping for some warm food. The people at The Slaughtered Lamb warn them that when they leave to make sure and stay on the road.

Does this seem to stop a werewolf later on in the film? No, so I'm not sure why this was the big warning. Either way, here's the goofiness I was talking about that worked. Perhaps because these characters work well together.

You have the guy who just wants to get away and sight-see for three months and then there's the other guy who wants to get laid by a girl the first one doesn't like. They're dialogue together is goofy and I always had fun with them.

.. until the night of the dreadful attack. The werewolf surrounds them, circles them, frightens them until finally he takes them. He tears Jack into pieces and only gets a few slashes on David before the people from the pub come by and shoot him.

Before David passes out he sees the werewolf turn back into an old man. The rest of the film shows David becoming close to his nurse Alex while getting closer to the full moon. Jack comes back as a dead person who decays more and more each time David sees him.

At first David thinks it's all just a dream, but it's not. Jack wants David to kill himself because he can only pass on to his afterlife if the last werewolf in the line is dead. He's going to turn into a monster anyway, so why not just kill yourself before you kill others? He tries to convince him more and more as the story progresses.

Sometimes things get stuffy along the way. I wish it would have flowed a bit better. Give us more plot points than ideas. The ideas are great, though. I never thought of the victims being stuck in limbo, which brought along a great scene in the porn theater where David sees the people he killed the previous night.

The transformation was also pretty great, especially for 1981. The doctor going to The Slaughtered Lamb was a fun little trip, but ultimately didn't add much to the film. I think they could have done more with that stuff.

It was one of the things that made it feel slow. We know exactly the secret that The Slaughtered Lamb holds, so it's not much of an adventure for us. I really did love the ending. It's one of the greatest endings I have ever seen.

David changes for a second time and when he does he goes on another rampage. He's got a family in the states that loves him, a woman that loves him, and a whole group of people who care. They can't just kill him off, right? Wrong.

We get the scene that should stop him and give them a chance to find a cure. Alex tries to show herself to him. Since she's the woman he loves she should be able to stop the beast within him. Right when he's about to attack her he gets shot in the chest until he dies.

The end. Really freaking funny and well done. It's not the best of the best, but An American Werewolf in London has some big entertainment value. It also shows what you can do with mixing horror and comedy in a real way instead of being cheesy and bad to make the audience laugh.

I actually jumped in some scenes, which is more than I can say for most true horror films.