It’s the last weekend before Halloween! If you weren’t aware, tonight (Saturday, October 28th, 2023) will see the occurrence of a full moon. Now, science has proven some of the strange things that take place during the night of a full moon. Animals may behave differently, and human mood may be affected. Hospital birth rates increase, but so do crime rates. Then, there are those things that happen during a full moon that science may not really acknowledge, but which any enlightened horror fan can exhaustively explain to you. This leads us to today’s topic.

Please welcome Chris Whissen back to the Halloween Horrors series! Chris first joined the series back in 2019 with a look at The Evil Dead, but he’s easily my oldest friend, putting up with my brain damage for about three decades now. Although I pushed more than a few of my personal favorite horror films upon him as we spent time together, Chris is admittedly not the biggest of horror fans, at least not the type that generally go out of their way to read sites such as this. So, I personally look forward to his thoughts on these films as they tend to be a little different than those of the common obsessive fan.

For this year’s Halloween Horrors entry, Chris will be sharing his personal experiences with 1981’s An American Werewolf in London. The film, of course, presents one example of why you should probably stay indoors on the night of a full moon. As the song featured in the film says, “Don’t go around tonight, Well, it’s bound to take your life.” Tonight, there very well may be a bad moon on the rise. 

 

Halloween, 1989. Perched among the cotton fields sits a lone mobile home park, brushed by dusk, quiet except for the wind. The rough breeze rattles the few skeletal husks in the post-harvest fields and then you hear those first few ominous notes…”’Cause this is thriller, thriller night”

By the time I turned 12, “Thriller” was a staple of any Halloween gathering, including that night in October just north of Yuma, Arizona. My parents helped me organize my first Halloween party and if there was one song that was guaranteed to give the neighbor kids a little chill, it was Michael Jackson’s hit.

As I was staring out at the empty fields, it wasn’t the bowl of eyeballs, jar of brains, or MTV zombies that worried me (though I would learn 30+ years later there was a reason the zombies had always seemed familiar). I knew that the “eyeballs” were the grapes I’d laboriously peeled that afternoon. The “brain” was tripe. And I knew we’d be safe – as long as we stuck to the road and kept off the moors. 

See, by the time I’d turned 12 there was only one thing in the world that truly scared me: werewolves. Specifically, the variety created for 1981’s An American Werewolf in London. 

In the past, I’ve credited the creator of this site with much of my horror movie experience, but there was a much earlier experience that haunts me to this day. It would have been about 1982 that my parents had plans with neighbors to see a movie. I remember bits of the evening, but talked to my mom to piece it together for this writing. Whether it was because they couldn’t get a sitter or, in her words, “ just bad parenting”*, my parents decided to take their 5-year-old along to the movie at a pub theater in central Florida. What I remember is dark walls, tables facing the screen, lots of tall people – many with bushy mustaches, it was the early 80s – and the carnage. Monstrous wolves jumping from dark places to tear apart unsuspecting victims. Horrendous and painful transformations. Decaying best friends appearing suddenly. Altogether an interesting choice to show a 5-year-old with an overactive imagination. 

When asked what movie has had the greatest impact on my life, it has to be An American Werewolf in London; a movie that, until recently, I had only watched once. In 1982. I felt that the film was burned into my brain and didn’t feel the need to rewatch it. During those 40 years, I would discover gremlins and ghosts, reanimators, and various things that really had an issue with people visiting their cabins. It was still the werewolf that invaded my thoughts when taking the trash out at night or walking to the car through an empty parking lot. It was the werewolf that made me jump at any sound when walking down a deserted country road after dark. 

So, for some reason, I chose to face my literal greatest terror directly and revisit the film. I will say, I learned a few things. Entire parts of the movie I’d completely forgotten. For instance, did you know there was a romance? Also, a porn made especially for the movie and shown in part during the movie my parents took me to see as a kid? Totally forgot both of those. I’d also forgotten, or never known, who was behind my nightmares: John Landis? Really?

By 1981, John Landis was already known for his work in comedy – and that’s what most of us still think of today. At that point, he’d directed Kentucky Fried Movie and Animal House, and did double duty writing and directing The Blues Brothers movie. He’d built up enough clout to finally make the movie about werewolves he reportedly wrote as a teenager. 

An American Werewolf in London follows two friends from America, Jack (Griffin Dunne) and David (David Naughton), out on a grand tour of Europe. They could have started some place warm, as Jack points out, but instead began out on the moors of Wales…well, supposedly Yorkshire, but it’s Wales. They are given one piece of advice, stick to the roads and keep off the moors. They find a small village pub, where they are not received warmly and are sent on their way with the same warning. So, of course, they wander into the moors under the full moon.

I can’t imagine that wandering into the moors is safe at the best of times, but once the howling starts, they are on the run until the creature catches up with them. Jack is ripped to shreds and the creature is starting on David when the villagers show up and save him. As he loses consciousness, we see the naked form of a bullet-ridden man where the creature should lay.

David wakes up three weeks later in a London hospital, confused and alone. Not alone for long, as he and his nurse fall in love. Also, his dead best friend keeps appearing for a conversation and to tell him to kill himself. We follow things for a while and then there’s another full moon. At this point in time, it shouldn’t be much of a spoiler to say David turns into the wolf. The wolf goes on a city-wide killing spree. David realizes it was him and tries to get locked up before he turns again, but fails. Then… the movie ends. Rather abruptly, it all comes to an end. 

At its heart, An American Werewolf in London is a fun story with Landis’ touch obvious throughout. There are the sarcastic friends trading quips on the moors (they didn’t listen!), a clumsy Scotland Yard detective, dart drops, jokes about sheep, and the conventions of British pub signage. The friendship between Jack and David is the heart of the film. They tease each other, but have a good solid friendship. Jack is that friend you want by your side. A bit care-free, a bit sarcastic, but happy and a good friend. Even in death. Of course, there’s also the romance of Nurse Price (Jenny Agutter) and David. Honestly, as romances go it feels a bit weak and was something I’d completely forgotten over the years. Still, there are any number of elements that someone familiar even with just Landis’ best-known works can recognize. 

With the story alone you have a perfectly enjoyable buddy comedy, a hint of a romantic comedy, and a small nod to horror. 

What brings the story to life, and cements the horror element, is a solid cast. I’m kidding, the cast is good, but the makeup and effects by Rick Baker steal the show. His contribution is where my nightmares were born. While the gradual, but obvious, decomposition of ghost Jack is funny and gross and just well done, it’s the werewolf transformation that is unforgettable. On screen it is agonizing and terrifying. Every hair growth, body bend, and elongating bone is seen in bright light – no shadows or darkness to suggest the transformation. Just in the open, in a well-lit room with everything on display. In an era before today’s CGI, when space robots were actually people crammed into rolling cans – this transformation was an incredible achievement. The Academy agreed, awarding Baker the first competitive Oscar for Best Makeup (he would go on to win 7 Oscars out of a total of 11 nominations). 

It can be hard to revisit some practical effects in the age of CGI, but in this case, I think it’s more realistic. Even when you see things that you know are prosthetics, you’re already so caught up in the transformation that you only think about it in retrospect. 

Credit should also go to David Naughton. He really sells the transformation – and the pain of it – with his acting. It starts a bit understated, then builds as the events unfold and the wolf is revealed. I don’t know enough to tell what elements of the performance were “actor” and what were Landis’ direction, but the result is terrifying. Between the effects and the acting, five-year-old me was immediately convinced werewolves were real. 

Landis, Naughton, Baker, and team created a monster that has lived with me for 40-plus years. I still scurry out to the trash cans at night and rush back inside. That is a powerful creation. Built on John Landis’ idea, embodied by David Naughton, brought to life by Rick Baker’s brilliance, traumatizing me since 1982.

Which brings us back to the staple Halloween song of the late 80s. The video that launched the song into the stratosphere has echoes of An American Werewolf in London. Makes sense, as Jackson brought in Landis and Baker to create the video. I had many friends who found the music video terrifying. For me though, it was nothing on their earlier work. I’d much rather have a zombie dance at me than fall back on the escalator while those yellow eyes are stalking slowly closer…

So, anyway, this year the full moon falls on the Saturday before Halloween. Many of you will be out partying. Maybe early trick or treating with the kids in some communities. Perhaps you’ll crash a costume party or go see a scary movie. Maybe just gather some friends and get a nostalgic thrill from an old music video. Maybe a group of zombies will appear and do a cute little choreography for you. Go. Have a great time. But, please, whatever you do…stay on the road. And keep clear of the moors.

* Let’s be very clear, they were good parents. I was one of the lucky ones.