Review: An American Werewolf in London (1981)

There were so many reasons I wanted to like this movie. For one, An American Werewolf in London was written and directed by John Landis, the writer responsible for one of my favorite cult-comedy movies of all time, Clue. I had heard that AAWIL had attained a similar cult status among some diehard fans, and so I sat down dearly hoping it would fill me with the kind of joy that only campy B-movies from the '80s seem to inspire.

I was sorely disappointed.

It helped, really, to try to see it as a satire, but I genuinely couldn't tell you whether that was Landis's intention. Some of the story elements seemed designed to come off as cringeworthy and absurd—the titular werewolf's grunting, panting transformation in a London porn theater, for example. David's six victims cheerily listing off ways for him to kill himself (in that same porn theater) provided another. But other scenes came off as funny only because they seemed poorly written. I mean, some of that dialogue, man! Who goes around announcing things like, "I'm still not hungry," or "I'm so hot!" when they're home by themselves?

I've been trying to come up with a formula to describe at what point a movie becomes so bad it's good again. At first I thought, bad acting + good writing = campy good times, but then I thought of some films that subscribe rather to the formula of good acting + bad writing. Then I thought of still others that manage to charm cult audiences with both bad acting AND bad writing. So maybe there's no magic formula after all, but if there is one, AAWIL did not find it. The acting was painful to watch, the central romantic relationship had about as much chemistry as a high school Latin class, and the dialogue, as I've said, drove me up the wall. Contrast this with Clue, which achieved cult status only after a miserable failure at the box office, but featured the acclaimed acting talents of Tim Curry, Eileen Brennan, and Madeline Kahn (to name just a few), along with bitingly clever dialogue. Hilarious? Yes. Utterly absurd? Of course. But still, the humor of the movie comes from the writing and the premise, not from watching a train wreck on screen.

I'm trying to separate the story from the film as I think about the movie critically, but it's honestly hard to tease them apart. The acting, cinematography, and effects color the way I see the plot and characters; it's hard to know if David and Alex's relationship would have been more believable with different casting, or whether I would have rolled my eyes at her propositioning him under any circumstances. (Certainly no actor could have delivered David's line, "You're a beautiful girl," without sounding like an utter creep.)

I will say, though, that we can forgive the actors their part insofar as many of their characters' decisions seem to be made purely for the purpose of advancing the plot, without any other apparent motivation. Kicking two college boys out of a pub on the full moon in a town known to be hunted by a werewolf, just because one of them distracted a guy who was throwing darts? Discharging a man form a hospital who is clearly unstable and finding his apparent psychosis attractive enough to merit an invitation to bed? If anything, this movie serves as a cautionary tale: writer beware, lest your characters lose all semblance of agency in service to your master plan. You can be a die-hard plotter, mapping every twist and turn before you ever set pen to paper, but your reader still has to believe the story developed organically and inevitably from a character's singular choice.

Of course, I feel like a bit of a hypocrite for criticizing Landis so harshly on this count when plotting is what I struggle with most as a writer. It's easy to know what's important, harder to put that advice into practice. Hearing your characters protest when you try to force them into an arbitrary decision takes a practiced ear; I'm just grateful John Landis learned how to listen before he picked up his pen to write Clue.


Citations: An American Werewolf in London. Directed by John Landis. Universal Pictures, 1981.