AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981):
Has there ever been a stranger combination of humour and horror as
An American Werewolf In London? Sure, the 1981 cult favourite is best known for Rick Baker's groundbreaking, Academy-Award winning transformation effects (amongst lycanthropy enthusiasts, the question of which werewolf movie--
American Werewolf or
The Howling--had the coolest shapeshifting effects is the equivalent of the Beatles vs. the Rolling Stones argument among music nerds). But this movie, written & directed by comedy juggernaut John Landis, hot off the blockbuster success of
Animal House and
The Blues Brothers, is equally memorable for its uniquely scattershot approach to evoking both laughs and scares. At times it's an incredibly gory monster movie, at others it's a doomed love story, and at other times still it's a fish-out-of-water farce. Despite a wildly uneven tone, though,
AAWIL succeeds as both a horror movie and a comedy, largely due to the chemistry between David Naughton and Griffin Dunne as two unlucky college students backpacking across the British countryside. The chemistry continues working even after Naughton's David Kessler has succumbed to the werewolf's curse, and Dunne's Jack has returned from the grave as a surprisingly good-humoured walking corpse. The romance between David and his lovestruck nurse Alex (Jenny Agutter) is sweet and ultimately tragic, and the soundtrack is loaded with pop songs about the moon (like Van Morrison's "Moondance", CCR's "Bad Moon Rising", and versions of "Blue Moon" performed by Bobby Vinton, Sam Cooke, and The Marcels). And, of course, there are those much talked-about special effects, which hold up to this day--the gradually decaying Jack is every bit as memorable as the famous werewolf transformation. Thirty-one years later,
An American Werewolf In London is still scarier than most horror films of its day, and still funnier than most comedies.
THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS (1980):
There's a legend among horror fans of a certain age that the original ending of
The Watcher In The Woods was so scary, Disney ordered it changed and buried the existing footage, not even allowing it to be used on retrospective DVDs. The truth is a lot more mundane--the visual effects for the original ending weren't completed in time, and in its place, a new abridged ending sums up the plot in a quick dialogue wrap-up. That's a shame, because this film could use all the help it can get, and both alternate endings included on the DVD release (neither of which is allegedly director John Hough's preferred ending) are more interesting than the one Disney went with. A rare foray into horror for the Mouse House,
The Watcher In The Woods begins as a family moves into a creepy old house owned by a mysterious woman (Bette Davis). The eldest daughter, teenaged Jan (played by a perpetually wide-eyed Lynn Holly Johnson) almost immediately begins seeing strange apparitions, like ghostly blue circles of energy and a blindfolded girl calling for help from the mirror. She senses a sinister force in the nearby woods, and she eventually learns of the disappearance of a young girl named Karen during a seance thirty years ago. Jan resolves to learn what happened to Karen, even as the incidents increase in intensity and power. Both alternate endings reveal the Watcher of the movie's title--a kind of insectile apparition--as an extradimensional visitor who accidentally traded places with Karen during the seance, and who is unable to return home until the ceremony is recreated. The Watcher is a pretty cool animatronic puppet, who enfolds Jan in its wings and briefly takes her back to his home dimension before safely returning both her and Karen home. The hurried explanation that takes the place of this effect in the released version is a lot more unsatisfying, especially after you've just sat through ninety or so minutes of harmless, sanitized Disney-approved supernatural shenanigans.
My folks had my girlfriend Hillary and I out for Easter dinner yesterday, and they graciously allowed me to rummage through their old collection of 45 RPM records and take whichever ones caught my eye. Y'see, they don't have a working record player anymore, and we're reasonably new to the whole vinyl collecting craze, so I guess they figured all these singles would have a better home with us than where they were--in a big pile underneath the china hutch. Needless to say, it was a real treasure trove of campy singles that probably hadn't been spun in about thirty years, like the theme to The Greatest American Hero (or, if you prefer, George Costanza's answering machine greeting), and "General Hospi-tale", a late disco/early rap novelty song designed to cash in on the Luke & Laura-era General Hospital craze of 1981. There were also some cool finds that didn't mean much to me as a kid but are favourites now, like Helen Reddy's "Delta Dawn" (AKA the song that plays at the end of the little-seen but terrific Patton Oswalt movie Big Fan), and The Monkees' "Goin' Down" (which was featured in a great meth-making montage on the last season of Breaking Bad). But strangest of all, there seemed to be a recurring strain of lycanthropy-themed cuts in there too...or maybe that's just my werewolf-obsessed brain connecting the dots. You be the judge.
First of all, there was the above number. Most people know the Five Man Electrical Band as the act behind the counterculture anthem "Signs", but to me, they will always be the guys who, for whatever reason, recorded this chilling tale of shapeshifting and sheep slaughter. Okay, maybe not quite chilling, but as a kid, I was pretty fascinated with the idea that anyone would record a pop song about such a terrifying subject. From the ominous opening ("Mama said/there's something weird 'bout Billy...") to the shrill, screamy chorus ("Is it any wonder we hate to see the sun go dooooown..."), the song is like a cool little horror movie in miniature. For the record, I still like it better than "Signs".
And then there was this. It's no secret that An American Werewolf In London is one of my all-time favourite horror flicks, and I'm sure that at some point I must have become aware that its star, David Naughton, was a pop singer. But I must have repressed that memory, because this sure came as a shock to me. It's a pretty silly, but not entirely un-catchy, disco number, but I feel like the future David Kessler must have known that pop stardom wasn't in the cards. Considering that the B-side is the forgettable reprise "Still Makin' It", I think he had a pretty good idea of his inevitable one-hit wonder status.
And finally, not really a werewolf song, but its inclusion in An American Werewolf In London makes for a nice little trilogy here. Nearly twenty years ago, I created a minicomic about a werewolf that took its name from this song, and, my love for CCR aside, I'll always have a soft spot for this song because of it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go fire up the record player and listen to Jeannie C. Riley sing "Harper Valley PTA" one more time.
