fine whine

I've never been much a fan of horror films. That said, the library is rapidly running out of movies that spring to mind when I want to reserve and watch something new or different.

I haven't heard all that many bad things about John Landis's foray into the horror genre, An American werewolf in London and I've been on a mini Jenny Agutter kick since I watched Logan's run earlier this month. As it happens the library owns about six of her films and I just didn't feel like taking on Child's play 2 or a Shakespeare adaptation or two (wow, talk about a range there), so I gave in and checked this out.

Overall it's not so bad for a werewolf movie, let alone one made in the early 1980s. Part of that might be due to its setting in the English countryside and London, two places that tend to look a lot less dated in films than corresponding areas of America. Then again, this is Europe, where the history comes from (so says Eddie Izzard). So perhaps it looks dated to European eyes, not mine.

Anyway, it's not so much the setting and costume that don't date the film but the overall production. Clearly this was made before the days of ubiquitous CGI, but for largely in-camera effects the makeup and props work quite well. One of the early scenes in the hospital finds Griffin Dunne quite torn up and falling apart, but not cheesily so. Instrumental to that scene, however, is his character's relative indifference to his wounds (and, well, death) and the conversational tone he adopts with his aghast (and alive) friend.

Of course later on when he's more decomposed the illusion's not so seamless, but you can only slap so much stuff on a person's head and make it look real, I'd wager.

Anyway, the movie's enjoyable enough if not really so deep. Landis copped out on the whole "character development" thing by having external factors change the people more than anything like introspection and whatnot, but this is a horror movie, after all. I think.

I've seen it billed as a comedy, but it's not really that funny. There are some funny bits, but it's not laugh-out-loud hilarious and given Landis's track record (The Blues brothers and Animal house among others) I don't think he was quite trying for that this time around.

So give it a watch sometime, but don't expect to be scared silly or tickled pink. There's a middle state there, somewhere, but nobody's quite named it yet.