I felt it was time to re-watch this movie and give it another chance. I saw it at the theater in 1981 when I was 19 and I immediately disliked it due to what I felt was its over-reliance on comedy and not taking itself seriously enough as a horror movie. Well, today I finally decided that after almost 30 years it was time for a new viewing with a more open mind.
Overall, after this re-watch I have to say I am now far less harsh on American WEREWOLF than I was in 1981. I think that what seemed so ridiculous and silly to me in 1981 doesn't play nearly as foolishly in 2009, and especially not after another 20 years of seeing so many far worse and TRULY stupid modernized horror films. In fact, during the first 60 minutes of American WEREWOLF I'd say there wasn't really any "misplaced intrusive comedy" that hurt the experience for me at all. As a matter of fact, I was surprised during this re-evaluation at how serious much of the film actually played to me. 28 more years and so many inferior goofy modern horror misfires really polished it up in my eyes. It wasn't comedy that got in the way during the first hour; if anything, it was the lack of anything really happening until that first powerful transformation sequence.
I was really enjoying the film, and was almost prepared to give it a 3 out of 4 star rating myself; except that the foolishness eventually reared its silly head during the scene where David wakes up in a zoo and runs around nude asking a little boy for his balloons to cover himself up, rather jolly and apparently not even the least bit properly shaken up that he's just woken up naked in a zoo in a cage with real wolves and doesn't know why! Okay, so that was only a little bit of passable nonsense ... but then when David wears a woman's coat, and starts screaming loudly in public for a London booby to arrest him, shouting: "Queen Elizabeth is a man! Prince Charles is a faggot! Sh-t!! Cu-t!!!"... well, that started sounding more like the old AWIL I remembered and despised from my youth. And the entire sequence in the porn movie theater with not only a revisit from his old friend Jack the Corpse, but now all his other victims' corpses joking around as well.... that was too much, and I found myself going down to a rating of "Above Average" instead of "Good".
A word about Jack and his constant appearances as a deteriorating corpse ... I took them all to be David's own hallucinations because he's been driven near the point of madness, so these were not a hindrance. But with the last visit in the movie theater, I wondered how David could be imagining all those other victim's faces he killed, considering he never met them? Maybe he remembered what they looked like and all their names form when he was a wolf? ANYTHING but figuring that these dead people were real and actually sitting in that theater (which they couldn't have been, as the theater was empty afterward).
In the end, I liked the movie better. It's not going to be a personal favorite I'd choose to see anymore, but I guess I'd now consider it a pretty good werewolf film, and one of the more respectable of the "modern versions". There was certainly enough gore and violent scenes staged to offset the light parts. I would say that if Landis cut out the whole sequence of David conversing that last time with the dead people in the movie theater, and all that junk of him trotting around town with the balloons and wearing a woman's coat, as well as that desperate yelling at the policeman to get arrested and saying really stupid things, this would have been a MUCH more effective horror film.
BUT I do have to stand as correct in one thing I have maintained form the very start back in 1981 as to why I was not a big fan of the movie. After the show I played an interview on the DVD with John Landis, and the very FIRST words out of his mouth regarding the movie were: "Everyone keeps saying this is a COMEDY! But it's not a Comedy -- it's a HORROR FILM!!!" So, after all these years of people insisting it's a "comedy" or at least a "horror/comedy", here was Landis himself stating he meant it to be a "horror movie", but it turned out to have unnecessary silliness in it that I think hurts it. **1/2 out of ****
Overall, after this re-watch I have to say I am now far less harsh on American WEREWOLF than I was in 1981. I think that what seemed so ridiculous and silly to me in 1981 doesn't play nearly as foolishly in 2009, and especially not after another 20 years of seeing so many far worse and TRULY stupid modernized horror films. In fact, during the first 60 minutes of American WEREWOLF I'd say there wasn't really any "misplaced intrusive comedy" that hurt the experience for me at all. As a matter of fact, I was surprised during this re-evaluation at how serious much of the film actually played to me. 28 more years and so many inferior goofy modern horror misfires really polished it up in my eyes. It wasn't comedy that got in the way during the first hour; if anything, it was the lack of anything really happening until that first powerful transformation sequence.
I was really enjoying the film, and was almost prepared to give it a 3 out of 4 star rating myself; except that the foolishness eventually reared its silly head during the scene where David wakes up in a zoo and runs around nude asking a little boy for his balloons to cover himself up, rather jolly and apparently not even the least bit properly shaken up that he's just woken up naked in a zoo in a cage with real wolves and doesn't know why! Okay, so that was only a little bit of passable nonsense ... but then when David wears a woman's coat, and starts screaming loudly in public for a London booby to arrest him, shouting: "Queen Elizabeth is a man! Prince Charles is a faggot! Sh-t!! Cu-t!!!"... well, that started sounding more like the old AWIL I remembered and despised from my youth. And the entire sequence in the porn movie theater with not only a revisit from his old friend Jack the Corpse, but now all his other victims' corpses joking around as well.... that was too much, and I found myself going down to a rating of "Above Average" instead of "Good".
A word about Jack and his constant appearances as a deteriorating corpse ... I took them all to be David's own hallucinations because he's been driven near the point of madness, so these were not a hindrance. But with the last visit in the movie theater, I wondered how David could be imagining all those other victim's faces he killed, considering he never met them? Maybe he remembered what they looked like and all their names form when he was a wolf? ANYTHING but figuring that these dead people were real and actually sitting in that theater (which they couldn't have been, as the theater was empty afterward).
In the end, I liked the movie better. It's not going to be a personal favorite I'd choose to see anymore, but I guess I'd now consider it a pretty good werewolf film, and one of the more respectable of the "modern versions". There was certainly enough gore and violent scenes staged to offset the light parts. I would say that if Landis cut out the whole sequence of David conversing that last time with the dead people in the movie theater, and all that junk of him trotting around town with the balloons and wearing a woman's coat, as well as that desperate yelling at the policeman to get arrested and saying really stupid things, this would have been a MUCH more effective horror film.
BUT I do have to stand as correct in one thing I have maintained form the very start back in 1981 as to why I was not a big fan of the movie. After the show I played an interview on the DVD with John Landis, and the very FIRST words out of his mouth regarding the movie were: "Everyone keeps saying this is a COMEDY! But it's not a Comedy -- it's a HORROR FILM!!!" So, after all these years of people insisting it's a "comedy" or at least a "horror/comedy", here was Landis himself stating he meant it to be a "horror movie", but it turned out to have unnecessary silliness in it that I think hurts it. **1/2 out of ****