The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

2 Edgar Wright
How would you describe the film to someone who has never seen it?
Wright: Well, An American Werewolf in London, for my money, is like the
best horror-comedy of all time. You’ve got lots of comedies that are very
similar, and you have lots of horror films that are very similar. But very
few horror-comedies are exactly the same, and An American Werewolf in
London is really defined by its tone. And it’s one of the few horror-comedies
that’s really funny.
It was directed by John Landis, coming off a run of very successful comedies.
People didn’t know how to take it because they were really scared by it,
and because it was coming from the director of Animal House. And the fact
that the poster said, “From the director of Animal House . . . A different kind
of animal,” people should’ve considered that they had fair warning with that
tagline. [laughs]
In reality, it was the first script he ever wrote, and he wrote the script in
the late ’60s. And he shot three or four other films before he did An American
Werewolf in London. It was obviously a real passion project for him. It’s
about two American guys in their early twenties hiking across the Yorkshire
moors. And both of them get attacked by a werewolf. One of them
survives and the other one doesn’t. The one who does survive becomes a
lycanthrope, a werewolf.
Why did you choose this particular film to talk about?
Wright: An American Werewolf in London was way ahead of its time as a
postmodern film, taking its own inspiration from the Abbott and Costello
horror films and the Bob Hope films.
The thing in An American Werewolf in London that really marks it out
from everything—even now—is how scary the horror is and how visceral
it is. I honestly think there are not many other films that really come close.
There are other films that I like—Evil Dead II or Peter Jackson’s Braindead
[a.k.a. Dead Alive in the United States]. But both of those are a little more
cartoonish and campy.
Whereas in An American Werewolf in London, it’s very funny; it’s also
very real. The scene-setter on the moors where Griffin Dunne and David
Naughton get attacked, or even before they get attacked, is absolutely terrifying.
It’s the stuff of nightmares. Tonally, it’s a really interesting film. I