The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

An American Werewolf in London
3
think it’s both hugely influential and, strangely, kind of underrated in a
weird way.
Can you tell me about when you saw it and under what circumstances?
Wright: I had a very interesting circumstance of seeing it, having to do
with very bad parental decision-making. I think it was showing on British
network TV in 1984, so maybe I was nine when it was actually on TV.
It was a real entry-level film into more adult films because both I and my
brother had grown up on genre films and Star Wars—Spielberg and Lucas
specifically. And through magazines like Starburst and Starlog, we definitely
had an interest in films with effects in them. It is really only a skip and a
jump from Star Wars and The Thing to An American Werewolf in London
just on the basis of creature effects.
And I remember vividly, when it first came out, there used to be a British
magazine called Starburst, which Alan Jones edited. During his tenure
years as editor, it briefly went really gory for a magazine that was just selling
at regular newsagents in Britain. There were massive complaints. One of
the issues I had, which I would flip through ravenously, was the one with
American Werewolf on the cover.
It had a photo of David Naughton smiling, surrounded by the people he’s
killed. And you see them all completely drenched in blood, which always
struck me, because it was a crew photo essentially. It was like a production
still; it wasn’t stripped from the film.
And I think that, straightaway, just struck me as odd because it wasn’t
like a standard horror film shot. I remember reading everything about it
and then actually it was on TV. It was on BBC 1, maybe nine o’clock at night,
quite early. And my parents, because they knew we were so insanely keen
to see it—we were allowed to stay up and watch it. So we were only nine
and allowed to stay up past nine o’clock to watch An American Werewolf in
London. And I couldn’t be more excited watching it.
About forty minutes in, after Naughton has been attacked on the moors
and his friend is dead, he’s in the hospital having these very vivid nightmares
and daydreams. There’s a scene where he’s back at home and the
door gets kicked down and his Jewish family gets wiped out by Nazi monsters.
They shoot his sister, shoot his brother and his parents. Then there’s