An American Werewolf in London
That was the year Jack Nicholson’s Wolf hit theaters. Until this time, I had consumed tons of werewolf fare including the original Universal films, including Werewolf of London, Silver Bullet, The Howling, hell, even Full Eclipse (y’know, that movie with Mario Van Peebles as a super cop with lycanthropic abilities – I thought it was pretty awesome at the time). And when it comes to John Landis? He was totally on my radar. I’d seen most, not all (clearly), of his movies. The imporant ones.
But, An American Werewolf in London, man… I just dropped the ball. Complete negligence on my part until that fateful day I dropped by the local video store – Mad Mike’s – and rented the Laserdisc.
Naturally, I gravitated to the personality of Griffin Dunne’s Jack right away and thought he was prime “quoting” material. Jenny Agutter was the hottest thing ever and I hoped, at the time, to have great shower sex with someone like her. And, of course, the FX blew me away. The unexpected thing I never counted on, however, was the palpable sadness that came with the story. Sure, it ended like so many Universal classic monster films before it, but you knew – somehow, some way – those monsters would come back. Here’s, there is finality to David’s journey. And it came so…abruptly.
It was far better than Wolf, that’s for sure.
