Text Review: The Fear and the Funny: “An American Werewolf in London” by Brian

Written and Directed by John Landis

Starring David Naughton, Griffin Dunne, and Jenny Agutter

On another podcast, the novelist Joe Hill said:

“If you’re watching the Three Stooges, and Larry pulls out a sledgehammer and hits Moe in the head with it, you laugh. If you’re watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Leatherface takes out a sledgehammer and hits a co-ed with it and blood splatters into the camera, you scream. But you have been fundamentally watching the same scene.” 

(Eli Roth’s History of Horror; Season Two, Episode One)

Hill’s illustration of the connection between horror and humor made me immediately think of John Landis’s film “An American Werewolf in London” because it remains the best example of a harmonious marriage between horror and humor.  Now, before anyone raises any objections to my previous sentence, take notice that I wrote “harmonious marriage”, by which I mean that both the horror and the humor exist peacefully together without sacrificing the effectiveness of either. The movie manages to be both very scary and very funny at the same time; This is a trick that very few movies have managed in the history of cinema.  In fact, the only other movie I can think of that even comes close to the same level of competence is Edgar Wright’s “Shawn of the Dead”, and that is a discussion for another time. 

The reason that so few filmmakers have been able to successfully unite these two genres is that the impulse to laugh at something immediately robs that thing of its power to frighten (the very heart of why satirizing or parodying the powerful works at all). Put very simply, we just can’t be afraid of something at which we are laughing.  To see the ridiculous side of something is to reduce it to something insubstantial. Fear dies at the sound of giggling. I think Landis was well aware of this and it’s why the humor in “An American Werewolf…” is used in a very specific manner.  

“An American Werewolf in London” tells the tragic story of David Kessler (Naughton), who, while backpacking through Northern England with his best friend Jack Goodman (Dunne), survives an attack by a werewolf outside of the small village of East Proctor. Jack is killed in the attack and returns as a spirit  periodically through the movie to try and help David overcome the side effect of being a survivor of an assault by a lycanthrope - the side effect being that David is now a werewolf. The talented and lovely Jenny Agutter plays Nurse Alex Price, who falls for David while he is in the hospital and whose love and caring help him to (at first) deal with both his grief over Jack’s brutal death and his suspicion that he might be losing his mind. 

If the movie progressed the way we would expect a comedy to progress, it would be filled with gags and there would be a joke on every page of the script. We would probably have ended up with pratfalls and mugs to the camera and all sorts of silliness that would have killed the horror as surely as the werewolf tore poor old Jack to pieces.  John Landis is smarter than that though.  

The humor in the movie is reserved for exchanges between the characters. The interaction between the people is what draws the laughs out of us, which makes us like the characters more and therefore relate to them. And once we feel a connection like that, the horror the characters are forced to endure is that much stronger. 

So, instead of the humor defusing the fear in the movie, it serves the opposite purpose - it enhances and amplifies the terror. These people are funny and charming and we want to see them get through this whole nightmare, while also being pretty sure they will not.  

So, after you’re done listening to our episodes, go and watch “An American Werewolf in London”, and laugh. Then scream. And laugh again. And scream again. 

Then send me a thank you note. I’ll be waiting.