Wolf Awareness Week II: Day 6

 

The Grey

2011

D: Joe Carnahan

**********

Pros: Good direction, Visuals, Some good lines

Cons: General story’s been done before, Inaccuracies about wolves, Anticlimactic finale

      Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces wasn’t quite the action-filled comedy its trailers promised to be, but it was still an interesting and distinctive movie.  I wish I could say the same thing for The Grey, which also seemed to suffer from misleading marketing.  I thought Taken was not much more than a generic Bourne wannabe, but Liam Neeson proved to be a credibly gritty action hero in it, and the movie spawned a series of Liam Neeson action films.  With The Grey, Hollywood seemed to be unleashing him on wildlife, but the film turned out to be different from what people expected.

      The film begins in an Alaskan oilfield that employs John Ottway (Liam Neeson) to shoot wolves in order to protect the workers.  This doesn’t make much sense because, while wolves will raid peoples’ farms for livestock, they know better than to attack humans directly.  Despite this, we see Ottway shooting a lone wolf that attempts to rush a small group of oilmen, an occurrence that I suspect would never happen unless it was rabid or really desperate for food.  Afterwards, Ottway writes a letter to his estranged wife Ana (Anne Openshaw), who occasionally appears to him in dreams telling him not to be afraid, and attempts to commit suicide, but he changes his mind when he hears a wolf’s howl.

      The next day he boards a plane with a bunch of oilmen (Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie, James Badge Dale), but the plane crashes in the wilderness, leaving a miraculous number of them alive, including Ottway himself.  Finding out that his gun is broken beyond repair, he tries to organize the other survivors and faces some tension from the closest thing this movie has to another character.  Diaz’s (Frank Grillo) attempt to loot the dead bodies may be questionable, but it certainly doesn’t warrant Ottway’s threat of physical and potentially lethal violence.  However, our merry travelers have a bigger problem on their hands: wolves.  And not just any wolves.  These poor bastards seemed to have stumbled into a nest of Africanized wolves, because these things are total psychos.

     The movie’s depiction of lupine behavior might be appropriately described as…well…pure bullshit.  These wolves insistently pursue this group of humans despite not apparently getting much out of them.  Wolves are animals, but they act with rationality in regards to their survival.  Obsessing over a group of humans seems to be a bad way to do that.  You wonder why they don’t give up this apparently high-risk quarry or even take a break to take care of their young.  Instead, they chase down the oilmen, killing a couple, but mostly just menacing them ineffectually.  More men die as an indirect result of their actions, succumbing to hypoxia, drowning or gravity.  Ottway, who apparently has a store of erroneous wolf trivia, exposits that the wolves have a hunting radius of 300 miles.  Now if this was true, and if wolves were as ridiculously territorial as they are depicted in the movie, then Alaska and Canada would only have room for 11 packs:

 Assuming all of these packs have 42 wolves in them (which is an extremely generous estimate) that would make the entire population of wolves in North America about 462.  But then again, in this movie Canada could be the size of Neptune for all I know.  
      I know that some people might respond to this criticism by saying that I'm missing the point of the movie.  I would say that you could have made the movie just as good at what it was without this distracting amount of factual inaccuracies meant solely to serve the plot.  You could still have the same things even with more effort put into the writing to avoid this buffoonery.  It also sends a mixed message in regards to the uncaring nature of the wild if you make a group of animals unrealistically aggressive.  I'm also sure that the implausibility of all those people surviving such a horrific plane crash, combined with the absurdity of what follows (ignoring the wolf attack in the first scene), would provoke many to play the "Owl Creek Bridge" Card (i.e. most of the plot is the fantasy of a dying man).  Personally, I find this trope to be trite when used as knee-jerk headcanon, especially without the novely, edge and eloquent cynicism of Ambrose Bierce's short story.  

      Aside from the inaccuracies, there is one moment that might disturb animal lovers.   At one point, the oilmen manage to kill the Omega and they decide to eat it.  In a very questionable decision, the filmmakers decided to “prepare” the actors for this scene by feeding them actual wolf meat (frozen,not raw), which Neeson apparently liked.  I’m not an animal rights activist, but I might say that feeding a sentient creature to actors just so that a character can say he doesn’t think wolves taste good is overkill.

      While being haunted by these creatures, the oilmen are killed off one by one in rather pointless ways.  I know that’s kind of the point in this type of story, but there’s no challenge or impact in this if we don’t sympathize with the characters.  They’re all just like horror movie fodder with the exception of Ottway.  There’s a reason why the movie poster is nothing but Liam Neeson’s face; it’s all about him.  In fact he gets all the good lines, though Diaz occasionally tries.  When I hear him utter an attempt at a one-liner as cringeworthy as “I got a book.  It’s called We’re All Fucked.  It’s a bestseller” and “This is fucked city. Population: five and dwindling,” it becomes painfully clear that the movie really, really wants me to like him.  Note to potential writers: one-dimensional snarky characters only work if you can actually write clever things for them to say.  The men stop for a moment to discuss spirituality, and (surprise) Diaz is a cynical atheist.  Ottway also says that he is an atheist, but he wishes he could be a believer.  He tells the men about his father (James Bitonti, with Jonathan Bitonti appearing as a young Ottway) and a poem he wrote about facing every day like a battle for survival.  After this important exposition is out of the way, a little more wandering and dying is done until Diaz decides he’s had enough of the former and sits down to let the wolves or the cold take him.  Ottway continues with the remaining redshirt, who immediately dies in a tragically pointless manner.  Left alone, he angrily cries out to an uncaring or nonexistent God, and soon stumbles into wolves’ den.  It turns out that the men have been getting closer to it the whole time, but then again why didn’t the wolves simply circle around them to get between them and their home? 

       In the final climactic scene, Ottway realizes that the wolves have surrounded him and he challenges the Alpha, who acknowledges with a really good Kubrick Stare.

As he prepares for battle, he thinks of his wife, now predictably revealed to have died of a terminal illness.  He recites his father’s poem as a poor man’s substitute for a John Murphy score swells up.  He tapes mini liquor bottles between his fingers and smashes them open.  Now we finally get to see the climactic final battle that the trailer practically promised us: Liam Neeson punching wolves in the face with broken liquor bottles.  He begins to charge, and…that’s when the movie cuts to credits.  Practically the same time as when the trailer cut.  I mean the ending isn’t bad per se, but considering what I was expecting.  I mean I was expecting to see Liam Neeson punching wolves in the face, and that’s something Twilight delivered on.  This is really more of the fault of the marketing rather than the movie itself.  The movie truly ends with a brief mid-credits shot of Ottway and the Alpha lying on each other, exhausted and possibly dying from an even fight. 

     At its heart, The Grey is actually a pretty generic tragic/survival story, without much to set it apart from its brethren aside from the false promise of Liam Neeson action and zoology so profoundly inaccurate Doug Walker would pick up on it.  People die without point, as they do in real life.  Odds are stacked against hapless protagonists with no relief.  It’s a type of story that has done many times before many times better.  Its position on the existence of God seems ambiguous and open to interpretation, but the movie was apparently marketed toward Christian audiences.  Then again, that could have just been cynicism.  It seems that God helps those who help themselves in this story, and that man must fight to survive as any other animal would.  The movie’s main theme seems to be to never give up fighting till the day you die, and I quite frankly thought that Paul Stanley conveyed that message more effectively.

     Perhaps the best part of the movie, aside from some of Neeson’s dialogue, is the visual style.  Cinematography is great, and the depiction of North America’s taiga during wintertime is beautiful.  A lot of this may be due to the involvement of producer Ridley Scott.  In fact, this $25,000,000 film looks far better than more expensive CGI fare.  My favorite part was special effects work on the wolves themselves.  Greg Nicotero deserves a lot of credit for the animatronic work he coordinated on these creatures.  CGI was used sparingly, mostly for touch-ups.  If you look at production stills of the puppets, they do look a little fake, but you don’t see that onscreen thank to the clever lighting and camerawork.  It reminds me of things like Bruce from Jaws or the Xenomorph from Alien.  Filmmakers using their wits to work around problems and create thrills rather than allowing the machines to think for them.  It’s good to see that’s not a lost art.  The alpha in particular has an air to him that almost makes him seem like a character himself.  They not only look realistic (with the help of great camerawork), but also very sinister and expressive.  There are plenty of great shots of them in the darkness where we see only their glowing eyes and their breath.  The movie may not be great, but it is something to look at.  The directing style really does redeem the movie, and makes it effectively tense and emotional despite its lackluster writing.  Like The Dark Knight Rises, The Grey is very watchable and engaging due to its spectacle, but you don’t really like it when you’re not actually watching it        

         

            

MEMORABLE QUOTES    

[Diaz is trying to loot the dead bodies after the plane crash]

OTTWAY: I'm going to start beating the shit out of you in the next five seconds. And you're going to swallow a lot of blood for a fucking billfold.

OTTWAY: We're going to get a large branch and sharpen the end of it, and we're going to shove it up this thing's ass. Then we're going to eat it.

OTTWAY: My dad was not without love... but a cliched Irish motherfucker when he wanted to be. Drinker, brawler, all that stuff. Never shed a tear. Saw weakness everywhere. But he had this thing for poems... poetry. Reading them, quoting them. Probably thought it rounded him off, you know. His way of apologizing, I guess. And there was one that hung over the desk in his den. It was only when I was a lot older, I realized he had written it. It was untitled, four lines. I read it at his funeral. "Once more into the fray. Into the last good fight I'll ever know. Live and die on this day. Live and die on this day."

     

OTTWAY: Do something. Do something. You phony prick fraudulent motherfucker. Do something! Come on! Prove it! Fuck faith! EARN IT!!! Show me something real! I need it now. Not later. Now! Show me and I'll believe in you until the day I die. I swear. I'm calling on you. I'm calling on you! [pause] Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.

Wolf Awareness Week II: Day 5

 

Hotel Transylvania

2012

D: Genndy Tartakovsky

**********

Pros: Animation, Some funny jokes, Werewolves look cute, Surprisingly good voice acting from Adam Sandler

Cons: Crude humor, Hackneyed romantic plot, Bad music

      I never found Adam Sandler funny.  I know a lot of people talk about the days when he was “funny,” but they seem to be referring to this.  That, along with its uninspired premise, makes Hotel Transylvania look like a perfectly missable animated film.  I went to see this movie mostly because it was Genndy Tartakovsky’s directorial debut (well, that and the werewolves look cute), and I’m a fan of his.  I don’t like how imitation of his style has made flat, drab animation the norm on TV.  However, he has earned my respect with Clone Wars, Samurai Jack and Symbionic Titan.  Perhaps he will inject some quality into this project.

      The movie’s plot begins with Count Dracula preparing for his daughter Mavis’ (Selena Gomez) 118^th birthday party.  She has lived most of her life in a massive hidden fortress called Hotel Transylvania, which Dracula had designed to protect her after humans killed his wife Martha (Jackie Sandler) and provide a safe haven for all monsters seeking relaxation.  He has promised her that she can venture out into the world on this day, but he is very overprotective and wants her to stay safe in the hotel.  Therefore he stages a fake human attack on Mavis in a fake village which convinces her to stay put.  In addition to the usual guests, Dracula’s friends show up to celebrate the event, and the main cast consists mostly of Sandler’s Happy Madison cronies.  They are Frankenstein (Kevin James), his wife Eunice (Fran Drescher), Murray the mummy (CeeLo Green), Griffin the Invisible Man (David Spade), Wayne the werewolf (Steve Buscemi) and his heavily pregnant wife Wanda (Molly Shannon).  I’m not a very big fan of celebrity voice acting, but Sandler’s is surprisingly good in this movie.  Really surprisingly.  He makes a great Dracula impression and he acts in it as well.  You can kind of tell that it’s Sandler, but it’s good.  In fact, most of the cast is also surprisingly innocuous.  Selena Gomez is a blatant celebrity voice who’s mostly there so that the movie can have bad music, as is CeeLo Green.  Green sings a song so heavily Auto-Tuned that I couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not, but his voice is distinctive and fits the character well.  Spade’s Invisible Man has one crude sight gag, but he’s mostly okay.  Frankenstein ends up having the worst fart joke in the movie.  He frames it on Murray while the latter is trying to hit on an attractive female mummy (mummies are a species), producing a large cloud of green gas and effectively cockblocking poor Murray from what might have been his soulmate. 

     The most consistently irritating character is Jonathan (Andy Samberg, whom you know from parody music videos that were funny the first three times you heard the mand annoying ever since), a human who bumbles his way into Dracula’s sanctuary.  Like Mater from Cars, Jonny is a nice guy so it feels bad to hate him, but his slang is pretty grating.  A panicked Dracula dresses him up as a Frankenstein monster to keep him from frightening the guests, but things get complicated when Jonny and Mavis fall in love.  They “zing,” which is what vampires do when they fall in love because we all know “love at first sight” is an immutable law.  He does some nice things for Mavis, like showing her her first sunrise, which is a remarkably bad idea.  Their screen time together is disappointingly low for a movie that revolves around their romance, and their chemistry is lacking.  In fact, most of conflict in this movie is between Dracula and Jonathon as the former tries to get the latter to leave her.  For all Mavis’ involvement in the plot that revolves around her, she might as well be a suitcase with unknown contents.   

      The female characters of this movie seem to get put into the background with little active involvement.  Considering that one of those characters is voiced by Fran Drescher, that may not be such a bad thing.  Still, you’d think we’d at least get more clichéd scenes of Mavis venting her feelings to her girlfriends.  Even Dracula’s male friends get utterly pointless scenes, like when they’re being assholes to zombie versions of classical composers because they want to perform at the party.  This culminates in a a very early 90’s cliché scene in which their supposedly lamer performance is shown up by Jonny’s “cooler” song number.  In the end, Dracula enlists their help to solve the movie’s problem while their wives don’t do anything.  But then again, I suppose I’d rather watch a movie that underrepresents women than have to listen to Fran Drescher’s voice for 90 minutes.*

      Despite this, Hotel Transylvania pretty much throws every annoying romance cliché in the book.  Overprotective parent of female character?  Check.  Someone weaves Web of Lies and eventually gets caught in it?  Check.  Love at first sight?  Justified by magic.  One of the lovers is convinced that the relationship cannot work and therefore reluctantly breaks up with her while holding back tears?  Check.  Someone gets chased down in an airplane?  Checkmate.  The only thing missing is a love triangle.

      When dealing with Jonny, Dracula seems reasonably tolerant for someone who fears humans for having murdered his wife.  You’d think he’d be more vicious, but he mostly treats Jonny as an annoyance until he eventually begins to hit it off with him.  They form a friendship, but then Dracula uses that to finally talking Jonny into leaving Mavis.  Unfortunately, Jonny’s humanity comes to the attention of what passes for an antagonist in this movie.  Quasimodo (Jon Lovitz), the hotel’s chef, finds out and tries to kidnap him in order to make him into a dish.  It results in a well-animated but pointless chase scene and Dracula freezes him with his powers.  He eventually overcomes this and publicly reveals the secret at a party where Jonny reluctantly rejects Mavis at Dracula’s behest and leaves the hotel.  Also, Dracula lets slip to her that he staged the village incident, making her angry with him as well.  He later tries to comfort his heartbroken daughter over the breakup when she reveals to him that she and Jonny “zinged.”  It’s established in this scene (which is surprisingly poignant in its execution) that this only happens once between two destined lovers.  She theorizes that Jonny didn’t “zing” back, and that she can never find love.  Dracula, realizing he did the wrong thing, gathers his friends to track Jonny down and bring him back.  Of course this results in chasing down an airplane, what kind of movie do you think this is? 

     Along the way the guys are helped by a group of humans performing a monster-themed parade.  The humans’ acceptance of them makes it apparent that they no longer have to worry about this prejudice any more.  Not because people have just gotten more tolerant of diverse races nowadays, but because they just love the old Universal monster movies and think it’s “cool” when they find out that monsters do exist, which doesn’t make sense.  I mean love Darth Vader as a character, but that doesn’t mean I want him to be real.  Recent fiction may have trained us to see such monsters as groups of people, but doesn’t apply to the character of Dracula, who is consistently depicted as a symbol of evil.  I would have played this for laughs with the combination of Dracula’s characterization of being out of touch with the present.  Dracula doesn’t just have the cultural hurdle of being an archetypal monster, he’s universally maligned as an individual.  I somehow doubt that this movie will change any minds about that.  They arrive at the airport only to find that Jonny’s plane has already taken off.  Dracula decides to risk his life by turning into a bat and chasing the plane down in broad daylight.  I must point out that this movie’s Dracula is the toughest heliophobic vampire I’ve ever seen.  He’s catching up to a jet while trailing and small burning pieces of himself because having Andy Samberg for a son-in-law is apparently worth that.  Dracula takes control of the plane and lands it back in Transylvania.  Jonny and Mavis are reunited and the movie ends happily with a closing credits sequence that features Tartakovsky’s 2D animation style, because the only way people will let you get away with 2D on the big screen nowadays.

      I must say that Tartakovsky adapted to 3D animation superbly.  The animation looks good and has the detail needed in 3D while being stylized, lively and zany.  I particularly like the animation on Dracula, and his body language is part of the things that make him a surprisingly likable character.   Genndy is great at sight gags, comic timing and choreography, which makes HT visually fun to watch for all its flaws.  While I love zanily stylized animation tropes, people tend to mistake them for actual humor too much, which is one of the things that holds Western Animation back.  There are some good jokes scattered here and there, but there are also many crude ones as well as one sadly predictable Twilight dig.  Character designs are good.  Murray looks cool, and I like how the Invisible Man’s glasses change shape to reflect his expressions.  I especially liked the look of the werewolves.  They looked the way I expect werewolves to look, although in a cute art style.  It’s funny that of all the werewolf movies I’ve reviewed so far, this silly fart cartoon is one of the few in which I actually approve of the design.

The werewolf kids look adorable.  I like how their design is reminiscent of the classic wolfman while adding a muzzle.  It also helps that Steve Buscemi and Molly Shannon are probably the two most reputable cast members of this movie (Shannon’s presence adds a creepy element if you consider how disturbing her character from NBC’s Hannibal was), and the werewolves get a disproportionate amount of good dialogue.  However, they’re not the best parents.  While Wayne occasionally makes impotent attempts to correct the pups, Wanda allows her extremely naughty children to run rampant throughout the hotel.  I certainly don’t subscribe to Malthusianism, they shouldn’t be trying to make more babies when they clearly can’t control the insane amount of children they already have.  Unfortunately, this results in some of the pups urinating in public, and by the way, movie, thanks for lingering on that shot of an animate sponge gleefully absorbing that yellow puddle for five whole seconds.  That was truly necessary.  One of the funnier moments in the movie is when their daughter Winnie (Sadie Sandler, who also voices young Mavis) uses her sense of smell to tell the guys where Jonny went very specifically.  She turns out to be the most active female character in the movie.

      Hotel Transylvania has plenty of good jokes and animation, but it’s brought down by a poor plot and crude humor.  Genndy deserved a better project than this for his first film, but I’m happy it was successful, since it will probably help his career.  Had it not been, Hollywood would not have learned to stop making stupid cartoons, but instead never give the director another chance.  Fortunately Tartakovsky is slated to make an upcoming Popeye movie, a project which he seems passionate about.  The sneak preview looks promising.  

*Okay, that was immature.  Dissing on Fran Drescher for her voice is unprofessional and John Simon-like.  It didn't help, though, that the entirety of her characters was accusing humans of having loud and annoying voices despite her own.       

QUOTES

[Dracula is walking past shrunken head door signs]

SHRUNKEN HEADS: Do not disturb.  Do not disturb.  Do not disturb.  Do not disturb.

WITCH: Good morning, Count.

SHRUNKEN HEAD (LUENELL}: Mae, clean this room.

[The werewolves have exited the taxi at the hotel]

WAYNE: Yeah, it’s a mess back there. [hands zombie busboy money]

WAYNE: Hey, kids, reel it in.  You’re only supposed to make Mom and Dad miserable.

[To Wayne]

DRACULA: You’re family looks beautiful.  Let me just clean up their filth. 

DRACULA: [aside] And Mavis.  If she saw you, she would know that I lied.  No!

JONNY: Who’s Mavis?  Is this her room?  I’m good with a roommate.  I had six brothers growing up, so I can totally share.

DRACULA: [aside] Can’t kill him.  It would set monsters back hundreds of years.

JONNY: One time in Hamburg I roomed with this dude who I caught stealing my shampoo.  I said, “Whoah, man,” and he threw a flower pot at me, but he was cool.

[seeing a female skeleton]

JONNY: Whoah, check that costume out!  Wow, seriously, I just have to ask you, how are you pulling this off?  I mean it looks so real, like I can just put up my hand right [puts hand between her ribs] through…

[female skeleton gasps and slaps him]

MALE SKELETON (ROB RIGGLE): What do you think you’re doing?

JONNY: [realizing that he’s in a room full of monsters] Uhh…she’s-she’s real…you’re real!

JONNY: “I’m Dracula, Blah!  Blah-blah!”

DRACULA: I've never said that in my life. 'Blah, blah-blah.' I don't know where that comes from.

JONNY: Wow, No one ever tried to eat me before, except for that one weird guy at a Slipknot concert.

DRACULA: Listen to me, you are never to return here. Your are to stay away and tell no humans about this place. Or I will track you down, and suck every ounce of blood from you body, until you look like a deflated whoopee cushion!

MR. FLY (CHRIS PARNELL): Wait, I speak Frozen. 

MAVIS: Dad, can you do me a favor?

DRACULA: Yes!  Yes, of course, darling, anything.

MAVIS: Will you erase my mind?

DRACULA: No no no no.  I won’t do that.  There’s too much I want you to remember.

MAVIS: You were right, Dad.  The humans hate us. 

DRACULA: Sweetheart.  There are so many eligible monsters out there.  Y-you’re so young…  What is it?  What are you reading?

[Mavis hands Dracula a booklet reading “True Love – by Mom – For your 118^th birthday”]

MARTHA: Two lonely bats crashed in the night.  They felt a zing.  Love at first sight.  They knew right then they would be husband and wife.  For a zing only happens once in your life.  Your zing will come my love.  Cherish it.  Love, Mommy.”

MAVIS: I thought we zinged, Dad. 

DRACULA: [gasps] You and Jonny?

MAVIS: I…guess it was only me.  But you should be happy, Dad.  There’s no reason for me to leave.  I have no more dreams.  I’m just like you now. 

WAYNE: What’s this minibar charge?

WANDA: Honey, the kids through the minibar out the window.

WAYNE: And that’s our fault?

DRACULA: I need you to help me find Jonny.

WAYNE: The human?!  He could have killed us!

MURRAY: He touched my guitar!

GRIFFIN: He put his hand in my mouth to see if it would disappear. 

WAYNE: Winnie!  Front and center!

[Winnie enters and smells Jonny’s shirt]

WINNIE: He got into a car.  A ’86 Fiat.  It needs a little transmission work, but otherwise okay.  It drove through town to the airport.  Flight 497.  8AM departure. 

DRACULA: That’s in fifteen minutes!

WINNIE: Seat 23A.  He ordered the vegetarian meal.

[The guys’ car is blocked by sheep]

WAYNE: I got this one. [jumps out of the car and eats sheep offscreen while the other watch in shock]  What?  Now there’s no sheep in the road.  Let’s go. 

Wolf Awareness Week II: Day 4

 

An American Werewolf in London

1981

D: John Landis

**********

Pros: Comic Relief, Great Direction, Some good characters, Restraint in building up the creature…

Cons: …until we see what the damn thing looks like, Confused tone, Arguably an idiot plot

     Wolfen and The Howling were also released in 1981, but this movie seems to be the cream of that crop.  I find this movie a bit hard to critique since it has its flaws, and its comedic elements are hard to weigh against its serious aspects.  In fact, I was on record of not liking this movie until I rewatched it for this review.  I know “contrarian” remains on my blog’s title banner as sort of a bad punchline, and I like to focus on my more unpopular opinions.  However, people like this movie and not without good reason.  Rick Baker’s Oscar-winning effects and makeup are great, and the comic relief is such that you have to watch it twice to appreciate it.  The movie does have a bit of a tone problem though.  It shifts between humor and horror, which would be fine if it had fewer flaws.  The serious aspects of the movie prevent me from simply brushing them off.  It’s not quite like Army of Darkness, where anything goes.  

     The movie begins with American students David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) hitchhiking in the Yorkshire moors.  They enter a pub called “The Slaughtered Lamb” and notice an upright pentagram on the wall.  The patrons (Brian Glover, Lila Kaye, David Schofield, Rik Mayall)  become cryptic and passive-aggressive when asked about it, and the boys decide to leave, walking into the open during a full moon.  After a suspenseful scene in which they are pursued by an unseen creature, Jack is attacked and mauled to death by a werewolf, which also bites David.  David is temporarily saved by the bar patrons, who arrived to kill the creature after some debate.  The last thing he remembers is seeing a naked man’s body in the place of the creature.  I can’t help but wonder that if these people didn’t want the two boys to venture out into the open when a werewolf was around, then why did they act like that to them?  The scene establishes good chemistry between David and Jack, the cinematography is great, the gore is satisfying, and Landis displays good restraint in depicting the monster.

      David comes to in a London hospital being treated by Dr. Hirsch (John Woodvine) and Nurse Alex Price (Jenny Agutter).  He encounters an amusing cast of characters that includes the hilariously insensitive American embassador Mr. Collins (Frank Oz).  He is interviewed by Inspector Villiers (Don McKillop) and his buffoonish but open-minded partner Sergeant McManus (Paul Kember).  Villiers insists that he was attacked by a madman rather than an animal.  David begins to question his sanity, and this is made worse when he encounters the undead soul of Jack, who tells him that he is werewolf.  His dead friend informs him he must die before he kills more people.  His victims are doomed to wander in limbo until the wolf’s bloodline is broken.  The idea that a werewolf’s kills continue to haunt him is quite clever.  I like how this doesn’t waste the two characters’ chemistry despite one’s death at the beginning.  It’s too bad Landis wasn’t around to consult on G.I. Joe: Retaliation.  It would have been interesting if one of the undead had concluded he was hellbound, and thus was motivated to keep the curse going as much as possible, being in conflict with those who want to be freed from limbo.  The makeup effects on Jack are great, and he goes through more advanced states of decay with each apparition. 

       David falls in love with Alex, even though she should be more wary of such an emotionally disturbed, if nice, man.  Here’s a problem I have with the plot: while it’s understandable that David doesn’t want to believe what he’s going through, he’s arguably being irresponsible.  He got bitten by a huge creature that immediately turned into a human upon death, and his dead friend rose from the grave to tell him in no uncertain terms that he is a werewolf.  He is either hallucinating rather critically or he has seen actual evidence that he is a werewolf.  Neither of these justify brushing off the problem as he just did.  At the very least he needs professional help.  Instead he moves in with Alex and has sex with her.  Apparently, lycanthropy is not transmitted sexually in this movie, even though I tend to think that that would make sense.  While Alex is at work, he transforms painfully into a werewolf in a celebrated scene.  Rick Baker's effects here are great, and the lack of a true reveal of the resultant monster also demonstrates good restraint. The scene serves the story well.  While I like the metamorphosis effects better in The Howling, the overall scene is better in American Werewolf because of Naughton’s acting.  The agony he sells is as important than any effect. 

      As a werewolf, he kills a total of six people that night.  One could argue that his flippant treatment of the problem makes him culpable for these deaths.  A particularly well-executed scene takes place when he kills one man (Michael Carter) in the London Underground.  The scene is superbly shot, not showing the creature up to its end, and even then we  only see a frighteningly subtle glimpse of the creature.  Landis directs a horror movie surprisingly well.  He wakes up naked in a zoo with no memory of the event, and this leads to some funny moments, including his stealing balloons from a young boy (Rufus Deakin) to cover his nakedness.  His humorous demeanor in this scene unfortunately clashes with what would be a logical reaction: horror that he has either turned into a werewolf or undergone a werewolf-themed fugue state.  He should be very worried about what he has done during this night.  He doesn’t put two and two together until he stumbles upon the news of the murders.  Then he gets it.  It’s hard to relate to the protagonist when he lacks common sense. 

      More likable is Dr. Hirsch.  He starts out the movie being amusingly witty, but as he begins to see holes in David’s case, he investigates.  When travels to the countryside to visit “The Slaughtered Lamb,” but is brushed off by all the patrons except one, who tells him the secret.  He still doesn’t believe this talk of lycanthropy, but he knows that something is terribly wrong and tries to track down David to get him to safety.  He turns out to be one of the stronger and more likable protagonists in the film, but he’s a secondary character who ends up having little effect on the story’s outcome.

      That night, a distressed David is led into (for some reason) an adult theater by Jack, who introduces him to the souls of the people he killed that night.  After they try to talk him into committing suicide, he remains in the theater until he transforms again into a werewolf.  Unfortunately, we finally have to see what he looks like as one. 

It looks more cute than intimidating.  The shape is rather awkward and clumsy, not to mention fluffy.  The legendary Rick Baker, for all the skill he possesses at his craft, made the questionable decision to base the design off his Keeshond, and Keeshonden are not terribly threatening dogs.  They are adorable, rolly-polly little balls of fluff that are so friendly that they are often used as therapy dogs.  Maybe I owe an apology to The Company of Belgian Tervurens.  It’s one of the most absurd attempts to pass off something cute as something scary, though I suppose I’ve seen worse.

      David then goes on a bloody rampage in Piccadilly Circus, which results in some very well-executed deaths of many people including Inspector Villiers and a guy played by John Landis.  Alex arrives on the scene and attempts to calm the creature down when the latter is cornered in an alley.  Her pleas momentarily reach him, but he reverts and is shot by policemen.

      An American Werewolf in London does seem a bit confused in its tone, but it’s never boring.  The dialogue is very funny, and consistently so.  It’s not the type of humor that you appreciate in one viewing, so I suggest watching it twice.  Fans of good comedy will love the witty dialogue, and fans of horror will love the violence, effects and atmosphere (even if werewolf fans will be disappointed by the creature design).  The design is difficult to pass of as a joke because of how earnest the effects and direction in this movie are.  The visuals are very good, with wonderful scenery and effects.  Landis truly shows his skills as a director in this movie.  He also introduces many clever ideas into the story.  However, there are many things to criticize about the characters and story.  I would like to say that this is a horror comedy that subverts and deconstructs audience expectations while remaining affectionate to the genre it’s spoofing.  This would justify the serious buildup to a goofy creature reveal, but this theory is somewhat discredited in my eyes by the depressing ending.   Still, if one doesn’t take it too seriously, it’s a very entertaining movie.  I can see why this has stood the test of time better than its contemporaries.       

     

    

 QUOTES 

JACK: Thanks for the ride, sir.  You have lovely sheep.

FARMER: Boys, just keep off the moors and stick to the roads, and the best of luck.

DAVID: Thanks again.  [to sheep] We’ll miss you.

JACK: Bye, girls.

MR. COLLINS: These dumbass kids.  They never appreciate what you do for them.

PORTER (ALBERT MOSES): Don’t ask me.  I’m just an orderly.  I move things around.

JACK: [appearing to David as a ghost for the first time] Can I have a piece of toast?

DAVID: I will not be threatened by a walking meatloaf.

DAVID: [transforming into a werewolf] I didn’t mean to call you a meatloaf, Jack!

CHILD: A naked American man stole my balloons.