Digging into the dream sequences of An American Werewolf in London
One of the most underrated classic creatures is the werewolf. Its been around in myth for centuries and film for nearly that long. Werewolf of London graced screens in 1935 and 90 years later we got Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man which was a disappointment for critics and fans alike. In between that run we would get a smattering of the Lycan terror from a Hammer Films classic with Curse of the Werewolf to a whole series with them vs. vampires in Underworld. Would you believe that 1981 would give us not one, not two, but THREE werewolf movies? I’ve been lucky enough to discuss all 3 in some fashion either as a Black Sheep with the criminally underrated Wolfen with Albert Finney or the differences between the novel and movie as with Joe Dante’s The Howling . My favorite of the three, and something I’ve only covered briefly, is An American Werewolf in London which, for me, set the bar for which all horror comedies are measured. Stay out of the moors as we look at one of the things that makes the movie so dang good.
John Landis is a comedy movie legend but has also always loved horror movies. He came up with the idea for the script for An American Werewolf in London all the way back in 1969 in Yugoslavia while he was a production assistant on the war movie Kelly’s Heroes. He saw a group of Romani people doing a ritual on a body so that he would stay dead and thought, that’s weird and spooky. After making a few movies like his debut with Schlock and then Animal House, Kentucky Fried Movie, and The Blues Brothers, he had clout and was sought out by studios. Executives who read the script, however, felt it was too funny to be scary or too scary to be funny. Landis himself considers it a horror movie with some comedic moments as it is horrifying and doesn’t really end up good for our main characters, does it?
Those main characters could have been played by Dan Akroyd and John Belushi as Universal, which was the studio that finally green lit the project, wanted to replicate the chemistry and success of The Blues Brothers. Landis would win out though, and we would get David Naughton and Griffin Dunne as David and Jack. Jenny Agutter and John Woodvine would end up with the other major parts, but everyone pulls their weight and especially the 3 leads show up strong as it is ultimately a character piece. David Naughton wasn’t a complete unknown at the time of this movie and had actually shown up in an episode of the Planet of the Apes TV series. He would go on to have a really solid career that is still going on today but for us it’s things like Amityville: A New Generation and Body Bags that give us joy. Jenny Agutter started off strong in the world of TV before Walkabout in 1971 made her famous which was followed by stuff like Logan’s Run and Dominique before todays movie. Dunne may have had the longest and most beloved career with stuff like After Hours, This Is Us, and even a short film Oscar nomination. He’s one of those guys that has huge range and is always entertaining. Final bit of casting is Rick Mayal of Drop Dead Fred (at least how I best know him) and Brian Glover from Alien 3.
The movie follows a similar plot of classic werewolf movies involving a curse. David and Jack are American graduate students taking a backpacking trip through England where they end up getting lost in the moors and stalked by what sounds like a rather large wolf. The men are attacked with Jack being killed and David being cursed with being a werewolf himself. David slowly heals at a hospital but is warned by his friend Jack, seemingly zombified or a ghost, only he can see, that he is now a werewolf and should end his life before the full moon or others will pay the price. In addition to these visions, David has disturbing dreams until he finally changes into a wolf and kills several people before waking up in a zoo. The moon is still full so the next night so David changes again even after Jack and all the people he killed tell him to take his own life before he changes again. Unfortunately, he doesn’t heed their pleas and warnings and ends up causing a disaster of death outside of an adult theater before getting killed in an alley way.
The movie is nearly perfect, so breaking down specific scenes is both easy and difficult to do. Nearly everything you would want to discuss is a worthy topic but the flip side of that is being overwhelmed with options. The Academy Award-winning transformation scene may be the most deserving, but I also feel like it’s the most predictable and talked about already, so that’s out. The beginning leading up to the first attack or the madhouse scene at the end with car accidents and decapitations could also be a fun topic but I’m more thinking something subjective. A little more up for interpretation. Today I want to discuss the dreams that David has while also including the hallucinations he experiences because those mean something too. All told he has close to 7 sequences that can be lumped into a dream-like state so let’s get into them.
The first one is a little over 19 minutes in and it’s a great transition from David being almost in a waking comatose state to a POV of someone, or something, running through a forest. Its great because at times it’s hard to tell if it’s a four-legged creature or a man running. The height of the camera and the speed and sound of the number of limbs hitting the ground fluctuates enough that it could be either. David wakes up from this one in a very calm manner, almost as if whatever is brewing in him is currently peaceful depending on how far we are from the full moon. It’s also subtle enough that he doesn’t mention anything yet to the doctor because it’s innocuous and he doesn’t fully know what’s happened yet. He didn’t even know Jack was dead. This also leads me to fully think he is at peace here because he doesn’t have the fear or guilt of what happened to take over his thoughts.
The next one happens just before the 25-minute mark and starts almost identical to the previous one. We get a POV of something in the forest but now it switches to a nude David being the one running and its third person. This can be seen as David being stripped of his innocence and being viewed by the world as well as his own self after he finds out that it was apparently a man that attacked them, not a wolf. His thoughts now posit himself as the man and he comes across two deer. These deer could easily be interpreted as Jack and David themselves with dream David killing deer Jack as a sign of his guilt, or, perhaps more horrifying, dream David killing the deer representing himself as he no longer is truly him anymore and just the wolf inside waiting to take complete control. We don’t see his reaction to this dream, but I’d imagine it was more troublesome than the last.
The third dream is a fight. We get a clothed David wearing the outfit he was attacked in with the music being much more pulse pounding. While this is almost certainly a non-diegetic soundtrack, it still portrays his anxiety. This is one of the last fragments of the old David who is now forced to watch as the unstoppable curse inside him is taking control, and he is helpless to watch as he potentially hurts Alex. I’d feel bad too because who didn’t fall at least a little in love with this character when they first saw her. While he is not a wolf yet, the David in the hospital bed sports a deranged visage that includes wolf features, which his brain is trying to compartmentalize with the story that he was attacked by a man and not a wolf. After this we immediately get a scene where David discusses the dreams with Doctor Hirsch.
The next entry is different as it evolves into David interacting with others. In fact, this is where we aren’t entirely sure what’s real and what isn’t anymore. It doesn’t even feel like a dream at first as David is suddenly home with his family watching The Muppet Show, the second appearance in the movie for Frank Oz come to think of it, when his house is besieged by monsters who all vaguely resemble wolves in some way. They slaughter his family and destroy his home before killing him which is foreshadowing that this wolf curse will destroy everything he has. He awakens from the dream and again interacts with another human, Alex who opens the window, but this is a twofer when she is seemingly killed by one of the same creatures who entered his home. While these are both dreams, it also transitions into the waking nightmares of seeing his dead friend who is also cursed to his fate until the line is severed, which means death for David. It’s a great series of transitions as David no longer dreams, unless he has dreams of the acts of violence, he commits which is a whole new level of terrifying. Jack still looks like himself here for the most part and even jokes with his buddy, but the message is clear, take his own life before the moon adds to the lineage of body count so everyone can rest peacefully.
The second Jack visit further cements the surrealness of the situation. While it appears through a subtle head turn that Jack is aware of other people it’s probably also true that only David can see him. Here, though, he apparently can interact with real world objects as he opens the door to Alex’s bedroom. He then hears her call for David but what throws a wrench in the whole ordeal is that she claims she heard voices, plural, which could be the supernatural in our world but even scarier is it could be David becoming an unreliable narrator and even imagining what he heard Alex say. The final one is post rampage in the theater with an adult movie featuring one of Landis best inside jokes and all the new people David has cursed to exist between life and death. Jack has continued to get worse which is also indictive of David’s sanity. The last thing he sees before the final turn is his best friend. He dies a monster but just maybe he dies loving someone who also loved him. Something he believes is the only way to kill a werewolf. While Alex doesn’t pull the trigger, her presence makes David show himself.
All of An American Werewolf in London is great from the special effects to the acting and even the basic storyline is elevated by all of the other ingredients being top notch. We clearly went to Trader Joes and Wholefoods for those. While many of the moments can be teased apart and taken a deeper dive into, it’s the dreams and discussions with dead friends that I find the most horrific in the film and have maybe the most interpretations available. What do you get out of the dreams? Let me know as well as what your favorite werewolf movie is.
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