The best werewolf black comedy ever made, with piles of references to classic wolfin’ flicks that make it extra fun for film geeks. Writer/director John Landis really cared about this one. It’s strangely moving without ever trying to be something other than a monster movie. It’s so entertaining that, for some of us, it’s granted Landis a pass through decades of mostly Hollywood hackwork. He’s just distinctive enough that we keep thinking that he might get good again someday.
Like Steven Spielberg, like Joe Dante, Landis started his film education as a kid at the Saturday matinees of the early 1960s and he’s never gotten over it. He’s seen every old spook show and so have some of his characters. There’s only one werewolf story in the world: guy gets attacked by a beast in the dark, survives with some scratches that infect him with the curse, turns into a wolf at the first full moon, chows down on human meat all night and then has no memory of it the next day.
That’s the story that Landis tells here, but this time it’s set in early 80s punk rock London. Also, Jenny Agutter plays a sexy nurse, superstar make-up man Rick Baker handles the all-important transformation scene and there’s a funny sequence that tells the often-untold story of what happens when a werewolf wakes up the next day as a naked man out in public.
What makes it great is that Landis is never humbled by the past here. He respects and acknowledges the Lon Chaney and Oliver Reed movies… and then he tries to top them. Or at least he seeks to make something that stands on its own. A new classic, something with its own weirdness and surprises. A fun trip to the movies. I’m glad to have bought a ticket.