Minds of Fear 30 Cult Classics of the Modern Horror Film

Introduction

So what makes Minds of Fear any more interesting than the many other horror film books vying for your attention? Well, aside from the fact that this little labor of love has involved conducting a number of exclusive interviews with top genre names, what you have in your hands is the perfect guide to 30 horror flicks that are each well worth your time. You may even discover a little gem that you otherwise might never have given the time of day — hence the focus, throughout this publication, on movies that haven’t yet suffered from overexposure. As tempting as it may have been to dedicate sections to Night of the Living Dead, Last House on the Left (already the subject of a tremendous book release from the UK’s FAB Press) or Halloween, the wealth of information available on these titles arguably reached saturation point a long time ago. However, from such classic benchmarks as An American Werewolf in London and The Hills Have Eyes to guilty pleasures like Evilspeak and Silent Night, Deadly Night and finally to the modern hits Jeepers Creepers and Wrong Turn, there should be something in here to satisfy every scary-movie addict. And even if you have seen every feature discussed in this tome, the variety of actors/directors/producers/writers and special effects maestros interviewed to accompany each entry should — at the very least — reveal a few interesting, even thought-provoking, secrets about the making of these cult favorites.

Of course one person’s gold is another person’s garbage and it is worth noting that horror film fans are possibly the most argumentative bunch you’ll ever come across…just go to a convention or a genre movie festival and see for yourself. Better yet, take a trip onto an online horror message forum — sooner or later things will get messy and expletives thrown around as passionate fans argue over whether or not, say, Fulci’s walking dead have held up better than Romero’s. Well, that’s been my experience anyway. Horror movie followers are dedicated and opinionated and so are the genre’s critics — and who would have it any other way? The conflicting essays and reviews inherent in many a genre publication or online web site are what makes the horror scene so exciting, invigorating and thought-provoking. The loyalty of its fans (who often carry an encyclopedic knowledge of their subject) is usually nothing less than startling, and for those filmmakers, special effects artists and performers who work in the genre, one can only imagine that it is a rewarding experience to encounter such devotion. However, it is rare to find that unified horror gem that brings together fans and critics alike in deeming it as an undisputed classic. As such, the 30 films discussed in this book are likely to cause a number of disagreements among readers. In answer to any complaints about leaving out such and such a film in favor of a movie of lesser quality, all I can say is that each title contains a critique whereupon I have tried, as best I can, to put forward my own favorable defense. Even so, one would be stupid not to be prepared for any resulting controversy…

For example, for everyone, such as myself, who proclaims Scream (1996) to be a contemporary great, there will be many others to state the opposite, perhaps arguing that it is little more than a glossy retread of the films that it sets out to spoof. While it is probably safe to consider Night of the Living Dead (1968) an undisputed masterpiece and the benchmark of modern terror (it is certainly difficult to find any critical dismissal of it), everything else falls onto far trickier ground. The Exorcist (1973) might be a classic to Mark Kermode, who writes at length about the movie in his British Film Institute book on it, but to Phil Hardy in The Aurum Film Encyclopedia it is full of flaws. Likewise, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) might be considered an untouchable milestone to many — but Leslie Halliwell largely dismisses it in his popular Film Guide. Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) seems to attract the same level of hatred as it does support, and while Friday the 13th (1980) was a huge (and influential) hit in its day, few would consider it worthy of being discussed in the same breath as Night of the Living Dead.

As such, each movie written about in the forthcoming pages is a personal choice — a film that has, in some way, etched its way into my collection (and my heart) since my love affair with the genre began at five years old and a showing of An American Werewolf in London. Were your folks crazy? asked John Landis when I revealed this to him. Well, you can blame it on my older sister and the family’s investment in a video recorder rather than on my parents, but seeing horror films with childhood eyes is something that I personally miss. Plot holes, stupid characterization and incompetent filmmaking could be swept aside back when I was a wee 10-year-old feasting on a diet of Amityville, Basket Case, The Evil Dead and Friday the 13th. Looking at these films now, with adult eyes, I don’t honestly know that I’d let a child see them — but when I was younger these were the greatest things ever and they never, for one second, did me any harm at all. Well, except for causing me to write about them…

A Few Words About the Modern Horror Film

The modern horror film is largely seen to have begun with Night of the Living Dead (interested readers should check out Kim Newman’s essential Nightmare Movies for further discussion), although the first horror film to really take terror out of the realm of the Gothic and the supernatural and place it in our present, everyday lives was undoubtedly Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960).

Herschell Gordon Lewis went further by inventing the splatter film with 1963’s Blood Feast — and Lewis gets acknowledged in this very publication through his 1964 classic Two Thousand Maniacs! In Italy, Mario Bava mixed Psycho with added blood and gore and the result, 1963’s Blood and Black Lace, is probably the very first body count, or slasher, movie. Where George Romero really changed things, with Night of the Living Dead, was with his finale. Up until 1968, horror films invariably featured a wrap up, whereupon evil was defeated and the audience could comfortably leave the theater without feeling too distraught by the onscreen unpleasantness. Yet, when Duane Jones is shot dead in Romero’s film — after having done everything correctly in order to fight the zombie plague — and his body mercilessly burned by a group of gun-toting rednecks, things changed. Suddenly horror did not have to follow any rules at all. Romero broke every rule. There was no happy ending in Night of the Living Dead. The terror is not destroyed at the end, and the audience has faced so many macabre, disturbing images (even today, the undead little girl stabbing her mother to death remains among the most horrifying sights in genre history) that the movie is genuinely difficult to shake off. Predictably, Romero’s influence is present in almost every film in this book.

The realistic brutality of Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972) is certainly a further turning point for horror cinema’s depiction of graphic violence, and the full-color disembowelments make even Night of the Living Dead look tame. How things had changed in only four years. Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre took Craven’s stark realism one step further by combining it with genuinely credible filmmaking and, surprisingly, actually managing to attract an enormous audience in the process. If William Friedkin’s The Exorcist did anything, it was to reaffirm Satan as a threat during the decade of Last House-inspired contemporary, real life, serial killer villains and produce a modern blockbuster. The movie also ushered in a new era of grisly special effects that would be followed up by the gory excess of Dawn of the Dead (1979) — perhaps still the definitive landmark of splatter cinema. Halloween (1978), and later Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), would inspire the general direction of American horror cinema during the 1980s (witness even the slasher film coda in 1987’s Fatal Attraction) for better and for worse. After these three hits, anyone with a money-spinning horror character would tire themselves out with two or three sequels — witness the direct-to-video schlock of the Sleepaway Camp (1983) and Slumber Party Massacre (1983) series. The slasher film movement is focused upon with five of the better examples in Chapter Three.

Italian horror cinema would find itself indebted to Dario Argento, Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci, although their impact on the English-speaking world was largely undervalued for a considerable length of time. That Argento’s Suspiria (1977) is the forefather of Halloween, and his early giallo films the inspiration behind a number of mainstream thrillers, from Dressed to Kill (1980) to 2004’s Saw, now goes without saying. That everyone from Tim Burton to Scorsese now credits Bava as a master filmmaker seems to have secured his reputation — as does the lingering influence of his Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971) upon the stalker movie genre. Fulci, meanwhile, remains the darling of low-budget independent filmmakers everywhere — his influence even managing to spread to the Far East, as fans of 1988’s Japanese oddity Evil Dead Trap will attest. My recent visit to the Los Angeles-based special effects house Spectral Motion, which has worked on Hellboy (2004) and Blade 3 (2004), confirmed that Fulci’s reputation has finally begun to penetrate the mainstream as the makeup artists sang the late director’s praises.

The 1980s also saw the rise of David Cronenberg’s weird form of body horror, which reached its peak with 1982’s outstanding Videodrome — a sure influence on the gory visuals of, among many others, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987) and Brian Yuzna’s Society (1989). As a new decade was ushered in, the nineties were initially a quiet time for the genre. 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs succeeded in advertising itself as something it was not (i.e., a top-rate thriller as opposed to a big-budget psychological thriller), although its presence on any number of direct-to-video serial killer movies is immeasurable. 1995’s Seven, likewise, chose not to advertise itself as a horror movie despite its giallo roots and often disgusting visuals. The subsequent influence of David Fincher’s movie on horror has not been especially vital, despite its commercial success, and it was instead Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) that reinvigorated the genre. Scream spawned a number of copycat movies ranging from I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) to Halloween H20 (1998) as well as its own sequels. Afew years later and 1999’s The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense allowed the genre to be more adult again — the scares in each film being far more imaginative, mature and primal than those seen in, for instance, 1998’s awful Urban Legend.

Since Blair Witch and The Sixth Sense, it has been difficult to point a finger toward another original horror title that has, in effect, broken new ground or inspired a new confidence in the genre at the box office. However, this may be a rash conclusion. After all, it can take a few years before a film’s influence can really be measured and the recent success of, for instance, Open Water (2004) might well create a renewed interest in shark movies and even the release of Jaws 5. Hey, it couldn’t be any worse than Jaws: The Revenge, could it? What is for sure is that, post-September 11th, there has been an unmistakable rise in the popularity of horror flicks — and especially fantasy-based horror features whereupon the viewer is transported into a living, breathing comic book full of macabre violence. Just check out some of the films that reached number one at the American box office during 2003 alone: Freddy Vs. Jason, Jeepers Creepers 2 and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre remake. Terror is big business yet again…as long as it remains far enough adjusted from reality. With the possible exception of King of the Ants, Chapter Six showcases a small selection of horror movies, made since the turn of the new millennium, that are decidedly removed from the brutal reality that previous trendsetters such as Last House on the Left reveled in.

Disagree with the choices in this book? Well you can either write your own follow-up or take solace in some of the films that were considered but ultimately left out of this first chapter. 1973’s The Wicker Man was definitely one movie that, had Allan Brown not written his own excellent book on it, would have been included here. 1980’s Italian classic Inferno is another horror title that I hold a lot more highly than most, although including a Euro-horror title is arguably taking this book down a whole other street. After all, European horror is almost a genre unto itself — with its own star directors and subgenres. 1974’s Deranged was also played around with, since it remains a powerful slice of nastiness all these years later. For the Future Classics chapter I deeply regret not being able to write about Marc Evans’ excellent My Little Eye (2002), which left me feeling, to put it bluntly, pretty damn fucked up when the end credits rolled in the cinema. Only my failure to nail down Evans for an interview on the film (having already discussed his new movie, Trauma, at length with him) stopped this excellent title from inclusion. 2003’s May, another modern cult hit, was also thought about as a possibility for this chapter but, looking back, I don’t regret the films chosen here. Each entry is a fine film, and a cult classic, in its own right and if this publication manages to alert at least a handful of readers to the merits of, say, Death Line, then it is a job well done.

Calum Waddell

The Exorcist — trash or treasure?

Chapter 1: Modern Classics

Five landmarks of the contemporary fear film

An American Werewolf in London

Director: John Landis

Produced by: George Folsey Jr.

Written by: John Landis

Cast: David Naughton; Jenny Agutter; Griffin Dunne; John Woodvine; Lila Kaye; Joe Belcher; David Schofield; Brian Glover;Anne-Marie Davies; Frank Oz; Don McKillop; Paul Kember

Special Effects: Rick Baker

Year: 1981

Plot Synopsis:

David (Naughton) and Jack (Dunne) are two young Americans backpacking across Europe. In England, the two begin their trek across the vast Yorkshire moors. They arrive at a small local pub called The Slaughtered Lamb. When they enter they meet with a cold reception. Nevertheless, Gladys (Kaye), the barmaid, serves them a cup of tea and the two Americans take a seat. Jack notices a pentangle on the wall and mentions to David that it is the sign of the wolf. He asks his friend to raise the subject but David objects. Remember the Alamo, comments Jack — which is overheard by Gladys and leads to a Mexican joke from one of the men in the pub (Glover). Jack finally asks what the pentangle on the wall is for and the pub goes quiet. The two boys are told to leave and warned, beware the moon and stick to the road. Outside, the two backpackers opt to get as far away from The Slaughtered Lamb as possible. As they do they wander onto the moors. Soon they find themselves lost and followed by a mysterious animal that growls and stalks them. Back at The Slaughtered Lamb, Gladys tells her customers that they should not have let the two Americans leave. She tells the men to go and help them.

Jack falls over on the moors. When David attempts to help him up to his feet, a huge wolf attacks and begins to devour his friend. David turns to run but, hearing Jack’s screams, he doubles back where he, too, is attacked. The men from The Slaughtered Lamb arrive and shoot the wolf dead. David has been mauled. He sees his attacker appear in human form, just before he blacks out.

Three weeks later, David regains consciousness at a London hospital. Two nurses are present: Alex Price (Agutter) and Nurse Gallagher (Davies). David is under the care of a friendly male doctor called Hirsch (Woodvine). David blacks out again and dreams about running through some woodland. When David wakes up, an obnoxious man from the American Embassy (Oz) arrives to grill him. David explains that it was not a lunatic that attacked him but a wolf.

Two men from Scotland Yard (McKillop and Kember) arrive in Hirsch’s office to investigate the case. They then interview David, who restates that he was attacked by a wolf. However, the case is deemed closed because the body of his attacker was found. David again dreams about running through the woods. This time he is naked and he beheads a deer with his bare hands.

Alex brings David some food to eat. They flirt. David has another nightmare — this time he dreams that he sees himself turn into a vampire while being attended to by Alex. When he wakes up he informs Doctor Hirsch that he’d rather not be left alone.

Alex spends the night looking after David. He tells her that she is very attractive and falls asleep again. David has a nightmare in which a gang of maniacs kills his entire family. When he awakens, one of the maniacs arrives in the hospital room and kills Alex. He wakes up again, having had a nightmare-within-a-nightmare.

The next morning David sees Jack — who appears to him as a decaying corpse. Jack warns David that he will turn into a werewolf at the next full moon. David screams for Alex, and when she arrives he kisses her. Alex asks David if he would like to stay with her when he is released from hospital the following day. The next evening David and Alex make love at her house. When David wakes up during the night, he is again greeted by Jack, who then repeats his warning about David’s metamorphosis into a lycanthrope. Alex goes to work the next day and leaves David alone. Doctor Hirsch investigates The Slaughtered Lamb where one customer (Schofield) warns him that the boy is in danger. At Alex’s apartment, David changes into a werewolf and prowls the night. His first victims are a young couple (Geoffrey Burridge and Brenda Cavendish) and their friend (Christopher Scoular). Hirsch is concerned for David’s safety and asks Alex to call home — when she does there is no answer.

Three tramps are attacked and killed by David. His final victim is a businessman returning home via the London underground (Michael Carter). The next morning, David wakes up naked in London Zoo’s wolf den. He escapes and, after stealing someone’s jacket, makes it back to Alex’s house. Alex hails a taxi to return him to the hospital, but when the taxi driver talks about the previous evening’s murders, David insists on being let out of the cab.

Alex chases after David as he shouts that he was the one responsible. David tries, and fails, to get himself arrested. He tells Alex that he loves her and kisses her goodbye. David rings his house in America and talks to his young sister. He fails to slit his wrists in the phone booth, and notices Jack beckoning him into a pornographic movie house. In the cinema, Jack introduces David to his latest victims, who all tell him to commit suicide. However, it is too late and David begins to transform again.

The police barricade up the cinema after David mauls a customer. The werewolf escapes, killing one of the men from Scotland Yard and wrecking havoc around Trafalgar Square. The police corner the wolf, but Alex breaks through their firing squad. She tells David that she loves him, but when the wolf attempts to pounce at her, the police open fire and kill it. David’s dead, bullet-ridden body lies on the ground as Alex weeps and Dr. Hirsch runs to her side.

Critique:

An American Werewolf in London is a movie that hits so many high points that it is difficult to even know where to begin, but this is likely to be one of the most biased critiques that you will ever read of the feature. Simply put, An American Werewolf in London is rivaled only by Fantasia and the first two Godfather movies as this author’s favorite film of all time. Yes, it really is that good and if you have — as unlikely as it is — picked up this book without having seen the movie, then one can only emphasize his envy at the thought of once again viewing this classic for the first time.

From the endlessly quotable script (A naked American man just stole my balloons or Have you ever tried talking to a corpse? It’s boring!), to the groundbreaking man-to-beast transformation courtesy of Rick Baker, the movie is every bit as entertaining now as it was 25 years ago. While new breakthroughs in digital special effects have allowed for the sort of realism evident in productions such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy (and, indeed, permitted for such horrific cinematic experiences as the Star Wars prequels), there remains a huge satisfaction in knowing that what you are watching was actually constructed by someone from the ground up. Moreover, it is a testament to the skills of Baker that David Naughton’s incredible metamorphosis into a four-legged lycanthrope is still amazing to watch, especially as it takes place with full lighting, and the sequence certainly puts to shame the computer-generated transformations that informed the 1997 in-name-only sequel An American Werewolf in Paris. Even when one looks at the werewolf design for 2003’s awful Goth blockbuster Underworld — a film with budget to spare — the end result is not even fit to lick the boots of this movie. [1] While some have argued that Joe Dante’s 1981 classic The Howling has the superior lycanthrope, [2] this writer is inclined to disagree simply because of the sheer length of the special effect that Baker creates, not to mention the emotional involvement that we have in David Naughton’s character. His portrayal is so accomplished, and his character so likeable, that his pain becomes our pain — undoubtedly the sign of a classic picture. Furthermore, breaking the rules of the genre, Landis makes it clear from the get-go that his werewolf does not need silver bullets to die. This is very much a movie that drags an old literary and cinematic genre into the contemporary age and, in doing so, recreates everything that went before it.

The special effects aside, what really makes An American Werewolf in London such a delight is its obvious humanity. Credible, unforgettable characters drive a narrative that flips between humor and horror with an ease that most other genre movies can surely only envy. Certainly, neither emotion ever clashes with the other — such is the skill of Landis as a director and the beauty of his script. It is remarkable that the director creates some of the most nightmarish moments ever filmed, such as the dream-within-a-dream set piece and the shocking moment in which Naughton tears a deer’s head asunder with his bare hands, yet he also crafts a number of laughs and a genuinely moving romantic subplot. The number of laugh-out-loud moments is too vast to comprehensibly list; however, it should be noted that Landis’ eye for documenting the personalities and culture of England is impeccable. The cheery Cockney couple, the straitlaced policeman at Trafalgar Square, the tackiness of British sex comedies from the 1970s, the all-male Northern pub, the overworked National Health Service staff and the grim hospital meals all lead one to conclude that this is somebody whose knack for satire is unparalleled. Perhaps the film’s standout comedy moment involves the initially silent welcome that the two Americans are greeted with when they enter The Slaughtered Lamb, an isolated Northern English pub. The entire scene will likely have most British viewers in hysterics and yet, this hilarity quickly turns to something altogether more sinister at the blink of an eye. What is at first lighthearted and amusing begins to seem conclusively more mysterious — and our laughs turn to nervous anticipation as Dunne and Naughton are forced to leave the pub and walk into certain danger. Landis’ casting choices are all excellent. Jenny Agutter makes for an inspired choice — her natural beauty shines throughout the movie, although she is not too glamorous (one might say that she really is a brilliant example of the girl next door) for us to find it impossible to believe her spontaneous romancing of a strange American man. Agutter embeds her character with a sad-eyed hint of misfortune that is perhaps inevitable from an overworked and underpaid NHS nurse. When she tells Naughton about her failed relationships, it adds a real emotional impact to the movie’s sudden, tragic ending. There is evident chemistry between the two stars, and the end result makes for one of the most believable onscreen romances this side of Casablanca. When Naughton is shot dead at the finale of the movie, it is following Agutter’s pained I love you, which in the hands of many lesser filmmakers could all too easily descend into farce (she is, after all, speaking to a werewolf!). Instead, the emotional performance by Agutter actually makes her lover’s death as bittersweet and moving as anything ever put on screen and infinitely more effective than such redundant romantic comedies as Pretty Woman (1990) or Sleepless in Seattle (1993). It is indeed difficult, if not impossible, to think of any other horror movie that can boast an honest, powerful romance to accompany the inevitable carnage — making An American Werewolf in London a truly unique experience. Exactly how this hodgepodge of so many different emotions and ideas did not end up as a farce is beyond belief, and on account of this movie alone one feels that a case could, and should, be made for Landis to be listed as one of the finest directors to ever walk onto a film set.

If all of this praise seems somewhat overbearing, then keep in mind that this is the movie that also features a cameo from the Muppets, a naked David Naughton running around London Zoo, a killer soundtrack and, perhaps best of all, a jovial talking corpse — without a doubt one of cinema’s most inspired sights. Dunne’s performance is flawless as the dead Jack Goodman, appearing to forewarn Naughton’s character about his imminent transformation, and one wishes that he had gone on to do more in front of the camera (although appearing in this film and then working with Scorsese on 1985’s masterful After Hours is boasting right enough by anyone’s standards). However, perhaps the greatest tragedy of An American Werewolf in London is that Naughton never went on to become a leading man even in spite of the talent that he showcases in this feature. Considering that his performance is the standard by which every subsequent, and even previous, werewolf film should be measured upon (even Jack Nicholson’s turn in 1994’s Wolf does not hold a candle to Naughton’s complex and tormented leading role), it is unfortunate that the actor never received further opportunities in films of this size. Moreover, for those of us who have little fondness toward the commotion, inwardness and quagmire of the U.K.’s capital city, it is a cathartic experience to see a werewolf trash the entire area.

An American Werewolf in London not only forced the Academy Awards to recognize makeup effects as a genuine art form, it also paved the way for a short spell of lycanthrope movies that included The Beast Within (1982) and the Stephen King adaptation Silver Bullet (1984). Although no future movie could ever come close to recreating the special magic that is evident in Landis’ feature, it is pleasant to know that 2000’s Ginger Snaps and 2002’s Dog Soldiers have, at the very least, made an admirable attempt to do so.

And remember: Beware the moon and stick to the road.

Standout Moment:

Could it be Jenny Agutter’s now-legendary shower scene? Not quite. Rick Baker’s amazing transformation sequence is still an incredible accomplishment.

Memories of the Film:

Following the classic comedies Animal House in 1978 and The Blues Brothers in 1980, John Landis would enter the horror field with a bang with An American Werewolf in London. Well, I’d written it in 1969, reveals the director. "I was out in Yugoslavia working on Kelly’s Heroes and when I made the movie in 1981 it was almost exactly the same. So what changed? Well, there was this cartoon theater…the first time I was in London was 1965, and then in 1975 I was hired as one of the writers for The Spy Who Loved Me, which at the time was to be directed by Guy Hamilton — who later pulled out. It was back then that I spent a lot of time in London, it was the time when [Bond franchise owners] Cubby Broccoli and Harry Salzman were at each other’s throats all the time…and I went to these cartoon theaters. There was one in Piccadilly Circus, one in Victoria Station, one at Trafalgar Square and one at Leicester Square. They had these perfect prints of the Warner Bros. and Disney cartoons, and they showed all the classics — Ward Kimball, Tex Avery, Friz Freleng — and at that time in the U.S.A. you only saw them on television. So I was frequenting these cartoon cinemas and the only other people there were the homeless or children, whose mothers had left them there so they could get away to work. Anyway, when I wrote the movie I set the end sequence at Arrow’s Theatre in Piccadilly and I originally had the carnage unfold to Road Runner cartoons. Then when I went back to shoot the film, the theater was showing porn — and so we changed that and that’s the only difference between the script I wrote for it back in 1969 and the one that made it to the screen."

As for why it took so long for the film to make it to the big screen, Landis remains candid. "In the movie business — well, it’s called the biz, or the industry — it’s not about quality, it’s about success and when you have a bit of success it gives you some power. So Animal House was successful, which allowed me to make The Blues Brothers, which was also successful and they didn’t expect it to be because it was this twisted comedy, and that led to me being allowed to make An American Werewolf in London. Virtually every studio had turned down the script since 1969 — it was considered to be too weird. Then I finally got to make it." An American Werewolf features Griffin Dunne and David Naughton, both unknown actors at the time, in fantastic performances. All the same, was there any reason for casting unknowns in the lead roles? This was a different time, states Landis. "In the movie business now it’s the cart before the horse — you develop a franchise or make movies out of comic books and everything is pre-sold. It was a better time then, you could still make films from your own platform, but now it’s either you make it big in the first three days (of release) or you don’t. I wanted people to accept these two boys as just being two boys. That’s my reason. With Jenny (Agutter)…I had known her for years and I was a big fan of her early stuff, right from The Railway Children. It was an insane part for her to play because she invites this patient back home with her and I wanted to cast someone that the audience could take seriously in that role and not just think she was a slut," laughs the director.

From the spoof of the film in the Guinness television advertisements to the consistent television showings on U.K. television, An American Werewolf secured its place in the British consciousness a long time ago. However, it did not fare quite so well in the States. Why does the director think this might be? Well, first of all it did quite well here in America, maintains Landis. It wasn’t a big hit…people were taken aback by the graphic violence. In the U.S. it’s considered to be a comedy, while in the U.K. it’s considered to be a horror film, which is correct — I wanted to make a horror film and it’s not really a very funny film. It has some humor in it — I mean, it’s a British film, it was financed in Britain. Not that the film went without acclaim in America — and Landis admits that he was thrilled to bits when Rick Baker received an Oscar for his work on the movie.

To this day, An American Werewolf and John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing are the movies that are usually held up as examples that you don’t need CGI for good effects — surely this is something of an honor? "The Thing came out a year later, states the director. I thought it was great. But it got terrible reviews and no one went to see it and I never understood why. It was a wonderful movie…But, you know — if I did Werewolf now I’d do a combination of both. I think when it’s done well it works — like with some of the scenes in Lord of the Rings — that [series] has marvelous CGI." Speaking of computer effects — what did Landis think of the truly woeful digital werewolf that informed the in-name-only sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris? I’ve never seen it, insists the director — although Landis did write his own sequel. "Yes, I wrote a sequel to An American Werewolf — but Michael Kuhn at Polygram hated the script. It was set 10 years later."