Its meter is never off, yet An American Werewolf in London's rhythms are unconventional. It's an unguessable button-pusher, the rarest kind. Writer-director John Landis channelled Luis Buñuel for a series of enveloping dream sequences that keep our guard up during most of the second act. The main character says irrational things to people and they don't necessarily dismiss him, as is so often the procedure in fright flicks. He is David (David Naughton), a college-age American touring Europe with friend Jack (Griffin Dunne). Cold, tired, and hungry from walking the moors, they stop into an ominous-sounding pub ("The Slaughtered Lamb"). After Jack asks why there's a five-pointed star on the wall, he and David are told to vamoose.

That pentagram wards off werewolves; Jack and David return to the moors and are attacked by one that leaves each of them for dead. Jack becomes a zombie, the walking dead, because the werewolf's curse was passed on--to David, alive and well and flirting with his nurse (Jenny Agutter, one of the sexiest women this planet ever produced), who invites him to move in. Jack, meanwhile, keeps showing up to tell David he must commit suicide before lycanthropy seizes control.

David's first time with his new girlfriend is followed by his first night as a werewolf; Landis calls David's transformation, with its painful contortions and unwanted hair growth, a puberty metaphor, and that's pretty apt: he's a real man after a night with Jenny Agutter. And who can forget that transformation? Rick Baker's effects remain transcendent, and they're all the more impressive for having been filmed under bright conditions, which left him little room to cheat. An American Werewolf in London is just a really visceral movie that one cannot help but respond to, best demonstrated by the violently mixed public and critical reaction to its ending.

An American Werewolf in London taught me something about movies in the days before I could even begin to appreciate, say, Citizen Kane. It shows that a genre's rules are set on a case-by-case, filmmaker-by-filmmaker basis, and makes more explicit one of the things that Brian De Palma was getting at in Carrie: comedy and horror are identical disciplines in their absolute reliance on timing. There is a scene late in the picture in which our hero is getting advice on how to kill himself from undead ghouls at a porno theatre (showing "See You Next Wednesday", natch (the title of an early Landis screenplay, its mention is a recurring gag in his oeuvre)), but situations are only funny in retrospect--we laugh upon this absurd tableau because the japes are precise. Likewise, moments later, we know that inside the cinema there is a man becoming a werewolf. The suspense is in wondering if he will take to the streets, so the camera remains outside for most of his metamorphosis, waiting for a bubble to burst.

Universal's Collector's Edition DVD of An American Werewolf in London is fun. I have yet to see PolyGram's disc, released during the format's Jurassic period, so I can't evaluate this latest version against anything except a mid-eighties VHS copy, and I assure you it betters that. Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, the image is a bit soft for my taste, though grain is too pronounced on the occasional crisp shot. Colour is very natural and probably the strongest aspect of the transfer. Landis films never look that wonderful, anyway, so take these criticisms with a grain of salt. On the other hand, I was pleased by the remixed audio: in either of its 5.1 configurations (DTS or Dolby Digital), the soundfield is airy and scary, if hardly the purist's ideal. There is a rear-speaker thunderclap in chapter 10 that bowled me over, and the moon-themed songs seem to have been rerecorded from scratch, as they're very 'warm' and aggressive.

Commentary by Naughton and Dunne, whose off-screen chemistry is no different, betrays unpretentious nostalgia. After all these years, Dunne expresses amazement that he got the part of Jack without auditioning, and that Landis began scouting Paris instead of replacing Dunne after the actor was initially denied British Equity. Dunne owns the track more or less; Naughton is the star of an included featurette, "Casting of the Hand" (10 mins.), assembled archival footage of Naughton posing his arm for Baker that proves moderately suspenseful when Naughton's fingers are still stuck in the mould long after they were supposed to come free.

Landis appears in a 17-minute interview that is edited like an episode of his HBO sitcom "Dream On"--in short, sort of annoying, and he tells a "schmuck" joke that's pure filler. (I preferred his contributions to the 1981 making-of (5 mins.).) Rick Baker's interview runs seven fewer minutes, and that's a shame--his incidental instruction is nourishing. (Did you know that the werewolf is actually a costumed wheelbarrow?) On what's left: watch the selection of silent outtakes (3 mins.) in its entirety, you'll be surprised; a storyboard-to-finished-product comparison reveals detailed conceptual art; a production photo montage is worth it to hear Elmer Bernstein's underutilized score; production notes (within the Amaray case insert and on the disc itself) further illuminate An American Werewolf in London; "Recommendations" features a trailer for The Wolf Man; and DVD-ROM users can access a script-to-screen option (Dunne tended to stray from the page) plus various Universal weblinks. This DVD has had a spot reserved in my collection for ages, and fills it nicely.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening