In 1969, John Landis worked as a production assistant on Kelly’s Heroes. Filming was taking place in Yugoslavia, then firmly behind the Iron Curtain, and during his time there, Landis witnessed the funeral of a local rapist.
It was an eerie ritual, supervised by an Orthodox priest that ensured the man’s body was bound in canvas, covered in rosaries and garlic, then buried feet first, standing up, at a crossroads.
This bizarre sight made Landis, then just 18, think about the supernatural and how ill-equipped the western world was to deal with it – the US had put a man on the moon just the week before, yet people still believed in zombies.
It sparked an idea for a script dealing with the incompatibility of superstition and the modern world. Finally, he settled on werewolves because, like ghosts, they seemed to be an international myth. It took over ten years for his idea to become a reality, a process hampered by his decision to mix old-fashioned horror shocks with jet-black comedy.
I wrote the first draft of the script in Yugoslavia. It was initially called An American Werewolf in Paris, but I heard about a British quota system that made it financially easier to make movies in Britain.
So it became An American Werewolf in London. It took years to make the film because everyone said the same things about the script: “This is much too frightening to be funny,” or “It’s much too funny to be frightening.” But by 1981, I’d made Animal House and The Blues Brothers, so I could do what I wanted. And when I said I wanted to do this werewolf movie, everyone thought I was mad.
The intention was to do what had been done with The Exorcist, which was to make everything very realistic and believable apart from one thing.
In The Exorcist, you had to suspend your disbelief at this little girl being possessed by the devil, and in American Werewolf, it was that a werewolf had bitten these two guys. Jon Peters and Peter Guber [big-shot ’80s producers who made Rain Man and the first two Batman movies] read it, thought it was terrific, and picked it up.
I had no idea what I was getting into. I got the part based on an interview. John sits there in his office in California and says, “Have you ever thought about being a werewolf?”
At the time, I was the commercial spokesman for Dr Pepper, and he was an avid Dr Pepper drinker, so we had a common bond. He called me the day after the interview and said, “Wanna go to England?” I didn’t do a screen test. I didn’t even read the script.
I’d known John for a long time. A friend had introduced us when he was making Kentucky Fried Movie. He was always talking about this werewolf film he intended to make.
He’d say, “I want you in it!” but it never seemed as if it was going to happen. I didn’t get involved until November 1980, when he’d got the money together and had a finished script for me to read.
John had described the story to me, and my feelings were, It sounded rather weird. I thought it would be extremely difficult to do without being camp. I went to a hospital for a week to get the specifics right about doing things as a nurse.
The only thing that was made clear to me was that nursing was a vocation: nobody does it for the money because there hardly is any.
I’d met Rick Baker in 1971 when I made Schlock. He did the make-up. I’d been telling him for ten years that we were going to make this werewolf movie, but he never believed me.
In 1980, he was working on Joe Dante’s Howling, and I was so mad that he was going to get to use all his technology on another movie. Anyway, he came and did my film, and Rob Bottin finished The Howling. the metamorphosis required casting months in advance because Rick had to make moulds which were built in LA and shipped to London.
A few days after my interview, I was in Rick’s workshop to do the moulds for the transformation. I was really excited, and I met Rick, and he said, “So you’re David? I really feel sorry for you.”
I’d be doing things like sticking arms and legs into huge vats of the stuff dentists use for moulds of teeth. When we did the face moulds, I had to hold different expressions, like being terrified, for five minutes until this stuff set.
Rick’s techniques were ground-breaking, so there was no one I could call and ask, ‘This guy Rick Baker’s kind of weird; what am I in for?” Rick’s a quiet guy. To this day, he has his wall of faces made up of moulds of every face he’s ever done.
There were problems when we got to England because British equity wanted us to use two British guys in the lead roles. Everyone else in the cast and crew was British, but they drew the line there for some reason. It was usual behaviour for the time, but it seemed pretty unreasonable.
And they put a lot of pressure on us. At one point, we sent some people to Ireland to check out the possibility of filming there. We were relatively close to moving production over there.
Everyone said, “You’ll never be able to shoot in town.” Michael Winner had been filming in Piccadilly Circus and let off a smoke bomb without permission.
It was a time when there were many IRA bomb scares, so the police weren’t interested in anyone filming another movie in London.
The other thing was that the porn film [See You Next Wednesday] that’s showing in the theatre at the end of the movie had to be shot first. I’d intended it to be a cartoon cinema, but when I got to London, I discovered that the theatre I’d wanted to use was now this grindhouse. I got interested in doing See You Next Wednesday because, at the time, British sex films were so silly, all “Oops, I have no pants on.”
Everyone said, “You’ll never be able to shoot in town.” Michael Winner had been filming in Piccadilly Circus and let off a smoke bomb without permission.
It was a time when there were many IRA bomb scares, so the police weren’t interested in anyone filming another movie in London. The other thing was that the porn film [See You Next Wednesday] that’s showing in the theatre at the end of the movie had to be shot first.
I’d intended it to be a cartoon cinema, but when I got to London, I discovered that the theatre I’d wanted to use was now this grindhouse. I got interested in doing See You Next Wednesday because, at the time, British sex films were so silly, all “Oops, I have no pants on.”
One of the grips slept with one of the girls in the porn movie – I won’t say which one. It was great being in London. It was my first decent role, and here I was in a flat in Chelsea that was all paid for.
I got these per diems (a daily allowance). I just kept them in a shoebox and let them pile up. I was in Swinging London with a shoebox full of money. And they flew me there on Concorde.
For the Slaughtered Lamb pub, we shot the exterior in a town in Wales and the interiors in a pub in London. When Brian Glover did the film, he was still a wrestler who wanted to be an actor.
I found Rik Mayall through Frank Oz. Frank was in London doing The Muppet Show, and we went to the comic strip one night and saw Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson. They were extraordinary. I just hired Rik; it was the first acting he’d ever done. He went on to have a massive career after, of course.
I was sitting in my living room late one night, and it came to me. I thought of a wheelbarrow race.
So I stretched out with my legs over the edge of the chair and my arms out in front, testing the balance, seeing if I could shift around while still holding my weight. Then I thought, What if we had a flat surface to support the weight, like a diving board with wheels, where we could move it around and vary the height?
The dream-within-a-dream sequence was scary enough to do. They lit the set on fire, and then a stunt man came up to me and said, “I’m gonna be holding a knife to your throat.”
Doing a horror film certainly has its side effects. I had nightmares throughout filming. The script and the gallons of fake blood lying around have a cumulative effect. There was some discussion from John as to how you would wake up from something like that. I said, “I’ll show you, cos I’ve had those dreams.”
It depressed me. It was like looking at your own corpse. Everyone else thought it was a big hoot. They wanted to take me out to the pub in the afternoon, still in make-up.
I wouldn’t go – I remember worrying I’d give someone a heart attack. And I remember worrying how my mother would feel seeing me like that. At the end of the day, it didn’t phase her.
But when I walked across the street in Piccadilly, it was a traffic stopper. The reactions were very British. Everyone stared and looked terrified, but no one said a thing.
The Piccadilly Cirus sequence was a case of shooting on the run. John got the usual warning from the police about being arrested if he stopped traffic, but they were impressed by his methods.
He shot at 3 am. He put some film unit cars in front of the traffic and had them go very slowly, creating a gap in the traffic flow. By the time these cars reached the Circus, the shooting was done.
We’d also re-created the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly at Brooklands race track. We did all the wide shots at Brooklands.
We also rehearsed the traffic shots at Brooklands so we could do them quickly. When we got to Piccadilly, we put these big lights on [sports shot] Lillywhites.
They were called Dinos because [film producer] Dino De Laurentiis had built them for Flash Gordon. They were the biggest lights in the world then. But you know what – nobody knew we were there. We were there and gone – although when we finished the take where the severed head bounced across the car bonnet, Rick ran into the road to pick the head up.
As he did, he stopped this taxi full of Pakistani guys. Then he picked up the head and waved them on past. You should have seen the look on their faces.
The way I decided to approach the transformation was through comparative anatomy. I didn’t have a human skeleton in my collection, but I had a dog’s, and that was enough.
Comparing it to a human’s, you’ll find the bones are pretty similar; it’s just that the proportions are different. I made a list of differences, what the major changes were, where this got shorter, that got longer – then figured out how we could get a suit out of it that made sense.
It took ten hours to get the make-up on the first day. I got a 4 am call, but it was 2 pm before I was ready to go on set.
Then the crew start all these “I’ve got a bone to pick with you” jokes. The transformation was supposed to be unbearable for the character. But it wasn’t hard to find stuff to draw on. Once you’ve got the paws, teeth and lenses on, you’re incapacitated.
And they didn’t have those nice contact lenses you get today; it was a glass piece painted horror yellow, harrowing to wear. I also had to be led around. As for going to the toilet with the paws on, I had these loose-string sweatpants. You just do the best you can.
The rubber torso [with ribs, wolf paws and face make-up] was the goofiest-looking stage, which unfortunately went by pretty quickly.
David had the ribcage and back on, with hand appliances that only left him some use of his thumbs, a fur mane, the face and teeth. That’s how he went to lunch. I have this hysterical memory of him trying to eat fish and chips through all that and having a tough time.
I was never worried that it might look ridiculous, cos no matter how many takes we’d done, it was never enough. I was delighted at the end of that week when it was all over.
For the shower sex scene with Jenny, we did it on a soundstage because we couldn’t find an appropriate shower. But the one they built had hardly any warm water. Then we slipped and fell over, and the whole set practically collapsed.
There was confusion over the ending because Jon Peters and Peter Guber thought the relationship between David Naughton and Jenny Agutter played so well that they didn’t want him to die.
John Landis had to talk them out of it because it would have messed with the portrayal of werewolf mythology. To have this guy’s life saved by the love of Jenny Agutter would have changed the tone of the entire project.
The first time I saw it with the public was at two preview screenings. The first one was in Chicago. In those days, you had a sneak preview: you saw one movie and got to see the preview for free.
We got to the cinema, and Universal had put a sign up that said, “The new comedy from the director of Animal House.” So everyone loved it until the attack on the moors when 60 per cent of the audience walked out after they realised they weren’t getting a fraternity romp. The next night we previewed in Long Island to a crowd filled with kids.
So I got up and said, “I’m John Landis, the director. I really want to warn you because it’s filled with sex and violence.” Which got a huge cheer. But they were prepared, and they loved the film.
It was odd doing publicity for the film. I was a struggling actor and still living in a crappy apartment, but they put me in this hotel for a week to do interviews.
I stayed there for another week afterwards, living off room service. No one noticed: they picked up the bill, and I never heard anything. I had my girlfriend over, and we ran up a fortune – no lobster, but plenty of champagne.
American Werewolf did okay. (11.5 million tickets sold in the US and Canada, which is okay.) We thought the picture would be a blockbuster based on some of the sneak previews.
It wasn’t, which was very disappointing. We hoped it would make $8 million or $10 million on its opening weekend. It took about $4m, which was good but not what we’d expected. But it definitely had legs. I still get cheques for it now.
I was worried that some of the make-up looked plastic at the time, and some of it still bothers me. I also think I showed the wolf too much because Rick’s work enamoured me.
Although it was considered radical at the time to do a horror film with humour, some of the best horror films are funny. In Psycho, Norman Bates has lines like, “Mother’s not herself today.”
It bothers me that some people still think of the film as a comedy. It’s not a comedy – it’s a horror film that ends pretty tragically. But it is very funny. I didn’t see why you shouldn’t mix the two.
When the movie came out on video, I got tons of mail from kids who were really taken with it. There were a lot of letters from girls who found my character attractive.
Even though his skin was falling off – they loved that. A lot of weirdo girls made me sweaters. The kind your granny gives you at Christmas; they’d say things like, “I knitted this for you because you looked cold in the movie. Will you write to me?” I’d never gotten fan mail before, so I was very diligent about replying. But I didn’t make them sweaters or anything.
© 2022 Deathbyfilms.com
