An American Werewolf In London (1981)
 The
archetypal wolf fable, An American Werewolf in London
overshadowed equally good The Howling with Oscar-winning
SFX and its classic man-to-wolf transformation.
Two American students, David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack
Goodman (Griffin Dunne), are attacked by a werewolf while touring
northern England.
Goodman is killed but Kessler survives a brutal mauling after
being rushed to a hospital by the local inhabitants, who claim an
escaped mental patient attacked him.
During his recovery, aided by his nurse Alex Price (Jenny
Agutter), Kessler experiences a series of nightmares filled with
visions of blood, gore and death.
Furthermore, he is disturbingly visited by the rotting corpse
of Goodman, who warns Kessler that he will become a werewolf
himself and kill others when the moon is full unless he kills
himself.
 Kessler
cannot decide if he is insane or indeed cursed until the next
rising full moon reveals the terrifying truth. Now responsible for
a string of horrible murders committed during his gory rampages
and for the state of limbo that traps his victims in a state of
supernatural wandering, Kessler must find a way to save himself
from claiming new victims.
Blackly comic, American Werewolf piles on the laughs,
poking strangely uncomfortable fun at the film's gory maulings - a
scene where David is introduced to his decomposing victims at the
back of a porn cinema is bizarre to say the least.
Sex, buckets of blood and a dose of self-referential,
genre-savvy wit that puts Scream to shame.
Writer/Director John (Animal House) Landis also throws
in some American observations on British strangeness (from the
unfriendly patrons in The Slaughtered Lamb pub to the dreariness
of channel-hopping with only three choices), a memorable shower
sequence with Jenny Agutter, nightmare Nazis, pointed barbs at the
expense of horror film conventions like silver bullets, and a
witty assemblage of moon-themed songs (Blue Moon, Bad
Moon Rising, Moondance).
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