A Lycanthropic Halloween Collaboration



It's almost no more days to Halloween (thank god we wont have to hear that advertising jingle for another year!), so its time to slip on your Silver Shamrock masks (make sure you load up on bug killer first!) and head on over to The Film Connoisseur for the in-depth article Werewolves of the Blogosphere: 20 Werewolf Movies to Watch Under the Full Moon. I was invited to fly the flag for the United Kingdom, and to explore British horror cinemas relationship to our tragic hairy friends. Also in attendance in this monstrous collaboration was Brian from the brilliant Cool Ass Cinema, and Johnny Thunder from Johnny Thunder's Midnite Spook Frolic, a blog I've yet to explore, but will be certain to do so now. This is no trick, but its certain to be a treat!

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

Dir: JOHN LANDIS
Country: UK/USA

An American Werewolf in London now holds such a position of cherished fondness within the annals of the horror genre that its easy to overlook a myriad of structural and tonal faults. Part of the problem is that the film is so keyed in to the emotional receptors of the horror fan that its nigh on impossible to be objective about it. The reason for the close proximity between the film text and horror fandom is that the writer/director John Landis is himself a horror fan. This was Landis’ tribute to the Universal horror films of the 1930’s and 1940’s - most specifically The Wolf Man (1941), and he lays on a sense of nostalgia with a thick brush. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, and if one can successfully harness it within a film you’re on to a winner. The nostalgic quality is evoked through an extended prologue set on the inhospitable moors of England (Landis isn’t afraid to throw almost every cliché in the book in) and a series of 1950’s and 1960’s pop songs, all of which comment on the action, sometimes in an ironic manner, in a way similar to that other ‘classic’ of nostalgia cinema American Graffiti (1973). We forgive Landis the cliché, we forgive the structural faults, we forgive the wildly uneven tone which veers from horror to comedy without any sense of purpose. We forgive him, because Landis knows what it is to be a horror fan, and we embrace his film because of his infectious love and enthusiasm for the genre.

The Beast Must Die (1974)

Dir: PAUL ANNETT
Country: UK

aka:
Black Werewolf

This utterly daft, but oddly endearing low budget horror flick saw Amicus Productions once again attempting (unsuccessfully) to conquer the single narrative feature film. As a story this is a complete nonsense but The Beast Must Die has the peculiar charm and characteristics of the cult film. An almost indefinable appeal, but one which has nevertheless seen this film remembered fondly. At the time it was heavily criticised for its gimmick of having a ‘werewolf break’ to allow the audience to decide which of Tom Newcliffe’s (Calvin Lockhart) guests is in fact a ravening lycanthrope. But this is precisely the type of detail which now aids a cult reading of the film. Furthermore the film has a large amount of generic hybridisation - melding as it does the horror elements of the werewolf sub-genre, thriller elements, the red herring structure of an Agatha Christie whodunit and various blaxploitation signifiers. Shot largely on location in the Surrey countryside surrounding Shepperton Studios the film makes use of some great rural countryside, especially in the sequences which open the film.