An Open Letter to the Makers of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON: THE REMAKE
Stephen Romano
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To whom it may concern,
I am a fan of horror films. I am writing you this letter to express my interest and concern over the currently proposed remake of An American Werewolf in London. This will not be some angry “how dare you” diatribe or a smarmy self-serving critical attack on The Landis Clan and company. Yet I feel that writing this letter is my duty as both a fan and a professional. You see, because I am in my late forties, I was a child when the original American Werewolf was first in theaters. In fact, it is one of the movies that blew my mind as a kid, and along with Joe Dante’s amazing The Howling, set me on my merry way to become a professional author, screenwriter and illustrator. As a matter of fact, The Landis Clan and I are even related by a sort of horror community proxy, because we (the three of us) were writers on a little TV anthology show you may remember called Masters Of Horror. Max and John, you did weird little “sequel” to American Werewolf on that show called Deer Woman, while I was a writer on Don Coscarelli’s Incident on and off a Mountain Road.
So I’m not just any fan, dig? I’m obviously someone you should listen to. Obviously you can choose not to. But I promise to be as respectful as possible. I am a filmmaker myself—I know how hard it is to make any movie work. I am, in my own way, quite an admirer of An American Werewolf in London. Probably no one who reads Dread Central would dispute that it is an important and historic film. What follows is a form of well-meaning constructive criticism, for the sake of the project currently on the boards. I shall also endeavor to make my comments accessible to the other readers of this open letter, so you’ll please forgive me if I go to some length now and then to put certain (very obvious) things in context.
Now then.
As I mentioned earlier, I was the audience you originally made An American Werewolf in London for, whether you realize it or not. Though the film was rated R and “unsuitable for children under 16,” I saw films like this anyway, like all 11 year old boys did back then, by sneaking into the theater and renting the videos later. My friend Noah and I were obsessed with “Amer Were” (our silly little pet name for the film), though I have to admit I was more intrigued by The Howling. I found it fresher and more original somehow. The thing to do in those days with my pal was to argue back and forth about which film was better. (There was no internet back then, remember, so you had to actually look at the whites of people’s eyes when you disagreed with them about a movie. ) Our arguments were passionate and childish and fun. Our differences as people and appreciators of art is what made us evolve from childhood and helped to shape our adult perspectives.
And I have to admit: As a child, I could never quite put my finger on what it was about “Amer Were” that put me off so much. Why had Dante’s film appealed to me more? Certainly, both movies have a lot going for them. Certainly, both movies have their inherent flaws. A lot of it came down for us, as children, to the special effects in the transformation sequences and which film had the better, slicker technicians on board. I was a staunch defender of The Howling’s protracted, lingering, pulsating metamorphosis, while Noah preferred the slicker, shorter, more polished effects of Rick Baker, which of course helped to win him an Oscar that year. There were intrinsic stylistic differences in the two sequences that put the films in totally different camps. Then again, it wasn’t fair to not like “Amer Were” just because The Howling was different, was it? There had to be something else at play here—something far more elemental.
There was.
For me, John, your film has always been a little frustrating, because it contains brilliance, and yet it may not see that brilliance. The main impetus of watching most any movie, especially a movie like An American Werewolf in London, is the characters. You want to feel them. You want to know them. You want to see them move through the beats of their story, until their final inevitable doom, or ultimate triumph. Whether it’s in a film like Cronenberg’s The Fly, in which we see a good man descend into cancerous, mutated madness, or a film like Aliens, in which we witness a good woman’s heroic defeat of her own personal (space) demons, we want to know by the end of their journey what that journey has meant to them—and to us, the humble audience.
The journey of David Kessler, played wonderfully by David Naughton in An American Werewolf in London, is compelling—particularly in the first hour of the film. In fact, the opening twenty minutes or so still remain some of the best traditional horror filmmaking of all time. “Traditional,” in that there are few surprises, but “best” in that we probably will never see a more sincere attempt to revisit these old chestnuts. It’s all funny, scary, inventive stuff that reimagines and improves on classic horror tropes. The problem is that the film waits so long to deliver a true payoff (the transformation somewhat muted, the kills that follow also cut away from) that the story never seems to coalesce in its second half. Some people who read this letter may disagree, but I submit—respectfully—that An American Werewolf in London may be an unfinished film. It sets things up beautifully and then leaves its terrific ideas and likable characters twisting in the wind like so many throwaway notions.
It all comes down to the ending, folks. For those reading this letter who may be unfamiliar, I shall recap briefly. (OBVIOUSLY SPOILERS!) After David initially becomes a werewolf and discovers he has killed many people, he springs the horrible truth on his girlfriend Nurse Alex, confesses his love for her, tries (and inexplicably fails) to get himself arrested, then runs away to a porno theater in Piccadilly Square, where he meets with the living dead specters of the men and woman he has killed as a werewolf. It begins as a great and funny scene, as the living dead—mostly pretty bitter about what happened to them—tell him that he must commit suicide and begin to offer blunt solutions to his dilemma. There is a abrupt cut away to the full moon . . . and then we are suddenly back in the theater, presumably after some time has passed, and David is still there, and he’s already turning to a wolf again.
So what happened here? Was there a scene cut from the film that might have explained why he never followed through and killed himself? Was there a bigger, better confrontation with the undead that prompted him to deep six the idea? And where are the zombies now? Wouldn’t it have been much cooler to watch David go crazy in the theater, yelling at the undead assholes which nobody else can see? Maybe his best friend Jack (one of the living dead ghosts) could get in his face and tell him what he must do, but David doesn’t have the strength to do what he must and literally goes insane, ranting and monologuing in front of a screen filled with pornography. This could have been great, even hilariously tragic drama. Meanwhile, the patrons and employees of the porno theater have no idea what to do with this screaming weirdo. My friend Noah also recently suggested that the porno theater itself could have been set up even earlier in the film, with Nurse Alex and David a having fun, spontaneous “date night” there in the second act (he pulls her into the place on a dare, with her giggling all the way and maybe they make out in the back row) . . . and so maybe Nurse Alex could have run into their “special place” to confront him during the climax, as the moon finally rises, and she could have confessed her love for him as he freaks out. David would beg her to kill him, but of course she cannot, and they all watch his final, horrible transformation, as he screams that he is sorry.
Something like this might have been the emotional climax such a well-set-up scenario required.
Instead, in the film we all know, there seems to be no emotional climax. David just turns into a wolf, busts out of the theater, decapitates a cop and causes a series of automobile accidents—shades of The Blues Brothers—and THEN Nurse Alex arrives and tries to reason with the monster in a blind alley. (That always made little sense to me, as she’s hardly been given any real proof that werewolves actually exist.) This final scene should provide the tragic crux of the story. In fact, some people have noted that this may actually BE the emotional climax of the film, when she says “I love you, David” just before the police riddle the monster with bullets. But it never worked for me, partially because there was not enough emotion there to begin with—it’s rather one-sided. The other reason I felt short changed, John, was because of your predilection for abruptly ending your movies with jarring hard cuts to music and credits. (Animal House, Spies Like Us, Trading Places and even Deer Woman have similar stylistic obsessions on view.) As David lies there bleeding, transformed instantly back into human form—WHAM! It’s all over. With really loud bee-bop music in our faces, no less. The irony is that on some high-concept stylistic level, this ending really works. It’s a slap to the face, almost literally. And the bizarre choice of music is kind of cool in it’s own way. But it does not help the film became a more emotionally engaging experience, as it probably should have been. One could argue that it was not intended to be a more emotionally engaging experience—but because, John, you have given us such a great and traditional set-up with such well-defined and likeable characters, one could also argue that such a slam-bang ending is somewhat callus and empty.
And so now we come to the point of remakes, and why they should and should not exist. I am not of the opinion that a remake should be opposed automatically. Things that are good or worthy in some way can be revisited again with a sequel or a remake, why not? If there is a reason to do it in the first place, that is. You might have noticed that I cited Aliens and The Fly earlier, both a brilliant sequel and a brilliant remake that existed for all the right reasons. The problem recently—as in the last ten years or so—is that everyone seems to be remaking everything for no reason at all. And, yeah, it pisses a lot of people off. Me, I think it all comes down to a case-by-case evaluation of each film on offer. For example, George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is my absolute favorite horror movie—and yet I attended the remake with an open mind and thought it was decent enough for what it was. It wasn’t no Dawn of the Dead or anything and Zack Snyder ain’t no George A. Romero, but he did his best. Ironically, it was Snyder’s remake that touched off this whole new post-modern wave of “reboots” in genre film, in which everything from Friday the 13th to Clash of the Titans got a spiffy new-millennium upgrade. Clash of the Titans is a particularly offensive one—a remake I will never ever watch because, to me, the very idea of a do-over on Ray Harryhausen’s final film with glossy digital cartoons is, on the face of it, disrespectful of history and cinematically offensive. (You might as well be remaking Citizen Kane in my opinion.) I feel the same way about a potential remake of Escape From New York. Only Kurt Russell can play Snake Plissken. Period.
But An American Werewolf in London? Well yes, that could maybe use an upgrade. For all the reasons I have mentioned above, and maybe others I haven’t. It is my hope that you talented fellows—the creators of this new version—have the spirit to truly discern the forest for the trees in this scenario, to find what worked and what did NOT work about the original film. I hope you find a story that is both reverent to its best intentions and improves on the frustrating climax that left not only me, but also many critics and fans, out in the cold. There is a great story here, and real potential to make a traditional monster movie in a cool new way. I hope this will be THAT KIND of remake—the kind that returns to a story and improves on it, rather than just aping it beat for beat. Or, worse still, keeping the title and doing something entirely different. Those “remakes” frustrate me. Dawn of the Dead is basically one of those. It throws out the very essences of what made the Romero film work. (Though I would still argue that it’s a decent enough movie on its own terms.) My wish for the All New American Werewolf In London is a film that strikes a careful balance of character and story and horrific set pieces, giving us the same traditional man-becomes-wolf tragedy, with plenty of living dead ghosts. But let’s evolve this thing into a new animal—one with teeth, sure, but somewhat more progressive teeth. We need an ending this time, guys. One with lots of heart.
Please think hard about it.
Please give us something great.
I’ll be first in line.
Writer
Categorized:Editorials News
