Episode 56 - An American Werewolf in London (Where is Warren Zevon?) - Middle Age Movie Reviews Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the Electronic Media Collective podcast Network. Yeah,
it's a mouthful. For more great shows like the one
you're about to enjoy, visit Electronicmedia Collective dot com. And
now our feature presentation.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome to the Middle Aged Moviees Podcast. Two guys
saying we will not be threatened by a walking meat loaf.
My name is Tim and my podcasting partner is Joey,
and joining us tonight. A man who's pension to snack
on milk bones always gives me pause during a full moon.
From the Andreas the pop culture Guy in the MCU's
Bleeding Edge to YouTube channels, it's Andreas, Say Hello.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Andreas, Hello everyone.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Also joining us tonight, a man who knows hunting werewolves
can vary greatly due to their ninety eight plus eighteen HP.
From the Dungeon Master Release YouTube channel. It's the Dungeon
Master rooimself, Rick say hello, Rick.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
Let's go out everyone, Thanks for being here, thanks for
allowing me to be here.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Thanks for joining us. All right, Joey, why don't you
tell us what movie we are watching at the Cinema
and Piccadilly Circus this evening tonight.

Speaker 5 (01:12):
We are watching the nineteen eighty one movie An American
Werewolf in London, number six hundred and ninety four from
the book of one thousand and one Movies You Should
Watch Before You Die, written and directed by John Landis
and starring David Naughton, Jenny Agutter and Joe Belcher. That
bald guy who runs the prison in Alien three? Did

(01:33):
I mention drop dead Fred is in this movie? Oh yeah,
there's a whole lot of recognizable British faces in this bar.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Oh right, Well, gentlemen, as you can see, Matthew is
not with us this evening, so I will be taking
the helm. So when was the first time you, guys
watched American Werewolf in London? And andres will start with you.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
All right.

Speaker 6 (01:54):
Usually for me, a lot of these horror movies I
see is horror marathons, and this is no exception. Fantastic,
We we love this movie. One of the best horror
movies you know in the eighties. It's just so incredible,
so lean, mean and truly a great horror comedy, so funny.
So I'm so happy to be back and to discussed
this week with you guys.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Most excellent. Well, Rick, how about you? When was the
first time you've seen American wear Wulf in London.

Speaker 4 (02:21):
So this was this weekend, This last weekend when I
was watching it for this review, was the first time
that I had ever seen it. So I have a
feeling that I might have an opposing take on this
on this movie this time around, so we'll see how
everything goes all right.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well, how about our resident horror Ficiano Joey. How about you?
When did you watch it for the first time.

Speaker 5 (02:44):
Well, I didn't see it in theaters because I was
only two years old. I saw this on television. Surprisingly
still gory because if you cut out his dead best
friend or I should say undead best friend out of
the movie, well you miss a lot of dialogue. So
I I did still get to see a lot of
gore even though it was on television. They don't really
show his friend Jack getting murdered by the werewolf or

(03:07):
some of the kills that happen as much, but you
definitely see him in his after effect state, being undead
and decrepit. And that was probably as bad as it
got on Horror Movie of the Weekend, and I remember
it was quite unsettling. That was probably the thing I
remember most about it was his ever decaying friend. Also,

(03:29):
I never knew what kind of movie they were watching
in the movie theater when I saw it on TV
as a kid, I had no clue they were watching
an adult film so rated. Our version probably saw that
maybe over a decade later, like on DVD or something.
I've seen this quite a bit, but mostly I'm familiar
with its heavily edited version.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
All right, Well, I'm actually part of the dungeon Masters
party in this. I watched it this last week for
the first time, so I too have a different take,
I think watching it now versus maybe seeing it when
I was younger. But we'll dig into that a little
further along as we go. So I guess what we
should do is jump to the synopsis. And since I

(04:09):
only have one victim to pick on tonight, Joey, it's
going to be you. So if you would, sir, I
would like you to read the synopsis for us, but
I would like you to read it as David as
he agonizingly transforms into a werewolf.

Speaker 5 (04:24):
My best friend Jack and I were just students from
New York City and we're off backpacking across Europe, and
we're starting with Northern England. But one dark and stormy night,
we found ourselves seeking shelter at the door of the
Slaughtered Lamb Pub, but we would not find solace within
its walls, one of which was adorned with a pentacle

(04:47):
and candles. After a strange encounter with the locals, we
decided to venture back out into the night. While walking
across the moors, which we're explicitly told not to do
multiple times, we were attacked by a wild animal. Jack
was killed. I awoke, finding myself in a London hospital,

(05:07):
surrounded by a sexy nurse, the voice of Miss Piggy
and Yoda, and a doctor with vast knowledge of circumcision trends.
I have strange dreams. My slaughtered undead friend Jack steals
my toast and he informs me that we were attacked
by a werewolf and I'm cursed to become a werewolf

(05:28):
unless I kill myself. But I didn't listen, and now
the transformation from manned wolf has begune. But I will
stalk and kill the unsuspected population of London. Never Mind,

(05:51):
it was just gas.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Very nice, Oh so much better, very very nice. I
could not have done it better, all right, Okay, Deep breath, deep,

(06:13):
breath everybody. Okay, let's jump into our movie. All right, gentlemen.
We open the film with two American graduate students, David
Kessler and Jack Goodman, hiking the Yorkshire moors of northern England.
As night descends and it begins to rain. They find
themselves in a small village, hoping to find food and shelter.

(06:35):
They enter a pub called the Slaughtered Lamb. As they enter,
the rowdy crowd goes completely silent and the hikers view
fixated on the wall with a set of candles and
a pentagram. It is evident that the vocals do not
like strangers among them and give them a cold reception,
hoping they will leave, The hikers persist and after some
awkward conversation, their curiosity gets the best of them and

(06:58):
they ask about the pentagram, and they are immediately told
go stay on the road and keep clear of the moors. Gentlemen,
what are your thoughts on the beginning of the movie.
Rick will go to you first.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
What are your thoughts the opening? Like little scene? You know,
I thought the music was kind of cool. Like I said,
I've never seen this before. I'm not from that area,
so I'm not sure. I'm only guessing because I've seen
Braveheart about thousand times that I was looking at the
Scottish Highlands or something with the music in the background,
so I was like, Okay, this is cool. The awkward
as fuck like scene that they had when they went

(07:33):
into the pub, I thought that was pretty funny, you
know what I'm saying. But like, I'll probably circle back
because I do want to talk about this. How do
they get off the road? You don't have to be
told don't get off the road. Like you're in the
middle of nowhere, You've never been here before. It is
pitch black at nighttime that you're walking around and for

(07:54):
some reason, even though you're told to stay on the
road multiple times because of some hoodoo or whatever, even
with that, okay, fine, you should stay on the road.
But when you take that out, like if you completely
that they never said that, you still wouldn't be off
of the road, you know what I'm saying, Like that
just literally makes no sense why they would get off

(08:17):
the path, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
And it better if they boosed them up first, Maybe
it would have made more sense.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
It would have made a lot more sense. I mean
they kind of played it off like they're kind of
in the moment, singing and stuff, but look, you're walking
down a road, like, why would you get off the road?
That just doesn't make any sense to me. The last
thing I will say about the comedy aspect so far
of the film is that joke, man, you know what.

(08:43):
I actually played it back and I was like, oh yeah, yeah,
Like it was actually a really funny joke. I understand
this is a little bit of maybe, you know, racial
bias with the joke and stuff. But now, I don't
know if I've ever said this on the podcast before,
but I am of Hispanic descent and stuff. Look, funny joke,
all right, remember the album? That was a funny joke. Okay,

(09:03):
you know, if you're taking offense to it, I don't know.
It was funny, Okay.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
All right, Well, Andris, let's move to you.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (09:11):
I'm Lintino and I thought that scene was hilarious. This
whole scene is so incredible. This opening sequel was that
sets up really the tone of the film very different
from a lot of the eighties Horse films, particularly this one,
where like before the slasher became a crazy thing in
the eighties. The opening just shows you how good the

(09:31):
humor is. But then Layer when to get into the guard,
you know, very creepy.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
They don't like outsiders.

Speaker 6 (09:38):
Of course Jack, he was so stupid, like why you
want to point at the symbol.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
It seems like they were afraid or something.

Speaker 6 (09:45):
Hey, very funny scene, but then it turns into like
a very quiet scene that's like dreaded overall, a fun scene.
I just want to find out, you know. The actors.
Obviously we've mentioned the Ward who's from Alien three, the
darts player. He's the guy from the Pirates of the
cam B movies who works in the Evening Company.

Speaker 5 (10:03):
He's also a gladiator Yeah, and gladiator too.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (10:06):
A lot of British actors here, you know, from there
and all that that were very popular during this time.

Speaker 5 (10:11):
They're probably big stars, yeah in Great Britain, but here
they're that guy in that one movie.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah, incredible cast here.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
All right, Well, Joey, show us what you got.

Speaker 5 (10:22):
We see our characters literally with sheep, and what.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Happens to sheep They go to the slaughter.

Speaker 5 (10:30):
They go to the slaughter, So that basically tells you
what's gonna happen to these two guys, one of them
sooner than later. I really enjoyed the bar. The joke
about uh, you know, maybe they're from Texas turns into
the local's own joke about a cargo plane that's too heavy,
and I think people shouting their final words before they

(10:50):
jump off to save the rest of them. I really
enjoyed all of that. They hit us over the head
too much about staying off the moors. Then they really
foreshot out when they leave and really find out there.
But it's basically murdered if you guys don't go out
there and do something about this, because they happen to know.
What the audience doesn't know is that one of the locals,
one of their friends, is a fucking werewolf, and maybe

(11:12):
that's been a problem for a while and he's just
the last remaining one regardless of the werewolf situation. The
definition of a more is a tract of uncultivated land.
And clearly it looked like rain, and then it started raining.
Why would you walk in the mud. So but if
it wasn't for you know, our lead character stupidity, we

(11:34):
wouldn't have a movie. So they do the opposite of
what someone fucking told him to do they get more
than a roll in the mud.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Yeah, for sure. I felt when I watched it, I
felt like the beginning credit sequence went on, and although
Rick seemed to enjoy the scenery for the screensaver that
it was, and it wasn't damn screensaver, let me tell you,
I was just like, Oh, my god, get to the
movie and then you finally get to see our two
actors and they jump out of that truck. And there

(12:02):
was a lot of build up in that, like he
was just trying to establish their hikers, their America and
their kind of buddies and stuff. But man, it was
a slow burn to get them to walk down the
road and tell their little jokes and stuff. But once
he got past that, you know, night's descending and they
get to that bar and they walk in. It's everybody's
worst nightmare walking into a place like that and have

(12:23):
everybody just stop and look at you. So I was like, okay, okay,
now it's going to kick up a little bit. And
so I thought the puff scene was interesting that the
joke that they tell, My God, I remember that joke
from when I was a kid. Somebody told me that
joke literally when I was in grade school.

Speaker 5 (12:36):
They might have heard it from this movie.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, I don't know, but I know that I had
heard that as a child. I was like, oh, I
remember that joke. That was So that was kind of funny,
just the recollection of remembering that from my childhood or whatever.
But uh, it was an interesting scene. The whole cannon
on the pentagrams in the wall. It was a little
too much on point in your face, but you know, again,
I think they needed to draw your eye to it. So,

(12:58):
you know, they got this bar with all kinds of
stuff on the wall except for this one where there's
just one weird scrawl pentagram and two candles and that's it.
And so you know, they couldn't resist to ask about it,
and then of course they get thrown out, and that
pretty much leads us to our next scene here where
you know, once our boys are back on the road
here that two are discussing basically the weird encounter as

(13:18):
they wandered through the countryside to find a more hospitable village.
They unknowingly venture off the road into the moors, and
they begin to hear the call of a creature in
the distance, realizing that they may be in trouble. They
try to find their way back to the slaughtered land.
They realize that the creature is getting closer and beginning
to circle down, so now they're starting to panic, and

(13:39):
of course they run. Jack falls to the ground. As
he gets up, he is attacked. Some giant flash of
gray just completely engulfs him, and you hear all kinds
of horrible things happening. David begins to run away, realize
that his friend is not with him, turns around after
he kind of rallies his bravery to basically try to

(14:00):
help you know, his friend Jack get away, only to
be attacked himself and before the creature could finish him,
he hears gunfire and looks over at the body of
the naked dead man before he passes out. Gentlemen, what
are your thoughts on this part? And let's go ahead
and let's start with Andreas this time.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
Let me pick on you guys.

Speaker 6 (14:18):
You were saying they didn't see the road, to be
fair though it was raining and plus those lands that
were foggy, so they were in a very tough situation
where they got lost because of natural things that were
in their path. And so that's how they got into
the field. It was like, Okay, now they're in trouble.
And then of course they were smartly turned back and

(14:39):
tried to run as possible, and then bam, the werewolf
or this creature to attack on Jack and it's rid
of him completely, which so brutal. I mean, creature was
killing Jack and it was normal he turned back, but
I don't know, I think he should have just kept
walking because you know, I mean, your friend's dead, sir.

Speaker 5 (14:58):
You know he was already a coward.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
Yeah, he was already a car.

Speaker 5 (15:01):
He was probably hearing Jack say.

Speaker 4 (15:06):
That's what.

Speaker 6 (15:08):
Yeah, and it's like he now feels guilty and it's like,
come on, dude, like you could easily help him out, right.
So yeah, so you know, he comes back and then
he gets scratched and then bammed, like all of a sudden,
the townspeople shoot him. And then the cool moment when
like we see the creature down, then he turns and
he sees the person got shot, and that was like

(15:30):
very cool way to like build up the mystery of
this like werewolf, because one things I like about this
movie is how they doesn't give us answers about how
this werewolf is. They give us like the very traditional
werewolf lord that we know if we're seeing these, like
you know, werewolf type of movies. And I like how
they don't shove it out of our faces. It's just

(15:50):
like they give us hints of like, Okay, what kind
of you know werewolf this is, you know, gradually throughout
the film when we get into it.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Yeah, the lessons more thing is kind of nice, Joey,
what do you think?

Speaker 5 (16:03):
Like I said, I didn't get to see this gross
version until later, probably on DVD. It goes on for
a lot longer. It's more than him just getting knocked
over by the werewolf and then you know, the other
guy getting attacked and the old man getting shot. It's
an elderly old, you know, British white guy who's just
laying there a full buckshot apparently, and later we find

(16:25):
he doesn't remember that part. He remembers everything but looking
over at the dead old man, and he doesn't even
remember the people from the pub standing over him looking
at him. It's graphic. And I want to say, this
was one of the scenes that the producers were watching
a screening of and they were misled by John Landis

(16:47):
about how graphic it was going to be. Somebody threw
a chair. They wouldn't say who threw the chair, but
one of the producers threw a chair, maybe out the
window of a hotel. They were so upset. Talk about overreacting.
You got to remember people doing a lot of cocaine
in the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
They say it's a powerful drug.

Speaker 5 (17:06):
What's that?

Speaker 4 (17:08):
According to Rick James, it's a powerful drug.

Speaker 5 (17:11):
Yeah, cocaine is a powerful drug. Maybe instead of a
monkey on his back, it's a werewoll fit his blood
in this film. Maybe that's one of the other subtexts.
But Landis listened to their feedback, said I'm going to
cut this. I'm going to cut that. Took all their notes,
and it turns out that he came back a few
days later, just as he promised, and he showed them

(17:33):
the same scenes in the film and they were happy. However,
he didn't cut anything. He just told them he was
He did a Jedi mind trick. And the second time
they saw it, they were expecting gore, and because they
were expecting so much gore, they didn't have a bigger
reaction to it. And he didn't cut a goddamn thing, So,

(17:57):
which is pretty cool. So we got to enjoy this,
and it's just a taste of what's to come in
terms of bloody special effects.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
That's always nice to see that the fake fix works sometimes, Rick,
what are your thoughts.

Speaker 4 (18:11):
I do got to push back a little bit on Andreas.
I don't necessarily think that it was a natural circumstance. Okay,
this was a natural selection. The dude who couldn't run
as fast died first. It's not poor Jack. Jack should
just been faster, he should have been quicker on his feet.

(18:31):
All He died because he just wasn't quick enough. All right.
The predator picked out the smallest and easiest prey to
get and now happened to be Jacking. So poor guy
or not. Natural selection? You know, if they would have
been a little smarter, they would have stayed on the road.
Natural selection. They deserve to die.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
That's what you get, Jackson.

Speaker 4 (18:57):
That's what you get, man. And something that I thought
was kind of interesting. I don't know necessarily how I
feel about it. But in the bar when the howling
was happening, the people in the bar, they were like,
I heard nothing. I heard nothing, you know, and it's

(19:17):
just like you didn't even hear that you know what
game they're playing and stuff, and then the lady was like, Yo, man,
you guys gotta do something. You guys have to get
up and do something about this, And that was the
provocation that led them to actually put together a hunting party. Yeah, manhood, Yeah,
I just leave it at that kind of say. The

(19:39):
other thing I want to say kind of get into
the whole supernatural aspect of the movie as we move forward.
I didn't really realize this until later on in the movie,
but it is kind of cool that most of the
time there's different type of werewolves that you see in
film and even in books and stuff like that, different

(20:00):
different depictions of where wolfs and stuff. But the ones
that we see here are a lot like this game
that I actually feature on my channel, Bloodborne, with the
Scourge Beast and the Cleric Beast and stuff like that.
They're like, these like werewolf type creatures.

Speaker 5 (20:16):
And are those creatures bipedal walking on two feet like
the wolf Man or are they on all fours y?

Speaker 4 (20:21):
So there are they're both. Actually, so there are some
of the creatures that are all fours quadruped, and then
there are a couple that are bipedal, so it's kind
of cool because the ones, specifically, the one that we
see in this is the scene right here is you know,
I got all fours and it is kind of like

(20:42):
what is known as the Scourge Beast. However, later on
in the movie, there is a depiction of one that
kind of looks like an owlbear for those who play
D and D. I don't know if you guys know,
I look like an owl bear. But which is still cool, man,
It's still cool. I just like the parallels that that
I'm seeing here. Like I said, I didn't realize it

(21:02):
at first, but a lot of parallels to the Gothic
horror a lot because the setting it's in London and
you've got that fogginess and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
I think he did that on purpose too. I think
when he decided to film this, he wanted to bring
it back to where all the horror films kind of
reside in that area, Like that's where you know, London
and England. So that's where we see Dracula, that's where
we meet the wolf Man, that's you know, where we
meet all these creatures almost, So I think he was
kind of taking it back to the roots.

Speaker 4 (21:31):
Yeah, so I appreciated that, but that's that's pretty much.
What about you two.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
Well, the beautiful thing about this one, at least when
we watch it, is they did go the lessons more route.
And I have to say in that last scene that
we talked about, I did enjoy the lessons of war
and the and the werewolf attack. I thought it was
really well done, well executed. I liked it a lot,
and I thought it was although I still stand with

(21:55):
you guys on the questionable why am I wandering around
in the Wars when I'm told not to thing? I
did find an interesting that once they realized they were
in trouble, they're just running aimlessly in directions. They have
no idea. There's not a tree, there's not a stick,
there's not a telephobal, there is nothing. There is no
form of navigation out there. Those guys were so screwed.
And I think even at one point when they thought

(22:16):
the wolf was circling them, there's a point where David
starts to circle Jack a little bit, and I was like,
I wonder if that's a little Ford telling. He's like, yep,
Jack's gonna die because you know, he's kind of circling
around him, you know, as the werewolf is circling around
both of them. So I thought that was kind of
a subtle interesting thing, And maybe it wasn't even meant
to be anything. I'm reading into something that wasn't there,

(22:37):
but it kind of struck me that way. So after
our attack, David wakes up three weeks later at a
London hospital and after doctor informs him his friend is
dead and spector Villers from Scotland Yard interviews him to
corroborate the locals account of an escape lunatic that attacked them.
David insists that that is impossible because of some sort

(22:57):
of animal. He's dismissed and told his memory will come
back in time, but this proves to be the furthest
thing from the truth. David begins to dream about running
through the woods and chasing game and killing deer and stuff.
He hallucinates his now dead and decaying friend Jack returning
to visit him, who properly informs him that they were
attacked by a werewolf and he has to kill himself

(23:19):
to basically end the werewolf bloodline and to free him
and all the past victims that are doomed to roam
the earth as undead ghosts. David's not having any of this.
He's just like, this is a bunch of crap. I
don't believe this at all. And then after that the
nightmares began. The really cool but somewhat out of place
werewolf demon soldiers begin to invade his dreams. What are

(23:41):
you guys thoughts on that. Let's let's start with you, Joey.

Speaker 5 (23:43):
Well, there's a lot to unpack here. So we first
get the dream, you know, if David as himself hunting
deer naked in the woods, and these nightmares escalate, we
get a spooky face where we think he's waking up
in this bed with some classic makeup that you'll see
stills from, you know, anytime somebodys talking about this movie.
It's it's on the screen for less than two seconds

(24:04):
where he just kind of opens his eyes. He's got
the blue skin and the yellow you know Michael Jackson
thriller eyes and the which John Landis directed, and then
the big fucking teeth, and then we get what scares
the Jewish kid, Well, he would have heard from his
parents stories of the Holocaust, and so they don't get

(24:25):
normal werewolves at the door. They get uh, demonic uh
Nazi demon werewolves with machine guns and knives. So we've
got our two main characters whose names are are David Kessler,
which is a Jewish German name, and then we've got
the less obvious Jack Goodman. And then you'll notice in

(24:48):
the family's house, if you look closely on on the
mantlepiece is a manora. So we're getting a werewolf nightmare
that's rooted in uh things he was led to be
afraid of when he was a kid and hearing about
Nazis bursting into the homes of a Jewish families and
committing atrocities. But the best part of this is isn't

(25:10):
when he wakes up. It's the fact that he's still asleep,
and we get one of the best jump scares of
the movie, which is just the same guy in a
rubber mask stabbing the nurse in the chest.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
It got me.

Speaker 5 (25:23):
Yeah, it's enough to make a Jewish kid say Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Nice. He does say that in the movie at some point, right,
I will say the menora was a nice catch. For sure.
I did not catch that, so that kind of makes
that scene make a little more sense. I don't know,
what do you think about that rick.

Speaker 4 (25:40):
You know what, until Joey puts some pretty good context
onto it, because they it was interesting because I did
note that the one of the nurses was like, yo,
I took a peek, you know, and he's got you know,
he's cut down there.

Speaker 5 (25:58):
Yeah, she says, I think he's a Jew, And yeah,
what what makes you say that?

Speaker 4 (26:01):
Yep?

Speaker 5 (26:02):
I checked it.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
Out, and and you know what, I didn't actually put
that together. Given the time period that this was nineteen
eighty one, if you were watching it probably in the eighties,
that you probably would have been a lot easier to
put the two and two together. I certainly didn't until
Joey just mentioned it. Now it actually kind of makes
a little bit more sense why you got SS werewolf troopers,

(26:25):
you know, running around and stuff like Sure, I was like,
what the heck is this? I was like, is this
just some you know, out of context, like the director
thought that that was interesting? But now that kind of
makes sense now, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (26:39):
And there's there's more to it than that. I want
to say, the name Adolph, I think kind of means
wolf or something of that nature. And then the Nazis
had a group of the SS that had a wolf
theme and that they had a wolf story that was
kind of it was an honorable animal, even though they

(27:00):
were terrible people, you know, the Nazis. But while other
European stories of like you know, wolf creatures were bad,
the Germans had a positive one, and unfortunately that got
turned into the very negative persona. And I think that's
where you also get I'm gonna mispronounce all the German
words in it. But like there's other things. Look at
the game Wolf in Stein, right, Yeah, it all there.

(27:23):
There's a lot of wolf themes with Nazi Germany. And
then you he just kind of tied that in. It's
like what would a Jewish kid be afraid of being
afraid of Nazi where wolves? And then even Rob Zombie
even did his fake trailer Nazi were Wolves of the
SS for the Grindhouse movie. Okay, so there's there's all
kinds of were wolf stuff with Nazis, I think before

(27:46):
and after this.

Speaker 4 (27:47):
I think that's pretty cool. But other things that I
noticed in this you know, group of scenes here is
that talk about this all the time. You don't really
see a whole lot of good plot devices and mechanics
in movies nowadays. This is this is really It's got
two really good ones in this collection of scenes here

(28:08):
where you have the you have to commit suicide otherwise
you're going to make more problems, which puts the protagonists
into a very big conundrum. And the other one that
I thought was kind of cool was the whole cover up,

(28:28):
you know, like there's more going on here and it
and they kind of go into each other because it
allows the protagonist to be able to just kind of like, nah,
this is all bullshit. That was just an animal I
you know, this is this is you know, I'm just dreaming.
I'm just hallucinating. You know. It allows for plausible deniability
of what really is going on to move the story forward.

(28:52):
And it's like Andre said, it just feels, you know,
like naturally these consequences are natural and stuff, and it
totally feels very human the way that this is done.
And I appreciate that. The other thing on the scene
that I don't know, maybe I missed it if one
of you guys said it, but the one nurse in particular,
Alex who becomes interest. Yeah, I was like, where have

(29:19):
I seen her before? I have seen it. There's a
she's in a few things and at this stage in
her life, pretty easy on the eyes man.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
So yeah, she was actually probably the most established actor
out of them all walking into this. For sure. She
had done quite a few movies before she did this one.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
Yeah, and for an American, I don't know, there's something
about the whole British accent and stuff, so that was
kind of cool, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
All right, well, andres what do you what do you
got to say about this?

Speaker 6 (29:51):
I mean, those dream scene was very iconic from the film.
I mean that scene where nurse Alex is in the
woods and then sees David in the bed and he
has that blue demon face that you know, Tim you
were talking about thumbnails That's always the common thumbnail that
people uses when they do like a clip for the

(30:11):
dream sequence.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
It's always that image. It's so like creepy.

Speaker 6 (30:16):
It's like up there with The Exorcist the debit, not
the regged demon, but the other one, which is way creepier, right,
even more creepier, you know, if you guys know you
know I'm talking about I don't know, the dream sequence.
I always interpret them as a transition of him, like
slowly becoming the werewolf before the full moon was coming,

(30:36):
and I didn't know about the Jewish thing. They were
hinted that. Now that makes a lot of sense when
Jack meets him in the hospital. When that happened, I
was like, WHOA. I was not expecting that. That's a
really cool concept having a victim warn you about the
coming of the full moon. Because traditional werewolf stuff, there's

(30:57):
always like a gypsy or some sort of expert about
the werewolf curse, and they always warned the person that
gets bitten about the replication of the full move. So
here I kind of like how they did it differently
is like supernatural spirit of your friend that has died
from the werewolf warning you to kill yourself. Really don't

(31:19):
let this happen because you're gonna kill more people. And
everyone talks about the iconic transformation scene. We'll get to it.
It's like, wow, the Jack Corpse is so good, and
we'll get into the film like the different phases that
it gets you.

Speaker 5 (31:32):
The first phase is the grossest. Yeah, you could literally
see it like hanging and like jiggling as he's talking.

Speaker 4 (31:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (31:38):
And then as it gets it gets kind of a
cartoonish until we get to a puppet. But at this
point it's like this was the groot graphic part of
the movie on TV because they couldn't cut it. Yeah,
because all the exposition would be lost. Ye you would,
we would, We would lose a lot of like the story.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
Well Griffin dude got a little depressed about it too,
because he said he realized as the movie went on
and he would see himself, He's like, this is how
I'm going to look as a corpse. So start kind
of get a little bit prisoned about it, and You're like,
it was just really so well done. He could see
himself like this is how I'm going to look when
I'm dead. And he also had to warn his parents
when they came to see the film, you need to

(32:16):
prepare yourself because this is going to be really gross
and it's going to be very disturbing. And afterwards, I
guess they couldn't even talk. They weren't just so so
flustered by the whole scene. It was amazing, And I think, Joey,
I think you hit it. I think you really drilled
down to the whole dream sequence. Because I was a
little put out and taken out of the film when
I was seeing the werewolf Nazi soldiers. But now that

(32:36):
you've kind of tied it in with the whole Jewish
aspect that I completely missed him, I know, or and
didn't think about the last names and stuff. It makes
so much more sense because before it felt like somebody
kind of inserted a little bit of a Twilight Zone
episode for a few minutes. It came back out, although
the jumping shock value of it was absolutely amazing. But yeah,
I think he did a really good job of trying
to kind of consolidate that into the context of the movie.

(32:57):
Very well done.

Speaker 5 (32:58):
I can't take credit for that. There's a plethora of
extras on the four K from Erro video, including and
I quote, I Think He's a Jew The Werewolf Secret
And it's an engaging video essay by a different filmmaker,
John Spira, who was just also is a fan of
the film, and it was about his perceived subtext of
the Jewish identity in the film, which goes into great

(33:19):
details eleven and a half minutes long, and he may
actually even be reading more into it than John Landis intended.
But that's where I kind of got all those facts from.
And if you want hours and hours and extras and
you really like this movie. The four K has got
more extras than the length of this hour and a half.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
All right, well, let's move on a little bit here.
So David's discharged and accepts an offer to stay with
the beautiful Alex Price. Although Alex is concerned about David's
dreams and nightmares, she's quick to dismiss his mental instabilities
as she succumbs to his sexual advances, and even more
decomposed version of Jack revisits David to again plead that

(34:01):
he end his life and release him from the purgatory
and prevent David from killing more unsuspecting victims. David refuses,
not believing Jack, and bids him to go away. Doctor
Hirshman while visits the slaughtered Lamb to investigate, suspecting that
David might have been influenced by the local superstitions. When
asked about the incident, the public goers deny any knowledge

(34:23):
of David, Jack or the attack. However, one distraught townsmen
privately tells doctor hirsh that David will endanger other people
when he transforms. That night, the full moon rises and
Jack's first painful transformation from man to Wherewulf takes place.
Once the transformation is complete, Jack prowls the streets of London,

(34:44):
killing six people. All right, Rick, why don't you tell
us what you're thinking about this section?

Speaker 4 (34:50):
As far as this sequence, I don't know, man, I
guess it totally is human and totally makes sense that,
you know, if this chick is to totally digging this dude,
because David was like, you know what exactly she was
kind of looking for, and the dude he's, you know,
attractive and young and vibrant, and she was a nurse,

(35:13):
so maybe she kind of wanted to, you know, take
care of him and stuff like that. Whatever it was,
she was looking at the whole situation through rose colored glasses.
This was like red flag after red flag after red flag.
You would not want to take this dude to your
house under any circumstance. But that is exactly what happened.

Speaker 5 (35:33):
To quote doctor Emmett brown Flord's nightingale syndrome.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yes, yes, apparently whatever she found out her that she
was like, I gotta have you some of that, yeah, Joins.
Does this fall kind of on the reverse hot crazy
scale only for a woman, That's right. She likes her
boys hot and crazy.

Speaker 5 (35:50):
He's just as exotic to her as she is to him,
because he's this Jewish guy from New York City, NYU.
She's wearing the T shirt and she's this hot British
nurse to him. So like they're seeing stuff in each
other that they didn't have in all their other sexual encounters.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
Right. I think that it's totally believable though, even though
it's like, yo, this is like not where you want
to be. But it's kind of interesting because earlier in
the film it was actually David who was telling Jack
when he was still alive, that he's pursuing the wrong girl.
When Jack was talking about some girl and stuff, and

(36:30):
later apparently some girl got with some dude at the funeral.
But I don't know about you guys, but I felt
some real good, like Sherlock Holmes stuff going on. When
the doc was showing up at the pub and trying
to get this investigation going on and stuff like that.
I was like, oh man, this guy's trying to deduce
things like Sherlock Holmes. I mean, you really don't see

(36:51):
it until a whole lot of it more until the
next you know, kind of sequence and stuff. But this
is where it begins. This is where he's he's starting
to build his case because David is like, hey man,
these things are happening, and I could swear that wasn't
an animal kind of thing, you know, and.

Speaker 5 (37:07):
It's clearly a big scratch from an animal, right right.
And he shows up with the dressed wounds already, and
the story from the authorities doesn't match.

Speaker 4 (37:17):
Up, right the guy who was there, and it looks
like this cover up and stuff like that. So you know,
that's pretty cool. And I mean, I probably will defer
to Joey and Andreas to kind of really more talk
about the transformation scene because while I might have thought
that it was good enough, and it surely does, I

(37:41):
think to some extent stand up to the to the
type of you know, special effects that we have today.
Maybe not as good, but it's still it's still relevant.
This is actually where I was like, there's this dude.
I thought it was funny as hell. Man, there's this
dude who's straight up sipping out wine and there's some

(38:01):
things going on outside, and sure enough, the lady's looking
through the window being like, you gotta check that out,
and he takes his little glass of wine go check
it out. I was like, you're dead, bro, you're cooked.
I thought, look, I get it, it's comedy, and I
get it that it's horror. For me, I thought that

(38:22):
was funny. I don't know, I thought that was funny.
But uh, I guess that's what I'll say for right now.

Speaker 5 (38:29):
We need a British werewolf in New York, is what
we need. And then the British Werewolf of New York.
They're saying like there's something outside and then the New
Yorker goes out the side and shoots the werewolf. And
if the boo's over.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yo, who's you looking at?

Speaker 4 (38:45):
God?

Speaker 5 (38:45):
Damn, I think that was a werewolf.

Speaker 6 (38:47):
Yo.

Speaker 5 (38:48):
It looked like a motherfucking werewolf and that it was
this dude. Oh, I got priors. I can get the
fuck out of here.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Who the fuck you?

Speaker 5 (38:55):
II ball man?

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Who you looking at?

Speaker 4 (38:57):
Their?

Speaker 5 (38:57):
Woof?

Speaker 4 (38:58):
Boy? You want some of this? Come on?

Speaker 2 (39:02):
It's like a Vin Diesel's out there, just like pushing
the wolf around.

Speaker 5 (39:06):
That naked guy tripped and fell on some bullets.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
What are your thoughts?

Speaker 6 (39:14):
First off, I would definitely watch a British Werewolf in
London starring Vin Diesel. That will be comedy. Gold and
Rays semina of all time. Anyway, Look, the werewol transformation thing,
Like if you like it, you don't like it. You
have to understand that this is a very important film thing.
I mean, forget about importance for horror, it's important for

(39:36):
film in general. Because this thing that made the Makeup
and Harror category in the the Acamedy Awards official because
it wasn't there up to this movie. So it's a
very historic moment and it just shows you how good
Rick Baker is as a makeup artist. I mean, the
fact that he was able to create a new award.

(39:56):
Lenni's hands been vocal about, you know, his regret of
some of the ending choices of this film.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
You know.

Speaker 6 (40:02):
But look, you have to understand that the MVP were
very harsh and like we're you know, very strict on
what you know, these ray are films that they can
show with the blood, the guts and all that, you know,
so he had to trim, you know, certain things and
I'm not going to go onto the list of it.
You know, like obviously we were talking about Jack and
his corpse, you know how real it was. He had

(40:23):
to kind of one scene where he was eating, he
was actually eating the toast and I think one of
the like lungs, it came outs and something like that.
Lennis had the kind of that like toasting a little bit.
So like, you have to keep this movie ray are
and I understand that by keeping the way transformation as
long is very crucial because a lot of these monster
effects things is cool. I want to see the transformation

(40:45):
or the effectsing like full on because it's so impressive
on how they do it. A very kind of scene.
I love to see those extended effects because we don't
see that anymore.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
You're right Andres, it's totally an iconic scene. And Joey,
what do you think?

Speaker 5 (41:00):
I love the First Night of Kills, and my favorite
was probably the least graphic the Hobos.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
It actually was more graphic, and then they cut it
out because the audience is happy about it. There was
more to that and he cut it due to people's
objection to it.

Speaker 5 (41:18):
That was not one of the deleted outtakes I got
to see. I did see an outtake of the Porno
film later in the movie. It looks like they have
no audio and it's just John Landis talking about like
this new movie is working on. I'm like trying to
read its list, and then all of a sudden he
has the set fall down like and go over him

(41:38):
like a like a Buster Keaton movie. And then behind
him is the bed full of people for the fake
pornographic movie that comes up later, and they're all having
an orgy behind Johns. So you can watch that on
the outtakes. But they did not show the hobo killings.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
You know, up to this point, I just kept thinking,
why is this movie in the book. It's not as
endearing to me as it is to Andreas and Joey.
But when we got to the transformation scene, I was like, oh, oh, okay,
now I see it. This is it. This, This is
what puts this movie in the book for sure. That

(42:15):
transformation scene, hands down, is probably one of the coolest
things I have ever seen, and I think it holds
up so well even into today's standards. I mean, I'll
put that up against any CG any day. I mean,
it was super well done, and I'm glad he took.
I think it's almost like two minutes worth of transformation,

(42:36):
but my god, it's two awesome minutes. And I mean,
all the effort that they put into making that transformation
look as agonizing as possible, and to focus on not
the whole body as a whole, which is what a
lot of wherewof shows have done, but to just focus
on parts of the body transforming, changing and stuff. Man,
it just paid off in space. I just it was

(42:59):
completely awesome. I was just floor by it. And after
I seen it, I said, Okay, I totally know why
this movie is in the book now and I completely agree,
just if for no other reason, just for that, because
it was so well done and it holds up and
I don't think there's a whole lot that can compare
to it. Even the Howling, as good as it is,
not as good as this movie. I don't think fans.

Speaker 5 (43:18):
Down some of their technique in when he's not fully
transformed in the face hasn't really gone yet, and he's
very hairy, and you see like different stages like he
gets hairer. They were actually smart about that, and they
shot it in reverse order, so he's covered in hair
and then they pull some hair off, and then they

(43:40):
shot some more and then they pull some hair off
until like you get that one scene where it's just
kind of like up his back and stuff. Yeah, and
so like and then they just edit it. Through the
magic of editing. It looks like he gets hairer, but
he was actually getting less hairy on set.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
It looks really good though he don't hair on the
body looks fantastic. It looks like it's real hair in
the body. I got Cisprowing's got nothing on what these
guys are doing. They need to be making wigs for
ball people, That's all I'm gonna say.

Speaker 5 (44:06):
I still like the big transformation sequence in the Howling
just as well. They did a lot more with bladders.
They were just pockets of air and then like you know,
that's kind of like the bubbling effect in the guy's
face in the Howling versus here, they had a prosthetic head.
They created their own substance that they're pushing against and

(44:28):
like stretching out that big snout. And they said, like
soon after they were done shooting like that, all that
stuff just kind of turned into goo. It was like
never meant to be permanent, right, It was this stretchy
shit that they just came up with.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
But it was amazing. Man, it just looks so good.
I mean, just when they focus on that face, that
snout's coming out and pushing it stuff, and they work
it so it looks like it's really painful and it's
kind of pushing and retracting and pushing. It just amazing,
I mean absolutely amazing. You just you can't turn away
from this, and you're just glued to it because you're like,
this is the greatest whore thing I've ever seen. And

(45:04):
it's not even gruesome. It's not bloody, it's not an attack,
it's not anything like that. It's just a transformation. But
it's probably as cool as the original Universal wolf Man changing,
where they did like the camera effects, like the fading
that was your monumental back then. This just took it
to a whole new level. And I mean, and I
don't think anybody's topped. I mean this hands down one

(45:25):
of my favorite scenes of all time.

Speaker 5 (45:27):
Certain shots looked better in four K because you could
see the details. But I will say the first part
where like his hand stretching, that actually not looked not
as good as I remember. Plus what do they call
it HDR High dynamic range? You see that there's like
a big difference in like shading between the actor in
the foreground and then him holding up the prosthetic hand

(45:49):
as it stretches, it just look look a little too brown.
So some of the effects cells better in four KAN,
some of it didn't.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
They should have probably colorized that when they transferred it
to four K they I should have done a little
clean up on that.

Speaker 5 (46:02):
But no, not everybody's going to George lucas it.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
No, no, but it probably would have been worthwhile. I
think for as the cult falling that this movie has,
I think they should have spent a little money and
just fixed that. But anyway, moving on, So now we
have doctor Hirsch, worried that Jack might be a danger
to himself and others, orders Alex to notify him as
soon as David returns back to her role. Meanwhile, David

(46:25):
wakes up in the Wolf's Den of the London Zoo.
Naked and afraid, David travels across London using whatever he
can find or steal to make his way back to
Alex's flat. Once there, she convinces him to return to
the hospital allow doctor Hirsh to treat his condition. On
the cab ride to the hospital, David learns of the
grizzly murders that were perpetrated throughout London the night before

(46:48):
David flees the cab and antagonizes a local police officer
and hopes of being arrested and put into a cage.
Failing this, he runs from Alex and calls home to
say goodbye before tempting to end his life. Unable to
must have the courage to do so, he follows and
now semi skeletal Jack into a theater where he's confronted
by all the victims of his previous night's rampage. So, Joey,

(47:13):
what are your thoughts?

Speaker 5 (47:14):
I applaud the actor's bravery in shooting that scene with
real wolves. I mean that clearly they were raised since
puppies to be around people, because they seemed super friendly
around him, and they were just curious. But oh my god,
Like this guy's naked a lot in this movie. By
the way. Yeah, you get to see full on dong

(47:35):
in the zoo, which I find out they weren't allowed
to close and they just kind of shut down parts
of it, so like some people got to see him
running around cupping is junk and his ass and the wind.
This leads to our second funniest part of the movie,
which John Landis insists is not a comedy. The balloons.

(47:56):
He basically comes off as a pediass talking to this
young boy from a bush, and he tells me he's
the great balloon thief and steals his balloons, and then
he goes up to his mom. She goes, He goes, Mummy,
a naked American stole my balloons.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
That was pretty entertaining.

Speaker 5 (48:15):
That was great. And he doesn't even hold onto it
long because then he grabs the women's jacket just so
we can have another scene where these guys are eyeballing
him in line for the bus while he's standing there
barefoot in a lady's jacket and.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Make a chit chat nice weather. Huh.

Speaker 5 (48:32):
Yeah. For all the horror in this, I mean you
do need something to kind of some levity to break
it up. Some of the funniest humor comes from his
dead friend looking very ghastly but keeping it light while
he tells his best friend to kill himself. This is
definitely not a film. It's a bit of a Debbie downer.

Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah. They told Griffin Dune, you know, anytime that you're
on screen as Jack, oh, be happy and upbeat. That
was that was the direction he was given. Never looked down,
Always be a happy and upbeat dead, dead ghoul or
dead you know, zombie or whatever he's supposed to be.

Speaker 5 (49:09):
And it makes sense because all his worries are over right,
if anything, is only worries, you know, for the well
being of others.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Well, that and having to wander the ages as a
decaying corpse because he can't ascend to the afterlife because
he's locked into the werewolf bloodline until it ends.

Speaker 5 (49:28):
Now do you think that he saw the ghost of
the original Werewolf in this film and that's the guy
who gave him the lowdown on the Curse of the Werewolf?
I mean they were both dead in the field next
to each other.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
I'm pretty sure they don't have that cool like after
life beatle juice book to work with, so yeah, they
probably you know, meet up and have some kind of
conversation because they say the bloodline has to be broken.
So everybody's from the first Werewolf down to David right now,
they're all out there. They didn't show them all, but
they're still all wandering around to because the bloodline hasn't
been broken yet.

Speaker 5 (50:02):
Bloody hell, I'm sorry I killed you and the bitch
your friend. I got some bad news about your friend. Uh,
and I got some bad news for you too. You're
gonna be around for a while until it's all am
I until he h, you know, I'm gonna tell your
friend to kill himself.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Well, and I'm thinking at some point maybe they can't
talk anymore because they're decaying at it an alarming rate.
I mean, you know, it's only been two days, and
you know, Jack's gone from looking a little bit, you know,
as I say, like a meat loaf, to almost being
halfway disintegrated. By time he's at the theater.

Speaker 5 (50:38):
He's literally played by a puppet in the last scene, right,
they did allow the actor to move the puppet's mouth
so he could actually get to do his lines on
set with his co star.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, which was was really cool that they did it
that way, and it lines up pretty good because I
kind of watched the mouth move up and down and
I was like, yeah, it's pretty close. So they did
a nice job with it, Rick, what are your thoughts?

Speaker 4 (51:02):
I guess I was moved by the scene in the
square where he tries to get arrested and the police
officer is just like, hey, stop kidding, stop messing around,
otherwise you'll get in trouble and he's like, I'm trying
to get fucking arrested. And he's like he's like, hey, hey,
stop it all right, otherwise you're gonna get in trouble

(51:24):
for real, okay.

Speaker 5 (51:27):
Because the tourists were there, he had an audience.

Speaker 4 (51:30):
Maybe, I don't know, I mean, sure, shit, it wasn't
like the Rodney King type of situation that they would
Jack wouldn't have been asking to commit suicide if that
was the case. But I thought that was interesting, I thought.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
And so you know too, some of the some of
the stuff that he's saying, he's talking about, you know,
Princess Diana and stuff like that. Yeah, and you know,
and Prince Charles at that point, they actually, if you
look at the credits at the end, they give him
some well wishes because they didn't want the royal family
or the people in Britain to be mad because they

(52:05):
were insulting them. So I thought that was kind of funny. Yeah,
he's like, we might have went too far.

Speaker 5 (52:10):
They congratulated him on his wedding, yeah, which was in
juxtaposition of him calling Prince Charles the F word.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (52:19):
He called him a cigarette right.

Speaker 4 (52:21):
Right, right, right right? Yeah, And so I thought that
that was cool. The doctor goes full on Sherlock Holmes
by this point on David like he's kind of figured
it out and stuff like that, which was kind of cool.
I mean this probably for me, this sequence from basically

(52:44):
when he wake up into the zoo all the way
to the theater the I guess ish end of the
theater and Jack was decomposing. Jack was decomposing. Man, the
guilt trip was real, a f man, That guilt trip
was real. AF He's like, yo, man, you just killed
this people. You just killed these people. You just killed
these people. You just killed these people. You know what

(53:05):
you should do? You should commit suicide. It's like dang, bro.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
But then they start sitting around going and this is
how you can do it. You should shoot yourself with
a gun. Well, if you put it in your mouth
then you won't miss. Well, I got a better idea.
What if you do this instead? I mean, they're all
like giving him the suggestions. He's like, thanks, thanks, I
appreciate the help.

Speaker 4 (53:23):
You know.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
So, Andre's what do you think about the sequence basically
from waking up in the Wolf's den all the way
to basically discussing and how he can offer himself in
the theater.

Speaker 6 (53:34):
So the sequence is pretty much to aff the map
of the werewolves attack.

Speaker 4 (53:39):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (53:39):
First of the doctor that's doing the Charlotte comes investigation
as Dundemester has been talking about great doctor.

Speaker 3 (53:48):
When the doctor goes to the.

Speaker 6 (53:51):
Pub asking some questions, confirming that David was right, that
it was no like lutic that attacked them, it was
an actual creature. Because when the dark player leaving and
like he's the one that reveals some detail about what
happened and confirm me he's suspicious that David was telling
the truth. And then we get back to like the

(54:12):
comedy aspect of the film, you know, David being naked
and you know, and the situation. I love how he's
in the pit with up two wolves. That was funny
and like I'm surprising to attack him. It's like, oh,
hello fellow, where wolf friend and gets that balloon kid,
and it's funny how the balloon kid goes up to

(54:32):
this British girl and it's like, hey, I got just
robbed by a naked man.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
It's like okay, you know, And then of.

Speaker 6 (54:40):
Course it's funny to see David running so quickly to
get the old lady's coat, going to the police officer
saying fuck you Charles, you know, and all that very funny,
and then he calls his sister, right, he's trying to
call back home. Very great tanger see I don't know
you talk about this, but you know, very tender, saying
very ad. Then after diaces Jack Raving, which was just

(55:04):
like very creepy, I mean, like Reavy corpse now, and
then he goes to a portal, you know, theater.

Speaker 5 (55:11):
They foreshadowed it too. We saw the movie poster behind
his tunnel victim when he was running. Oh yes, and
there's a close up of it. I can't remember the
name of the film, The you Next Wednesday. The tagline
is bigger than the title, and then you know it's
advertising orgy. What's it called?

Speaker 2 (55:29):
See you Next Wednesday?

Speaker 5 (55:31):
See you Next Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
Yeah, they had to do that because when he wrote
the script for this, all those theaters in Piccadilly Square
is a Piccadi Squares, Piccadilly Circle, Piccadilly Circus. They were
all cartoon theaters, so he planned on having cartoons playing yeah,
And by the time they went to shoot the movie
in eighty one, they all transformed into portal theaters. So
he's like, uh, I guess I gotta roll with this.

(55:54):
So he had to quickly rewrite it so it would
line up with what was actually there now, and that's
why created the whole fake porn old movie to be
playing in the background.

Speaker 6 (56:03):
Yeah, I heard about that. That was gonna be weird
to see him go to a cartoon fear. I'm like,
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Would have made it more funny though, I mean there's
there's all this depth and horrible stuff going on, and
there's like a road runner going across. You know, that
almost would have been lighter and funn here.

Speaker 5 (56:18):
No, because he would have eaten children instead of perverts.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Well that's true. There would have been a lot of
children's deaths and that would have been a little unsettling.
So maybe you're right, Joey, maybe it's better that he
just wiped out a bunch of perverts.

Speaker 6 (56:30):
I'm happy it is not in the film, because I like,
first of like eight old kids want to go to
a fear to see cartoons.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
That's an age thing again, though you're you're taking for
granted that you can watch cartoons at any time you want.
We were kids, dude, cartoons were Saturday morning and and
then there were a couple when you got out of school,
and that was it. Like then, it was a wasteland
of no cartoons and horrible TV you didn't want to watch.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
Yoh man. Yeah, I used to get up at like
five in the morning and watch cartoons on Saturday.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (57:01):
It was like a barbarian cartoon and Bears yog yeah man,
Yogi Bears Treasure Hunt yeah yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (57:14):
Then we get to Jack, who is now in his
third File phase. I do agree with Joey that, yeah,
his File phase is like very Pupper TV, but it's
still creepy. But he's really creepy when we see the
six victims, which I was like, whoa, I totally forgot
that we actually see his victims back again, just convincing

(57:34):
David to kill himself. And this is even creepier. That
guy was standing to him when he it was transferring
into a were wolf. What he's doing, he's starting at
this guy is like he's having attack. Why do you
want to stand there? It's so weird.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
I don't think that guy thought that's what was happening.
He thought he was having a good old time. That
guy just wanted to sit and watch what was happening. Well,
he's standing there thinking he's going to get a good show.

Speaker 4 (57:58):
You know.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
David transforms the werewolf while you know, inside the cinema
and he kills everyone. The police arrive in attempt to
hold him in the cinema while they wait for the
reinforcements to ride with guns, but he bursts out, decapitating
Inspector Viller's. We get to watch his head do a
little catapult across the hood of a car or as
you would say, bonnets of the car. He charges into

(58:22):
the streets of London. Hava ensues and shock motorists crash
into one another and mowed down stunned pedestrians and the
wake of this werewolf sighting the werewolf now sends the
police on a wild chase as Alex, doctor Hirsch at
roup of pedestrians follow the police. The police surround the
trapped David at a dead ended alley and prepared to

(58:42):
shoot him. Alex and the last ditch effort, runs down
the alley to try and save David. As she confronts
the now transform David, she tells him she loves him.
A brief moment of recognition enters the b size as
David's consciousness appears to recognize Alex, but the moment passes
as the beast research itself and lunches at Alex, forcing
the police to shoot and kill him. The werewolf transforms

(59:05):
back into David's human form, and Alex stands alone in shot,
sobbing as she mourns him. Joey, what do you think
about the end sequence of this movie?

Speaker 5 (59:15):
It's extreme, more extreme than the what the guts that
the werewolf spilled in the adult theater. It's the car accident.
It causes a bus nearly misses the werewolf, and had
it hit him, the movie would have been over and
so many more people would have lived or not been maimed.

(59:38):
They shot this across two nights at Piccadilly Circus. They
were not allowed to shut down the street. They basically
blocked traffic for two minutes, they did their stunt, and
then they had to let traffic go again. So they
got a few takes, you know, the first night, a
few takes the next night. They did it overnight from

(01:00:00):
Saturday to Sunday, and then Sunday to Monday, and then
anytime there's an impact where they actually hit cars. Those
are enclose ups where they had recreated like one story
of one of the corners on an old airport track,
so they just, you know, they had all the time
in the world over there, but anything where you saw
everything that was just a run through where you got

(01:00:22):
to have these no impacts swerving around with the stunt
vehicles and then get the hell out of there. The
one thing that was very amazing though, was they forgot
the severed head and the only guy that was at
the offices where the head was was one of the
film cutters, and they said, you got to get the
head down here, and he's like wet on a car,
so he had to take the subway and had his

(01:00:43):
head in a plastic bag and then all of the
people on the subway are like just staring at this
man with a severed head in plastic bag. And that
was the guy from Scotland Yard the know it All
gets his head severed and if you watch the outtake
you get to see his bumming sidekick, the one who
dropped all the bedpan his introductory scene, that guy actually

(01:01:05):
dodges the head flying over the car. They did a
wider shot for comedy and he's like literally dodging his
boss's head hurtling toward him. That was I wish that
Outtach would have been left in the movie. Definitely played
for laughs and not horror. But I the most disturbing
stuff was probably watching people fly through the windshields of

(01:01:28):
their car.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Yeah, it was almost more brutal than the actual attacks
by the werewolf to some degree, but it was fascinating
to watch. Andres what's your thoughts.

Speaker 6 (01:01:36):
Yeah, when the wherewolf comes down from that beer well,
I was like, whoa, You see this creature like just
roaming around Center London, right, and like he's causing having
in the traffic, and then you see people pulling out
from the vehicles and you see one body getting crushed
and you see the afterman. It's like really brutal, but
it just really shows what his creature could do. It
is a very down beat ending, very tragic ending to

(01:02:00):
do you know he was doomed anyway? For me, I
think he actually did jump intentially so he could kill
himself and ended right there. I think he was actually
in control and like he did the attention to jump
at Alex so that the police can kill him. And yeah,
great ending. And one day labout this week. You know,
some science horbies don't stick the landing. This one particularly

(01:02:21):
stick the landing, which is great.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
Yeah, all right, Rick, what are your thoughts of this
final scene?

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
So there's love and hate to the final scene for me,
because I do love me some good action, and there
was some pretty good action here, especially when I saw
some dude getting rolled over on the ground by it
was the bus or something, Yeah, somebody over There was

(01:02:46):
a dude under there. Man, I was like, and he
was rolling. It wasn't like it wasn't a speedbop. This
motherfucker was flying across the ground and got rolled by
the vehicle. I was like, damn.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
The only thing to made it more horrific is if
they'd have backed up and done it again.

Speaker 4 (01:03:06):
So, look, there was things to like about this, for sure.
But when I take a step back this scene, the
sequence did fall in the unrealistic action eighties movie trope
because you've got a freaking werewolf that's chopping people up,

(01:03:27):
taking off their heads. There's pandemonium in the streets. Yet
there's still crowds that are attracting to the scene, like
what the hell, man, For real people would be trying
they would be crawling over each other to get away.
They're not trying to get to that stuff, you know

(01:03:48):
what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (01:03:48):
To be fair, they heard the beast on the other
end of the barricade, and then they wanted to see
what all the fuss was, and the cops are telling
them to get the fuck out of there.

Speaker 4 (01:03:57):
No, no, no, no, that shit bullshit, man, that is
totally bullshit. Because if you have people's heads flying around
and stuff like that, you got a legit werewolf and
stuff that people could see. People are not trying to
go get a better look like that. That is not happening, man.
And I'll tell you what if it is happening, you know,

(01:04:17):
my stance is already they deserve to die, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Right right, Well, not that when they see police officers
over in Britain with guns, something serious is about to
go down to Debt's right, because those guys don't carry guns.
So that's a good indication that you should get the
hell out of Dodge.

Speaker 4 (01:04:35):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely, definitely this was the
specific scene when really the werewolf did look a whole
lot like an owlbear. For those of your D and
D bros. And gals out there. I don't know, man,
Maybe it's just me not necessarily seeing how far the
distance was between the police officers hold out stance to

(01:04:58):
where are as I did werewolf was. It seemed to
me like it was pretty darn far. And it also
seemed to me Nurse Alex was in the way. So
when it was like a real clean shot to kill
the werewolf, you know.

Speaker 7 (01:05:15):
I was kind of like she didn't get hit at all,
and it wasn't like I don't know, man, I that
again brought me back to the whole eighties, you know
action trope, Like all their shots are dead on, you
know what I mean, Like these dudes straight up from
the you know, the British military sniper Green Bray thing,

(01:05:37):
Like I don't know about that, man, Well not.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
On exact, but you got a line of police officers
that are holding back an entire town of people, but
yet they can't stop this hundred and five pound woman
from bursting through their line and running down the alley.

Speaker 4 (01:05:54):
No, I know him, I know him, you know, like, oh,
maybe if I go over to him, everything will be cool.
She deserved to die, honestly, yeah, she deserved to die.

Speaker 5 (01:06:07):
She literally knocked over like four fucking guys that were
like crouchy. Yeah, and they were amazing shots, because dude,
they were. It did seem very far away, but I
think they wanted you to believe that, like only she
got to see him transfer him back into David because
they were so far away. Yeah, apparently they could hit him,
but they didn't get to see what transpired between her

(01:06:30):
and the werewolf that became a man.

Speaker 4 (01:06:32):
Yeah. So I mean it wasn't totally bad. Like I said,
I do like eighties action movies and stuff, and it
definitely felt like that for me. However, all that that
I could easily forgive. Okay, I was like, WTF because
as soon as the end of the movie came, that

(01:06:52):
was the freaking end of the movie, man, Like that
was it? Okay? All of a sudden, you have Bloom
by the Marcels doing some do wop and I'm just like,
what the hell is going on with the moon here?
Why are we listening to this song right now? It
should be darker. I did not like the choice of

(01:07:14):
song at the end. I thought it was not good man.
I was not buying that at all. I could buy
the rest of the stuff and be like, hey man,
that's some cool action and I could forgive some of that.
But nah man, not that end song. Nah ah man.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
That did not That clashed big time for me.

Speaker 5 (01:07:32):
Was that a book end? Did they have the same
song at the beginning?

Speaker 4 (01:07:35):
They had a blue Moon? A different version of blue Moon.
In the beginning it was more serene and stuff. Okay,
this ending one was by the Marcels. It was this
whole do wop you know, like dou wop duop du
up all that kind of stuff. You know.

Speaker 5 (01:07:48):
Would you have liked it better if they would have
gone with Werewolves of London?

Speaker 4 (01:07:51):
Yes, this one was too uplifting.

Speaker 5 (01:07:54):
Man, it was abrupt.

Speaker 4 (01:07:56):
It seemed like the direction at the very last few
moments of that scene was a love's last chance to
try to like make this make the whole situation better,
And it seemed as though they were trying to kind
of empathize with the protagonist's unfortunate situation. He's stuck in
a situation where he cannot win. And I was willing

(01:08:20):
to be like, oh, yeah, man, that fucking sucks to
be like that guy, you know what I mean? But
it then it just goes to this, you know, weird,
like well mad, it's like this upbeat things I did.
They could have gone with some other type of music
to kind of smooth out the ending year, but yeah,
that's what I got, man.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
Well right. I enjoyed the pandemonium of the scenes that
we got when he transforms for the last time, you know,
I mean, the the scene in the theater is just
bloody and brutal when you see that pile of bodies
and then he bursts out and you just know bad
stuff is going to happen, and it did. But I
thought it was funny. It was more from the people
that doing it to themselves than there were doing anything,

(01:09:01):
So I enjoyed that. I'm with you, though I feel
it's pretty stupid with the way everybody's following this around,
like it's a big attraction that they need to fall
around and see what's going on. They should have been
running for the hills, for sure. But I also did
enjoy the abrupt ending. I thought it was stupid that
she made it down the alley, and you're right, she
should have died too, But nonetheless, I like that they

(01:09:23):
just shot him. He's dead and the dude just ends
the movie. I kind of like that. Again, the music
might not have been the right choice, but the brutal
suddenness of the ending, I thought it was pretty brilliant overall.
So I guess, you know, let's face it, the early
eighties is the era of the werewolf movie. We get
a lot of werewolf movies. So I mean, just an
eighty one alone, we're gonna get Wolfing, we're gonna get

(01:09:44):
The Howling, and we're gonna get this one, and we're
gonna get Full Moon High, you know, and out of
that too. That rise to the top is this one
in the Howling for sure, and then we're gonna get
that followed up with a company of Wolves. We're gonna
get to see The Howling two. Your sister is aware,
We're gonna get to see the teen wof franchise start up,
and then later on we're gonna get to see Teenwolf two.

(01:10:05):
So a lot of werewolfs throughout the eighties. But I
think overall, I mean this and The Howling are the
two that are going to stand out in this one
for sure because of the cool effects. You know, that's
gonna catch the eye of a very young Michael Jackson
who's going to hire not only the director. He's gonna
hire John Landis, but he's gonna hire the special effects
people to do the thriller.

Speaker 5 (01:10:25):
Yeah, Rick Baker, Yeah, I always thought Michael Jackson looked
more like a were cat.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
It looks like a lot of things throughout the years
that that's a whole other podcast.

Speaker 5 (01:10:37):
Respect daig Man, that was probably one of the more
acceptable weird looks he had, right yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):
Yeah, yeah, but it's a real slow transformation that he
does morphing over the years. I don't know who does
his special effects, but they didn't do good job. He
wasn't looking good towards the end at all.

Speaker 4 (01:10:54):
I think he did look like cat.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
Yeah he did look yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:10:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:10:57):
That was one of the most honest line of anything
Michael Jackson's in though, when he looks at his date
and says, I'm not like other guys. I'm different. Yeah,
I like everybody's cracking up. Apparently, John Landis says Michael
was in on the joke that people were gonna laugh
when he said that he was different, and they did.

(01:11:19):
But Thriller's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
Oh yeah, the video is awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:11:22):
Man. I'll tell you what. When I was younger, I
could not watch thriller. That's how scared that stuff was
to me. When I was younger. I couldn't watch it.
I couldn't even be around when the song was playing.
That's how scared I was. Wow the scene, yeah man,
it was for real man.

Speaker 2 (01:11:38):
All right, Well, gentlemen, that's the end of our film,
and that brings us to the death clock. So I'm
gonna ask each one of you, starting with Andreas Andreas,
is it worth giving up an hour and thirty seven
minutes of your death clock to watch this movie?

Speaker 3 (01:11:54):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (01:11:55):
It was.

Speaker 3 (01:11:55):
It was worth the death clock.

Speaker 6 (01:11:57):
I mean, this movie is well paid, well erected by
the awesome director that is John Lennis. This movie is
top tier horror comedy. So it's worth the def cloud.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
All right, dunge maasterard ninety seven minutes worth it or not.

Speaker 4 (01:12:12):
I think this will be the first time on the
podcast that I have to say that I think that
for most people, I would probably say, do not spend
the time to watch it. I got a couple three
reasons why so. One, if you haven't seen it by now,

(01:12:35):
you're gonna be measuring up against things that exist currently.
There might be a couple short scenes that you want
to take a look at and stuff. But as a whole,
there are movies that do a better job than this
one does at this current time. Not saying that the
movie's coming out right now are better. I'm just saying
that there are movies that are better that are more contemporary.

(01:12:56):
Part of the reason why I say that because this
film it should have, in my opinion, it should have
committed a little more to the horror genre or to
the romantic really leaning into the plight in a situation
that are almost like an anti hero kind of thing.
I would have liked that a little bit better. But

(01:13:18):
it kind of a little bit of both and a
little bit of comedy and stuff. Which the comedy isn't
necessarily a bad thing in a horror film because it
does allow to have a little bit more of ups
and downs, which is good. But I would say probably
not all.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Right, Joey a little over buck thirty, what do you
think for your time or not?

Speaker 5 (01:13:38):
Absolutely? And it was worth John Landis's time. He came
up with the idea for this and wrote the script
in nineteen sixty nine when he was on the set
of Kelly's Heroes. He's a production assistant and he was
traveling across Europe and he saw some gypsies burying a
criminal and they buried him wrapped in cloves of garlic

(01:13:59):
and feet first, just so he wouldn't come back and
cause any more trouble. And it kind of gave him
the idea for the movie. And he'd already done something
comical with Rick Baker and loved his effects, and he says,
I'm gonna make American Werewolf in London, and you're gonna
do the makeup. And ten years later, someone finally greenlit
the fucking project. So they both had a lot of

(01:14:21):
time to dwell on this, and I think that's why
it turned out so well that it did, because they
were both working on this in their head until someone
believed in the vision that he had for the film.
And it made history the first Oscar for Best Makeup
special Effects, and it made Rick Baker a legend. So
I definitely think it's worth taking time off my death clock.

(01:14:44):
The real question for me is, you know what do
I like better? This or The Howling? They're both an
hour and a half, they both came out in eighty one,
they both have great special effects, they both have downer
endings except The Howlings ending is hilarious. She turns into
a werewolf on live news broadcast. Know if that was
supposed to be funny, but I loved it. Sadly, I
can't find my fucking Howling Blu Ray, so I didn't

(01:15:06):
get to review that before this, and I can't say
for certain which one I like better, but this was groundbreaking.
Most of it holds up today and I will probably
take more time off my death clock revisiting it several
times before I joined the Undead.

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
All right, Well, for me, I found the first half
of this movie to be pretty slow paced, and I
kept asking myself again, why is this in the book?
And it wasn't until we get to the special effects
where I finally understood, Okay, now I get it. And
the other thing that I have about this movie is

(01:15:44):
there are definitely some glaring plot issues, as we've kind
of pointed out through the podcast. So I mean, unless
you just really big into special effects, I don't think
that you're really going to enjoy this. I'm glad I
watched it. I'm definitely glad I got to see the
transformation scene and things that that this is probably never
gonna be a go to movie for me. Maybe I'll
watch it maybe one more time in my life. Joey

(01:16:07):
comes over to my house probably, you know, so let's
watch you know, the America Werewolf of Mondon or something
like that.

Speaker 5 (01:16:12):
We're gonna put it on during your Halloween party.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
There we go, We'll put on during my Halloween party.
So yeah, I'll probably watch it because Joey will take
over my TV and play during my Halloween party. But
uh yeah, I just I don't see it being one
of my go to horror films. If I'm gonna watch
where Wolf movies, I'm probably gonna go watch Underworld and
watch vampires and where We'll fight each other or something
like that. That's gonna be far more entertaining than me.

Speaker 5 (01:16:30):
So that's just because Kate Beckham sells and a latex
body suit.

Speaker 4 (01:16:35):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Yeah, there's there's a lot to be said there, and
you're not wrong. So again I'm gonna say it's a
conditional one. You may want to watch it, you may not,
but it's just not gonna be for everyone. So I
think that takes us to our shameless plugs. So Rick,
where can our listeners find you?

Speaker 4 (01:16:54):
So you guys can find me at the dungeon Master
Elite channel on YouTube and that's dunge Master Leak. There's
no spaces in there, and I do tips and tricks
and live gameplay videos for souls like action games, tactical
games like Fellseeal, Arbertis, mark Ogre, Battle Tactics, and the

(01:17:17):
action games there is like Bloodborne, Dark Souls, those type
of things. If you're playing any of those games. I
know a lot of times people getting into the genre
might have a couple of problems and not know what's
going on. Check out my channel. I've got a lot
of tips for you guys out there, and even walk
through to kind of help you guys out. I respond
to pretty much a lot, if not all of my

(01:17:38):
comments that people have. People would be like, how do
I do this? Ask me a question if you need
to know, and I'll probably respond. So Dungeon Master Elite
channel YouTube and thanks again, by the way.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
No problem, all right, Andreas, Where can our listeners find you?

Speaker 6 (01:17:53):
Check me out on my channel Andrea's polk culture Guide
channel presents there.

Speaker 3 (01:17:58):
I do a lot of.

Speaker 6 (01:17:59):
Movie trebudes, resispectis, slash reviews or in genermal movie reviews.
Foll culture themes from television or movies. Then I got
live stream reviews. Also checked me out at mc belee Edge,
where I host with Jeff and zeiber to do movies
and television are upcoming Duff Star Wars, Rogue one and
then and or the same broad Plus we got the

(01:18:20):
last of US Season two coming up. So yeah, a
lot to come into mcbe edge. I just wanted to
thank Tim and Joey for invite me again their channel.
It was fun, it was blast. I hope you guys
are enjoyed this latest awesome movie vo on American Werewolf
in London.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
All right, well, Rick Andreas, thank you both so much
for coming and joining us tonight. I hope you guys
will come back again. We always enjoy having you on
a channel. And I'd like to thank everyone for listening
to the Middle Aged Movieviewes podcast in our review of
an American We're Wolf in London. I know we all
had a holling good time bringing it to you. If
you like what you heard, please smash that like button, subscribe,

(01:18:56):
leave a comment. If you have something to say about
the movie, or hell just something to say about any
one of us.

Speaker 5 (01:19:02):
Follow us on Facebook x Blue Sky and Instagram have
a commoner suggestion, then email the show at Mamreview Podcast
at gmail dot com. Ba ba ba bob ba ba
ba The Night.

Speaker 2 (01:19:24):
Without a Dream without a lover. Dang

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Episode 56 - An American Werewolf in London (Where is Warren Zevon?)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 56 - An American Werewolf in London (Where is Warren Zevon?)