American Werewolf In London

Ask anyone why this John Landis comedy werewolf horror is rated so highly and you will meet with a flurry or reasons, and probably some scorn for daring to query the quality too. The effects are amazing!, they will cry. It’s so funny!, they will shout. It’s the best werewolf movie of all time!, they will claim. So what? We whisper.

The special effects are, of course, extremely good. Given the limitations of both the movie’s budget and the year the film was made, the transformation scene that sits so firmly in the hearts and minds of genre fans still impress. But it doesn’t convince. It’s a stellar technical achievement but that’s different to an effect that doesn’t impede on the suspension of disbelief. Of course, you can’t criticize the creators for such marvelous work, but you can certainly disagree with those who maintain that this is still most convincing werewolf transformation ever.

The humor, too, hasn’t aged brilliantly, but unlike the effects this aspects was never state of the art anyway. The parodic, B movie tone the tale of the transforming tourist strikes was never particularly smart or new. Indeed it genuinely doesn’t offer much more than an episode of The Simpsons TreeHouse of Horror, and this isn’t helped by some rather stupid skits and limited performances.

Drag Me To Hell

Commercially it’s hard to make a case for Hollywood horror being in bad shape. The J-horror remakes and gornography that have dominated screens for the past decade still do the sort of numbers the execs want them to, meaning there is likely to be another ten Saw movies before mainstream audiences get bored. Creatively, however, it’s a different matter. Thankfully, though, with the very enjoyable Drag Me To Hell, Sam Raimi has returned to the genre has made his name with, wrestling the steering wheel away from the blinkered fat cats and performing the cinematic equivalent of a U-turn.

An unashamed throwback to the tongue, in cheek scare fests of the Seventies and Eighties, Drag Me To Hell is very much a deliberate antidote to the grim, straight faced muck of recent years. It has jumps, twists, shocks, and most importantly, it has real personality. The story of a young loan officer who is cursed by a rejected customer shifts along at a wicked pace and although there isn’t an ounce of it that isn’t in some way derivative, it feels entirely refreshing.

There are, however, niggles. Justin long’s character, for instance, is fairly pointless and the performance fruitless. The final twist too, is one of that can be seen from the inside of a buried coffin. And let’s not forget that horror grew out of the Eighties through necessity. Fun through it may be, there are inherent limitations to the template, and more often not it feels like little more than a particularly good episode of the Twilight Zone.