Transcript: An American Werewolf in London (1981)
Transcript of 70mm’s An American Werewolf in London (1981) Episode.
SLIM Heeey, it’s your old pal Slim and this is 70mm, a podcast for film lovers. Every Monday I’m joined by dear friend and artist, Danny Haas.
DANNY How are you not getting away from this thing? I feel like he could just throw a collar on this and walk it with the leash at that point.
SLIM And our spiritual advisor, Protolexus.
PROTO This is real! Yeah, totally. William Hurt and Jeff Bridges are the same person.
SLIM And together as friends forever, we discuss recently watched movies. In the second half of this episode, we cover An American Werewolf in London from 1981. Is it time to finally give werewolf movies their due? Find out… now.
[70mm theme song ramps up, plays alone, fades out]
SLIM The month of October, it’s almost finished. And we did a voting situation for our patrons. You know, they said let us vote one more time. We’ll get it right. Give us the power. And we put it out there. Proto built this huge bracket with a bunch of movies from the Masters of Horror, sweet 16, it came down to two movies. They Live from John Carpenter. And who’s the director of Suspiria?
PROTO Argento.
SLIM Argento. Suspiria. The OG.
DANNY Slim, did you cheat? Did you look at the results?
SLIM No, I didn’t do anything.
DANNY I didn’t look either. I don’t know what the results are.
SLIM So it came down to those two movies. There was a very strong push for They Live, at least in the Discord, because we still have yet to do a John Carpenter, The Thing, so people were trying to make it right. But Suspiria, there are some vibes behind it. You know, some 4K vibes, remaster vibes. But Proto, can you walk us through what happened in the end? What led up to this moment?
PROTO The lead up to this — this is what I thought going into this 16 movie bracket. Looking at these pictures, I would have said for a horror bracket, I would have said Suspiria is a first seed. And I probably would have said that They Live is an eighth seed. I’m looking at They Live and I’m thinking who’s voting for They Live? But here we are. And I have to say, I am shocked at the results. This is probably the closest we’ve had of a final. The winner is at — just barely — I mean it’s almost 50/50. It’s 51.9% for the winner.
SLIM Oh my god.
PROTO It was so close. So we’re pretty much — we’re in that zone where no one’s going to be happy. Or at least half the people who voted aren’t going to be happy.
DANNY Can I vote real quick?
PROTO Sure, it won’t do anything but you can vote. [Danny laughs]
PROTO So the winner is — Suspiria.
SLIM Ohhhhh!
DANNY Yessss.
PROTO It was pretty close.
SLIM Holy crap.
DANNY That’s what I wanted to watch.
PROTO They Live really put up a fight.
SLIM Congratulations to John Carpenter on a real hard fought tournament. [Danny laughs] But in the end it didn’t work out. I just want to go back to the beginning. This was Proto’s hope for this entire tournament. You said it early on, right, you wanted to do Suspiria?
PROTO I don’t remember saying that. [Slim laughs]
DANNY Somewhere check the tapes.
SLIM I remember it! 1977, you said this is on your watchlist. ‘’I really want to do Suspiria.’’ So if you’re curious, if it’s within your capability, there is a gorgeous 4K set of this movie. There is a blu-ray. By all means, go snag that off of eBay or Amazon. But it’s also streaming fo’ free on Tubi TV in the US. Tubi army rise up. Danny, how do you feel about that?
DANNY I’m excited. I really am, actually. I watched the more recent one with Tilda recently on my Tilda Swinton journey, and I was in love with that movie, so I’m very excited to watch this one.
SLIM We have to say hello to some friends that joined us this month. New patrons at a 70mmpod.com or patreon.com/70mm. Konrad, Dennis, Benito, Josh, Trey, Nexus9, Gator, Julian, Dustin, Edgar and friend of ours, Kurtz, all joined this month. Four bucks a month.
DANNY Wowowow.
PROTO Unbelievable month. Thank you.
SLIM A lot of new friends.
DANNY What a life.
SLIM Get access to the VHS Village where we can chat movies during the day, and you get access to the 70mm Vault of exclusive episodes that’s been growing and growing.
DANNY How many we got in there right now?
SLIM Oh god — 13 maybe? We have another one, we’re recording our next episode for the supporters. If you listen on Spotify, if you’re paid sub, you get access to them too, but our patrons will have access to our Harakiri episode as chosen by patron, Torin.
DANNY I’m excited about that one too.
SLIM Proto, did you watch any movies this week?
PROTO I did watch a couple movies. So to get into the spirit of Halloween —
DANNY Yes.
PROTO There was a movie that I really wanted to watch last year, didn’t get around to it. I don’t know if it was streaming, but I got to it this time. The Return of the Living Dead.
SLIM Ohhhh.
PROTO I know Slim’s seen it. Danny, have you seen this?
DANNY No, just the first one. Night Of, right?
PROTO Oh my god — I don’t even know, I guess it’s more of almost like a tongue in cheek like spoof off of the whole Night of the Living Dead.
DANNY Oh this is a joke?
PROTO Kind of — I mean it’s horrific.
SLIM It’s like a horror comedy.
PROTO Yeah, it’s a horror comedy. But the first half hour of this movie is absolute gold. I’m talking like —
DANNY What?
PROTO I’m talking like bars of gold. [Danny laughs] Like like you got a whole palette over at like — where’s that? Fort Knox? They keep the gold? Yeah, that’s what this is. Hilarious. I almost fell out of my chair laughing when these two goons are trying to handle this corpse. [Proto laughs] Oh my god. Amazing. Amazing movie. We were talking a little bit about it, me and Slim. There’s like some real graphic nudity in this and we were kind of theorizing that’s maybe one of the reasons that this isn’t as I don’t know, more highly regarded during this season. Yeah, it’s pretty graphic.
SLIM Like it would have been great on like USA but because of the nudity they would have had to cut out like 25 minutes of the movie so that’s probably why it wasn’t like elsewhere.
PROTO But yeah, I had a great time watching this. It’s just kind of what I wanted. Like I love the whole comedy horror aspect of this season. So this was perfect for that. I gave it four stars.
SLIM This guy, Dan O’Bannon — let me tell you something about this Dan O’Bannon guy.
PROTO Tell us.
DANNY Talk to us.
SLIM He wrote Alien, Total Recall, Prometheus, Lifeforce and Invaders from Mars.
DANNY What!
SLIM Yeah. So this guy — he directed this, so when I rewatched it recently I kind of went down the O’Bannon rabbit hole. See what else he was cooking up, but he only directed —
DANNY Is he a household name? Just not in my house?
SLIM I think he’s pretty well known for his Alien work. I think he’s probably like tossed around and those like Alien books. Let’s see, Jason in chat from Dune Pod says he also worked on Jodorowsky’s Dune.
PROTO Good heavens.
DANNY Got something in your throat? [Danny laughs]
PROTO That wasn’t a movie, right?
SLIM No, it’s like a documentary explaining I think the failed attempt at making it as far as I’m aware.
PROTO Yeah. The other movie that I watched, not in one night, not in two nights, not in three nights, but from I think it was over the course of 10 days — I took a chance on myself. I took a chance and I watched Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World. This is a movie I’ve seen on Criterion. It was you know, it’s in the sci-fi category. And the big thing, the big special thing about this is it’s almost five hours long. So that’s why it took me so long to watch this.
SLIM Cripes.
PROTO And what is it about? Over the course of five hours, you follow two characters, who are pretty much globetrotters around the world. And there’s different people following each other and it’s set in the 1999 it came out in 1991 and it has an amazing look at like future tech. If you love that, where they try to imagine what tech will look like and you know 10 years in the future this movie is chock full of it. And it’s kind of like super fun because it’s kind of there but also not really, like the computer stuff is like super silly. They’ve got screens that look like they’re on a Nikon camera, just like huge blocky silly looking things. They have some like sci fi cars that look ridiculous, but if you like that kind of stuff this movie is great. But it also, it’s hard to process a movie that’s this long. I gave it five stars because I think the creation — what he was able to accomplish and what he was trying to go for it is so audacious and incredible. And the story is so big and just the sheer length of it alone makes it incredible and you follow these characters and they go through all kinds of stuff but it’s not for everyone. It’s barely probably for anybody so I can’t just blanket recommend this movie that I gave five stars to. But I think if you look at it and you if these all these things are pushing your buttons, I think it’s worth checking out. I really enjoyed it.
DANNY Can you say the title of it again?
PROTO Yeah, it’s Until the End of the World.
DANNY No, what was the beginning part you said? Wim Wenders?
PROTO Wim Wenders is the director.
DANNY Ohhhh.
SLIM The poster on Letterboxd is pretty rad. Was it you or someone saying that this was originally supposed to be like a TV movie and that’s why it’s so long? Because I remember saying that, like the original cut was like 20 hours long or something insane.
PROTO Yeah, I said that. I think I made that up. [Danny laughs] So I couldn’t find any proof that that was true. I must have confused it with something else. Yeah, but there’s some familiar faces in this. There’s Sam Neil’s in it. And also William Hurt. William Hart is like the main character. But you know, every time I see William Hurt — I don’t know, I just don’t really buy the whole William Hurt thing. I don’t know. I just — he’s not very convincing to me. I love seeing Sam Neill in movies though. The more I see Sam Neill, like his stock is rising. So I mean, I think it has a real bright future ahead of him. I can’t wait to see what he does next. [Slim laughs]
SLIM I like William Hurt. I don’t even know if there’s a ton of movies I’ve seen him in, outside of Altered States. That’s it. Tron? Was he in Tron?
DANNY Okay, can we move on?
PROTO That’s Jeff Bridges, but they are twins. [Slim laughs]
SLIM That’s like the Dennis Quaid bit from Proto!
PROTO Yes! Yeah, it’s real. This is real! Totally. William Hurt and Jeff Bridges are the same person.
SLIM Have you ever seen them in the same room at the same time? [Danny laughs] Someone look this up, please. Danny watched a lot of movies this week. I was just looking up his Letterboxd. A lot of movies. For some reason — which we need to get into right now. Please, finally.
DANNY Talk to me.
SLIM You watched a 4K disc of the original Dune movie. What’s happening?
DANNY I got sucked in to a nice gorgeous box set and art. And I also read the currency wrong. And so when I thought I was buying this, I thought it was way cheaper in American dollars, then Arrow Films shipped it to me. So that’s a part of the story.
DANNY So I fired up the 4K of this movie this week. And the movie itself is still bad. Like it’s still a one star movie. But for those who like David Lynch’s Dune, the 4K looks incredible. And I think a lot of the sets – it hurts a bit of the sets and backgrounds but a lot of the close ups look amazing. A lot of the shots of Kyle look really good and whatever his name is in the movie. What’s the name of Paul again? Paul –
SLIM Muad’Dib.
DANNY Muad’Dib. It’s fine. I’m happy to own it. I think Casey’s not happy I spent the money on it.
SLIM I wouldn’t think so.
DANNY For a one star movie, it is what it is. It’s on my desk now. So I’ve watched the 4K version of Dune and it makes me even more excited for Denis’ Dune.
SLIM The buzz about this Dune movie.
DANNY I know, it’s palpable.
SLIM People are running through the streets talking about this Dune movie. I think our friends at Dune Pod have seen it already. They interviewed Denis Villeneuve.
PROTO There are worms in the street running. [Danny laughs]
SLIM What else did you watch, Danny, that you want to talk about?
DANNY Let’s get into a movie. I don’t know if I’ve talked about it much on here. Ghostbusters. I think I’ve said before, I didn’t grow up on Ghostbusters, and I didn’t watch it until later in life, actually, probably for the first time — I guess my first Letterboxd review of it. Because I didn’t care enough.
SLIM Yeah, you let people know, too that you didn’t care. It might have been on this podcast.
DANNY Yeah, because people would shut up about it. [Slim laughs] And I was just like, this is a well overly influenced movie. And it’s never gonna live up to this hype. But it does. Every time I watch it, I just enjoy it a lot more. Getting — just the jokes, the bits between the four guys. It’s just funny. I have a great time watching it. Continuing to love it. So yeah, I watched that again this week on the way to New York. On the way back from New York, I watched another movie — or a movie for the first time, not another. I watched What We Do In the Shadows for the first time.
SLIM Oh.
DANNY And I had a great time watching that as well. So it’s a solid three star movie. [Danny laughs]
SLIM A perfectly good movie, three stars. That’s your Letterboxd review.
DANNY Yeah, it’s funny. It’s short. It knows its movie and knows what it is and doesn’t try to be anything else. I like it. I had a good time.
SLIM There’s a lot of What We Do in the Shadows super fans. I think I see a few of them in chat right now. And some who are listening right now that are probably deeply hurt from that star rating.
DANNY It hurts more because most movies I give are five stars because I love, love movies. And I had a good time watching this. It’s just, you know —
SLIM Three stars from you is like one star from another person.
DANNY Yeah, I know. I know how that looks. But I really love Taika in this.
PROTO The optics — not good.
SLIM Very bad optics right now for Danny. [Slim laughs]
DANNY I know. Trying to figure out how I can change the subject real quick to something else.
SLIM I’ll try to take some of the heat. I watched the What We Do in the Shadows TV show and I actually don’t like it that much. But I did enjoy What We Do in the Shadows the movie.
DANNY Oh, see, I really liked the show. And then when I found out that it was a movie, I stopped watching it.
PROTO What came first?
SLIM It’s like the Ted Lasso of vampire shows.
DANNY Oh, no.
PROTO Wow.
SLIM You can’t say something bad about the show. You cannot.
DANNY Oh my god.
SLIM You talk about bad optics. Keep those opinions to yourself.
DANNY Just keep your mouth shut. Okay?
SLIM Proto, do you have any opinions on people that like Ted Lasso?
DANNY On the people or the show? [Danny & Proto laugh]
PROTO I don’t know. I mean, they’re too numerous to count. You can’t really define them as one particular — they cross all boundaries of, you know, categories, races, everything.
SLIM We have to talk about our free year of Letterboxd Pro winner this week.
PROTO Please.
SLIM We talked about Danny’s scandalous three star review of What We Do in the Shadows. We don’t want to bring it up again. That’ll be the last time we ever mentioned on the show.
DANNY Yeah, thank you.
SLIM But if you’re on Letterboxd, and you share the show on social media, you are automatically entered to win a free year of Letterboxd Pro. No more ads for you when you join as a Pro member. And this week’s winner, their surname on Twitter — get this.
DANNY Listening.
SLIM Touched the butt of Dracula. [Danny laughs] Alison on Twitter, you just want to free year of Letterboxd Pro. Congratulations.
DANNY Congrats Alison.
SLIM Good Twitter name.
DANNY Touch the butt.
SLIM Touch the butt of Dracula. We need to — I know we’re rapidly approaching American Werewolf in London. But there was some talk in Discord this week about a movie that I watched that I had a kind of What We Do in the Shadows Danny moment. I know I said I wouldn’t bring it up again.
DANNY I think this is worse than that moment.
SLIM But I watched this movie in prep for a Letterboxd Show episode future guest. You know, this is a movie we almost did on this show. Like “Oh my god, musical month. Should we do this?” Moulin Rouge with Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, Baz Luhrmann. Baz the king from Romeo + Juliet, Strictly Ballroom, the king is here. This is the worst movie I’ve seen this year — Moulin Rouge. [Danny laughs] Hands down. Hand down.
Proto, have you ever seen this movie Moulin Rouge?
PROTO I think I have seen this. Yeah, I’m gonna say I’ve seen this back in the early aughts I guess — when did this come out? Moulin Rouge is from 2001. Yeah, pretty sure I watched this with my sisters in the house at some point. I don’t really have much memory of it. I was too young to have an opinion.
SLIM I started it and I thought maybe it started 40 minutes in — like I needed to like wait a minute — did this fast forward for some reason? Like I needed to be on drugs to watch this movie. It didn’t make any sense. It was so frantic. I didn’t get it.
DANNY This is interesting.
SLIM It might get lower than one star. I wanted to shut it off.
DANNY Really?
SLIM Yeah.
PROTO I don’t have an opinion on this movie. But I will say there was there was an argument about Ewan’s singing capabilities. [Danny laughs] And a clip of one of his songs was posted in the Discord as a defence. And let’s just say I’m not sure if it helped. [Proto & Slim laugh]
SLIM I mean, anyone that sings — [Slim & Danny laugh]
PROTO I had to take off my headphones!
SLIM I know, this is dangerous talk. The optics right now for us, not good. First we did it with What We Do in the Shadows. Now we talked about Ted Lasso a little bit. Now we’re doing Moulin Rouge. [Slim & Danny laugh] This could be the last episode.
DANNY We had a good run.
SLIM If you’re listening. And you have been too afraid to speak up, I’m talking to you, right? My hand is outstretched.
DANNY Come to the altar.
SLIM We’re here to support you.
DANNY Wait, I haven’t seen this. Don’t put me in the ‘we’ yet.
SLIM Alright, maybe you should watch it to settle this and become the savior of the Discord because you know that they would just hoist you up with a four star rating for Moulin Rouge. Ewan definitely sings in the movie. It just doesn’t sound right. But we got to move on. We got a lot to cover in this episode. We got American Werewolf in London. That we need to get into right now. Please. This was — who’s pick was this? It was Proto’s pick. Biiig pick. Proto, can you guide us through this journey of An American Werewolf in London?
[music from An American Werewolf in London plays]
PROTO Jack and David are backpacking across northern England. When they come through a little town and meet some locals in the pub. They’re at the Slaughtered Lamb. But then they are run out of the pub when they begin asking pointed questions about the five pointed star on the wall. And before they know it, they are back on the road in the rain under a full moon. And something is out there with them. David wakes up three weeks later to find out that Jack is dead. And he has been bitten by a wild creature. David begins to see his dead friend Jack and his waking nightmares that point to him not being okay. Is David going insane? Or is he about to go ham on the population of London? Spoilers. He goes ham.
SLIM I need to start using that phrase more often — going ham. I feel like that’s an underutilized phrase. Golly. I’ve seen this several times. So I was kind of aware going into this. But Danny, do you remember if you had seen this before previously?
DANNY No, no, no, no, no, never. I’ve never seen this movie. And I don’t know why it seems from everything I’ve looked at on Letterboxd and stuff. People love this film. And I was excited to finally get to watch it.
SLIM I’m meant to ask you, how’s your soundbar? You plug that thing in yet?
DANNY My gosh, the sound on this sound bar that Casey bought me for my birthday is incredible. The Dolby Atmos alone.
SLIM Oh!
DANNY You kiddin’ me? It changed everything.
SLIM Really?
DANNY Changed my whole viewing game.
SLIM Paul in chat wonders if this is sponsored segment. It’s actually not. TCL, you know, if you’re listening, you know, I don’t have a soundbar so you do the math. Proto, have you seen this before?
PROTO No, I haven’t. But, again, I was looking at it last Halloween. I feel like werewolf movies are far and few between. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of them or at least ones that are well regarded. And when I looked at the ratings from friends on Letterboxd there was you know, all like four and five stars for this movie. And then like I said last week, I thought it’d be fun to switch gears a little bit and just have more of a, you know something that’s comedic in some ways not going so hard on the horror. So yeah, this is a movie that I’ve been wanting to watch for a while.
SLIM John Landis, the director, you might know from Trading Places, Coming to America, Three Amigos. Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Ever heard of it? Blues Brothers, I mean, quite the library. I think we talked about maybe on a post show, but he was embroiled in that controversy for that Twilight Zone segment. Remember talking about that? Where the actor and the children who were working later than they should have were killed by that helicopter crash on set.
DANNY Yes, I remember that.
SLIM But he eventually did get working again in Hollywood. And this is one of those movies so he’s got quite the pedigree. Spies Like Us also. Blues Brothers 2000.
DANNY Where he should have stopped. [Slim laughs]
SLIM He needed to buy another beach house, I think that’s why he did that movie. But I’ve seen this many times. This is — I think I said it last week that this is maybe one that we’ll probably watch every year. And as I say that out loud, Scrooged is a movie that we watch every year and I hate it every year because I’ve seen it so often, I like pick it apart. So maybe I need to stop watching this movie.
DANNY Oh no.
SLIM Before it gets to Scrooged level. First note that I have for this movie is the backpacking.
DANNY That was my first note too. Let’s do this.
SLIM The backpacking that opens up this movie, we talked about a little bit in Blair Witch about how I would be dead in 24 hours. But even so, I mean, you’re in another country you’re just kind of going through and then you land at this bar. What did you have in your notes, Danny about backpacking?
DANNY How about everyone telling them to stay on a road and they couldn’t keep their damn feet on a road. Like they always wandered off a road walking through people’s yards? I’m so confused by that. But also just the thought of walking this entire country and then didn’t say they were gonna keep going to Italy or something? They had three months to do this?
PROTO I don’t think they’re walking to Italy.
DANNY That sounds like fun. I don’t think you can walk to Italy.
SLIM Proto, this sounds like right up your alley, walk about for three months.
PROTO It sounds cool. You know, you hear this all the time, people backpacking in Europe. I don’t know the geography of England. Okay? I don’t know what’s going on where they’re at. But I will say these guys looked terribly unprepared. [Danny laughs] These coats alone. What are we doing with these coats and the backpack? Like this is not right. This isn’t right. And then I’m just really confused. So, is there a town every two miles in England? These guys leave a pub at what could be — I don’t know, 11 o’clock at night and just go back on the road. Where are they walking to? Where are these guys going? Like it’s raining out, you are not prepared at all. I just couldn’t — I didn’t agree with their decision at that point.
SLIM Their puffy coats in the rain. They look like it’s absorbing so much water. It looks so — you ever get one of those coats wet? You’re miserable for the amount of time that you’re wearing that coat.
DANNY Wait, you have one of those coats?
SLM I feel like I’ve had one of those puffy coats and a shred of water on those things, you want to throw yourself off a cliff after that.
PROTO If you’re indoors, if your coat is indoors and it’s raining out, it gets wet. Like it starts to get damp on the inside. Just the humidity in the air.
SLIM Another thing about their coats. What do you think about their backpacks? Jansport. Remember Jansport? That logo? How iconic is that logo? Do we need a 70mm logo in the in the format of Jansport’s logo?
DANNY We need a 70mm Jansport backpack.
SLIM Oh my!
DANNY That’s what we need.
PROTO What about a 70mm sport? [Slim laughs]
SLIM Oh my god, a full sport line of clothing on the store front! [Danny laughs] The pub! Yeah the pub looked like a lot of fun.
DANNY I wanted nothing more than to have a Guinness in that pub, to sit with those people. It looked like a blast. I wanted to be at that pub so bad.
PROTO Yeah, that Alamo joke that the guy told.
DANNY Oh my gosh. Funny.
SLIM Proto, what’s on your list for An American Werewolf?
PROTO Well yeah, outside of like the be the opening, my first note — oh, yeah. So Frank Oz showing up in this movie. Holy crap. I have not seen Frank Oz — I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Frank Oz outside of his hand in a puppet.
[clip of An American Werewolf in London plays]
MR. COLLINS Hi. I’m Mr. Collins of the American Embassy here in Grosvenor square. Both Mr. Goodmans parents and your parents have been notified of your injuries and everything’s in order.
[clip of An American Werewolf in London ends]
PROTO And I was not ready for that voice. He’s like to Tobias Funke in the flesh. [Danny & Slim laugh] And that voice — just hearing that like combination of like Fozzie Bear, and like all of the other characters at once coming out and it’s like, oh my God, that’s his actual voice, or was he doing a voice? No one really knows. How could you ever really tell if he’s doing a voice or not? Um, but yeah, that totally took me out of it. And I was like, I was like, whoa, this is nuts.
DANNY I think I was taken out of this film way the beginning so then everything else seemed comedic the rest of the way through, like I was ready for silliness at that point. So seeing Frank walk in, and then get like, second billing for puppeteering Miss Piggy in the quick clip in the TV is hilarious to me, too.
SLIM Let’s talk about a nurse Price, Alex.
DANNY Excuse me. [Slim & Proto laugh]
SLIM Nurse Price, she is she falls in love with him after his stay. Their entire relationship. You know, she takes care of him. She offers a place for him to stay. So she essentially takes him home after he’s out of the hospital into her flat. I think that’s what you call it. And my god, that scene or she shows him the bedroom. Are you kidding me right now? [Danny & Slim & Proto laugh] Mestopoles says ‘’The Price is right.’’ Good lord. Proto, what are you thinking about their relationship in that scene?
PROTO Well, yeah, I mean, she’s adorable in this. Soph is pointing out, yeah, worst sex scene of all time. That is — it’s up there. But what’s crazy to me about this. And so like, I think she is great. And I love her in this. But David Naughton is really, really bad. [Danny laughs] He is a terrible actor. He’s like, needs to be shot into the sun. God bless him for trying. But this was just — first of all, like, I mean, this is outside of his control. But he just does not have like a movie star face. His face is just confusing to look at.
SLIM It’s like a shoe. [Proto laughs]
PROTO It’s like part shoe, part like he doesn’t look like he knows what he’s doing at any moment. Bad optics on the face. [Danny & Slim laugh]
DANNY A shoe!
SLIM Looking back, it should have probably been a different actor being the lead in this movie. Like even when he’s like walking with Alex down the street and he’s like, ogling her. Almost like are we about to make whoopee in your apartment right now? Like he’s just creeping me out in general.
DANNY The problem with that sex scene, I was just worried he was gonna bite her and then turn her into a werewolf or is something. Like, sir, you need to just calm down.
SLIM Like, we need to get back to the shower scene. The shower scene, whoever directed that scene has never had intercourse in their entire life. [Danny laughs] I mean, there’s no way that anyone who filmed that shot thought that was a very good scene. What are they doing in that shower? They’re hugging! Proto, your thoughts.
PROTO I mean, if that was up to John Landis, he has has no sense of like, ambience or like atmosphere of a shot. Like these shots are just — it’s just really bad, all of it. And not just this. I mean, most of the movie, there really isn’t like much to look at in this movie in terms of cinematography. Yeah, it was just, it was awful. There’s like soap suds on her back and David Naughton is trying to like, put his hands up her back, it just doesn’t look right. It just doesn’t look right.
And I was thinking the same thing about the bite. I was thinking that it was going to be like a dream sequence again, and he was going to like rip her throat out or something.
DANNY Those dream sequences. I have those dreams written down. Those dream sequences were nuts.
SLIM They were rad. The wolf soldiers?
DANNY The wolf Nazi soldiers, you kidding me? I was like what is happening right now? Who thought of this?
SLIM Also when he wakes up from his own dream it has like a ghoul face.
DANNY Oh yeah. In the woods or something or I don’t remember. That ghoul face was nasty. The makeup in this film alone should have won Oscars. When Jack see him for the first time, he hasn’t decayed all the way yet. I couldn’t stop looking at the neck flap. He has this like flap a skin that was just wobbling there. And honestly, I wanted to pull it off. I wanted to grab it and snap it off like a number out of a deli counter.
SLIM Marcie says is the first best makeup Oscar ever. Is that real, Marcie? It’s gotta be real if Marcie says it.
PROTO Wow.
DANNY If Marcie says it, it’s real and I believe it. The makeup in this is unreal. The transformation — when he transforms into the werewolf, I think my mouth was agape. I couldn’t get over how good it looked. I can’t imagine seeing this in the 80s and my mind would have been wrecked watching him transform like that. Everything looked like disgusting but also just looked like it was actually happening to him. So many smart shots of him that kind of, just well placed areas of him stretching and it was unreal.
[clip of An American Werewolf in London plays]
PROTO The transformation is amazing. And it goes on and on.
DANNY So long.
PROTO It’s so much longer than then I would have thought the scene would have been but it’s great because it’s so cool. Marcie says that it looks so painful and I love that aspect of it. How like he’s just sitting in the house and all of a sudden he’s like ‘’Oh god I’m burning up!’’ Just starts going nuts.
DANNY So much pain.
PROTO Yeah the pain that you would be going through, that was that was great to communicate that. What a terrifying experience. But yeah, it’s amazing. I mean that scene alone, it’s worth the price of admission this movie.
SLIM I think I had to add this to the Man Ass list.
DANNY Oh, you 100% have to add this.
SLIM There’s a rear end, bent over and then over transforming, with his A out.
DANNY That’s rough.
SLIM Yeah. All this stuff is legendary, in my opinion, this entire scene.
DANNY And I’ve seen that face, the GIF that was shared in Discord of the face stretching so many times, I knew was from this movie, but I had no idea the length of that scene.
SLIM Yeah, I think I went to watch the Jack Nicholson werewolf movie, maybe soon after watching this. So I feel like I compare all werewolf transformation scenes to this after having seen this movie, it’s pretty hard to top, imo.
DANNY Also Blue Moon playing behind, like, incredible. The music in this.
SLIM Danny, what else is on your list for this movie?
DANNY In her apartment, there was a lot of Disney memorabilia. Did you notice all the Mickey’s and Donald’s? I was confused by it. Like there’s at least four figurines from Disney sitting in her apartment. And I couldn’t understand why. Did she just love America or something?
SLIM Maybe that’s just to show how hard —
DANNY How much she really loved him? She just wanted an American?
SLIM What was he wearing? What American college t-shirt was he wearing? Was he wearing like a —
DANNY I don’t know.
SLIM UCLA or something?
DANNY They probably just wrote COLLEGE. [Slim laughs] In American English.
SLIM It just said American College on it. [Danny laughs] NYU. Thank you, Megan. Yeah, she saw that. And it was it was over. She knew what she was doing as soon as he was being released.
DANNY I have in my notes. It’s because I thought of us, Slim, when the scene happened.
SLIM The shower scene?
DANNY I thought of you during the shower scene, yes. But also I thought of you in the zoo seen when he steals the balloons. And the kids like ‘A naked American just stole my balloon’ and the mom goes ‘wot?!’ [Slim & Danny laughs]
SLIM [in British accent] WOT?!
DANNY And I could not stop laughing. But him running naked through this whole movie.
SLIM Maybe he was the only actor that agreed to run through London nude, or do the nudity. He was the only one who could do it. He was booking it, when he stole that coat.
DANNY He was movie, yeah.
SLIM He was moving real fast. Six minute mile.
DANNY Just flappin’.
PROTO There was another moment that I just wanted to highlight. So there was just like some scenes that just they seem so poorly executed and one of them was right before his transformation. So his girlfriend nurse Price, Alex, she goes off to work and he’s just hanging out at the apartment. And it seems like they’re trying to have like a montage scene of him just trying to burn time at the at the apartment not knowing what to do like he puts on the TV and then there’s like this moment where he paces in the living room for like 20 seconds and it seemed almost like like Landis might have been like, alright, David you know, you know just look like you’re trying to you know, kill time you don’t know what to do and all he can do is just literally walk back and forth. It’s such an odd scene and it just looked so bad like they couldn’t communicate anything. And there was just like a lot of like weirdness in this movie. I feel like it was maybe like just perfect storm of the maybe the director like relying on the actors a little too much. And then David Naughton just having like zero clue what to do in those moments.
SLIM I hope David Naughton doesn’t listen to this episode.
DANNY I want him to come on the show.
SLIM Explain yourself for this film from 40 years ago.
DANNY I liked him in this film. I think because once you realize how much of a joke this movie is, then his performance is just kind of silly. Like it didn’t bother me as much. Like if you try to take this seriously, like this is a Horror movie — capital H — then you’re gonna hate it. This is Camp — capital C.
SLIM Yeah. How about the subway tunnel scene where? Where Richie Rich is hearing noises in this empty tunnel and he starts like talking to what he thinks is the noise? How would you not just immediately leave instead of like investigating a noise alone? That guy was a moron!
DANNY Just run.
PROTO Who are you growling at me? [Danny laughs]
SLIM Show yourself right now! I’ve had enough of this. He should have been easily able to get away from the werewolf in my opinion. After you see the werewolf
DANNY Why did he lay down on the steps? He just decided to lay down an escalator. [Slim laughs]
PROTO He was out of breath. He was winded so he just gave up, I’ll just die here.
DANNY I will say if you go to Google right now and type in deflate.gif, that’s how I felt when I finally saw the full werewolf walking on all fours. I didn’t know what to expect but the fact that he’s not standing on two feet really threw me. And he just looked like a shaggy dog. Like when you watch the stretching scene, he looks like a giant werewolf, like an actually scary, big, tall. But when they finally show him walking in the alley, I was just like oh no, this is not what I wanted to see. Like he looked — I guess, I mean silly. I know this is a silly movie but it’s not what I wanted. I really wanted on two legs, seven feet tall giant werewolf. But man I was so bombed by the seeing this full figure.
PROTO I felt like it was a little inconsistent just the look, like you’re saying the transformation almost looked like you’re getting one thing and just certain scenes where you would see him transformed. It just didn’t seem consistent throughout and I wonder like maybe they want to do that. But I wonder if they’ve like just ran out of time or money with this because how about the ending of this movie? Like this is one of the most abrupt endings of any movie. There needed to be at least what one more scene. There needed to be something but it just like cuts with like, the strangest point. I was really thrown off by that.
SLIM It definitely feels like I would have been maybe had Rick Baker do something more. Maybe they did run out of money because like they barely show the werewolf on screen. And when it does appear, it’s like for a half second, it like cuts away, where he only like drifts into the corner of the frame and then is gone. Like, I don’t know, I was thinking about how the story’s about the original Predator movie, where john Claude Van Damme was original Predator. And it was like, the original design of the mask almost looked like an ant head. And looking back, you’re like, oh, man, I’m glad they never went with that. Because what we got was so much better. It feels like the inverse almost of this. Like, this is a version that I wish we maybe didn’t get, but I don’t even know what they could have been capable of back then. Like a like maybe a dude in a suit with with that mask?
DANNY Honestly would have been fine of just a guy running around in a suit.
SLIM There’s nothing special about like the animatronic that they pulled off. It’s not like this was the height of technology. It just looks like —
*DANNY It also felt like, how are you not getting away from this thing? It all of a sudden didn’t feel terrible or like scary. I feel like you could just throw a collar on this and walk it with a the leash at that point. [Slim laughs] I was less terrified of this thing.
SLIM I mean, the screenshot that Paul put in — that’s a great looking face.
DANNY The face is amazing! Coming out of the dark, like yeah, great shots it gave me It gave me the feel of like, Neverending story that, kind of wolf,
PROTO Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.
DANNY Once you see it, maybe they use the same head from Neverending story.
SLIM I was gonna call out the porn theater was my other comment. How about the fake porn that they watch? Where the dude comes in and yells at them, but he’s got the wrong room? [Danny laughs] He just leaves.
DANNY Oh my gosh, if you thought he couldn’t shoot a shower scene, he couldn’t make a fake porn either.
SLIM It’s in my opinion, I love that scene. You know, the chaos everyone driving in, crashing into each other. The panic, the dummies, the guy getting run over, flying out of the car.
PROTO Through the windshield was amazing.
DANNY I was laughing out loud at those scenes. I mean, I was cackling. It was so funny and ridiculous. And it kept going. Like, it’s long. Like that scene is chaos. Like the world is ending. Because this giant dog is walking around.
SLIM Yeah, I love the visuals of it trying to come out of the theater. Also, we didn’t really talk about the scene in the theater where he has a conversation with his buddy again. And they show that like all the dead people were there also. And he has to die in order for them to kind of like you know, finally leave and die completely. I love that. I love how he’s like disintegrating even more as the conversation is going.
PROTO Is that is that like well known lore for a werewolf that they interact with those that they’ve killed? I’ve never heard that before. It’s great though.
SLIM I don’t remember that being a story. Yeah, I love that story. I love that, you know, the bloodline had to end for all those people to finally be released. I don’t remember seeing that in any other film. Although I’m not like a werewolf film expert.
DANNY I love Jack slowly decaying over time too, like his makeup is just crazy good.
PROTO Yeah, the makeup in this is just unbelievable. His whole trip. After the first one or like once you realize oh, he’s decaying. Like, I just couldn’t wait to see him again.
DANNY Yeah, unreal.
SLIM Anything else in your list pro?
PROTO The dummy going through the windshield. I had a note — is this the worst plan? I think that might have had something to do with what the doctor was planning to do but I can’t remember. How about the doctor going back to the pub and you could totally see like he knew how to handle himself in a pub. I was like, dang.
SLIM Had one sip of that Guinness, and it was like alright, that’s it for me. I’m out of here.
DANNY It was a small Guinness too. It sounded weird that he said a small Guinness. I have a note written down that says Swiss Army knife, but I think — I don’t remember why I wrote that. I think that’s when you tried to cut his wrists with a full Swiss Army knife like it was gonna do anything.
PROTO Oh, that’s what my note was! Yeah, worst plan ever was the way — he was in a phone booth, right? He’s in the phone booth — oh my god. [Danny laughs]
DANNY A butter knife to his wrist to end things, please.
SLIM Swiss Army knives were like the coolest thing you could have as a kid. Remember that?
DANNY I remember it being a big deal with them that my dad bought me one. Like he gave me like a Swiss Army, like you’re gonna have this forever, son. I couldn’t tell you where it’s at.
SLIM I remember, I mean my brother had a Swiss Army knife and then I think he had like a catalog and then you could like get advanced versions of the Swiss Army Knife where it was just got thicker and thicker and more tools. What a different time.
DANNY Amazing.
SLIM Those are all of my notes so I’ll give my final thoughts now. I think this is a very fun movie, I don’t think it’s perfect. It’s still funny. It’s fun. I think my last rating I added four stars. I’m teetering between — I think I feel like I say this all the time. I’m teetering three and a half to four still. I think I maybe have watched this too recently so I was getting kind of like through the motions on this viewing and that’s what reminded me of Scrooged, like if I watch a movie too often I’ll start to hate it so that’s why I need to put this one back in the vault for a while I think. Yeah, there you go, Paul, look at that thing. Come on! That Swiss Army Knife photo. Danny, what about you?
DANNY For first viewing, I had a blast watching this. I found myself just laughing out loud and constantly. It was a funny, gross horror movie to watch in October and I had a good time. I’m going to three and a half star it. It’s not perfect but I had a good time.
SLIM Wow. Wow. Proto, final thoughts? This was your pick.
PROTO Congrats Proto on this pick, this was a really fun movie The good stuff in this is really great. The makeup, the transformations, the action, the dream sequences, all of that. And then there’s just that the bad is really bad! But it’s kind of just what I wanted for the month of October. You know, it’s fun, it’s funny, it’s silly, it’s got horror, it’s got bloodshed. So I give it three stars. It’s a good movie.
SLIM Wowowow.
DANNY We did it.
SLIM Three stars. Unreal. Great pick, a lot of fun to go back and watch it. Hopefully people check it out. Also the version — where did I watch this? Was this Peacock or Paramount or? There’s just too many apps!
DANNY Too many apps.
SLIM I thought the whatever version I watched would look pretty good. I don’t know if it was like a recent blu-ray release.
DANNY Yeah, I was thinking that too. Whenever we watched it on was nice.
SLIM Yeah, yeah. We have to get into some letters that we got this week. You can leave us a letter or a VM. Voicemail audio file at 70mmpod@gmail.com. And we have one from Tim coming in, Tim Hamilton.
DANNY Oh Tim.
SLIM Tim writes ‘’I haven’t written in in a while because I was listening to the German 70mm’’ And he links to the other Spotify podcast. [Slim laughs] Oh, Tim. ‘’But, then I heard there was going to join you to talk about Vacation and me being a Dale completist — ‘’ Dale, for those unaware our producer at large. ‘’Found my way to the correct link. Then I heard you talk about Superman the movie. I did see this in the theaters as a child and yes, we waited two hours to see Clark become Superman. And all that foreplay made it worthwhile. The kid getting slapped bothered me as a child. The whole audience laughed at that and I was like Superman just cause that kid to get smacked. How deep do you want to go down the Superman movie hole? This is a pretty good video.’’ And let me just drop this in chat for people to see. It’s a YouTube video. Thank you Tim for the letter. Forgot about Superman. We did that like five years ago. A lot of fun to go back and do Superman, but I was very unsettled about that child being slapped. Thanks to Superman. Proto, you remember that?
PROTO Yeah, it didn’t bother me one bit.
DANNY No, definitely not.
SLIM I’m very against child gore. I don’t know if that was pre show or during this show, but I’ll say it again, just for the record. Next letter comes from Woody. ‘’Happy spooky season guys. I just wanted to say thanks for picking this film. It’s been on my Letterboxd watchlist for ages. And you prompted me to finally watch it. Now that I have, the only word I could use to accurately describe the experience is bonkers. There are many memorable scenes but that car pile up in Piccadilly Circus at the end has to be one of my favorites. The way it kept escalating made it to the comedic peak of the movie for me. For anyone who enjoyed this film I wanted to recommend a British comedy series called Garth Morangies Dark Place. It’s six episode gives an affectionate Mickey taking out of old school horror. films like this, as well as the work of Stephen King. Highly recommended Halloween viewing if you can find it in the US. Thanks for your amazing work as always. Take it easy.’’ And that’s from Woody. Thank you. I’ve heard people recommend Dark Place before. I feel like it might have just hit US streaming somewhere. But either one of you heard of that show? Or watched it?
DANNY No idea what he’s talking about.
PROTO No, I don’t know.
SLIM Some kind of Brit comedy show. This is a segment of the show we usually announce next week’s pick, but it is Suspiria. The first Suspiria movie, it’s on Tubi. We have some time — I want to talk about another movie I watched real quick. We don’t usually do this.
PROTO Talk about it.
SLIM But I watched Beetlejuice again in 4K, Dolby — actually, I don’t know if it was Dolby.
DANNY You can say it was Dolby.
SLIM I don’t know if it was Dolby. But I’ll say Dolby Vision, 4K. And it’s a five star movie.
DANNY Is it?
SLIM Danny, what’s your rating for Beetlejuice?
DANNY I couldn’t tell you. It’s been decades. I haven’t seen it in years. I mean, I haven’t seen it probably since I was a kid. I was terrified of this film.
SLIM I was blown away in this film by Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice. This is one of the greatest performances in the history of film, I said in my review.
DANNY That’s impressive.
SLIM Proto, where do you stand on Beetlejuice?
PROTO Never seen it. I don’t know what it’s about. Maybe it’s better that way.
SLIM Oh my god.
DANNY Are we about to pivot?
SLIM Should we cancel Suspiria and do Beetlejuice with Proto?
PROTO I had a possible assignment for us for next week. I don’t know if we want to do this or not.
SLIM I’m listening!
PROTO But I thought, what if each of us put together our top five horror movies for next week? Where we could just say what’s our top five?
SLIM Wow.
DANNY Interesting, I already updated my top four and Letterboxd for horror month.
PROTO I’m talking about top five.
DANNY I just need to do one more.
SLIM I’m into this idea. Make a list, fave — I call these my faves. Fave horror movie. TM. Trademark, copyright @slim 2017.
DANNY I like this idea.
SLIM Alright, if you want to join us, join us in Discord. Put together your top five best horror.
DANNY Have it to us by end of day.
SLIM EOD next week. Wednesday.
PROTO Also I was thinking, I love the idea of a werewolf. I love the idea of a werewolf movie. I want more of this.
DANNY There’s a lot.
PROTO Is there though?
SLIM Doesn’t this go against your primordial humanoid phobia?
PROTO It does slightly, yeah, but I think if it’s done in the right way, like this movie didn’t bother me. I was okay with this. But I just love the idea, and you know this movie doesn’t really get into it so much, but it has just like such, like the themes are so easily applicable. You know, you don’t have to say anything about just like, you know, you know someone having two lives, you know, two sides of them and but also the whole I mean, I would love like a movie just more about this whole thing of like having someone telling you to you know, end your own life to free these other people from pain. Like that whole aspect of it is so good. I would want more more more of a movie around that like you imagine a guy having like 100 on dead people asking him to kill himself to free them from their pain. And like refusing?
DANNY I just pulled up a Letterboxd list by likened thorp.
SLIM Oh, Yoli just suggested that you watch The Howling by Joe Dante the director of The ‘Burbs.
DANNY The movie we just watched as number one average rating on this list. The second movie is Gingersnaps, second highest rated werewolf movie on this list. A four star from Dale. Dirkfeelgood four star. You kidding me? The Wolf Man, OG.
PROTO You watched that, didn’t you?
DANNY Yeah, I don’t it like. He’s a dick.
SLIM Delete this. Close this list. Close the tab.
DANNY Alright, it’s closed. Good Manners was on there too.
SLIM I like The Howling for what it’s worth. Four stars for me. So next week is Suspiria, 1977 streaming on Tubi for free. Or if you are willing to grab the blu-ray, which is a very nice transfer, imo, Proto, take us out for the week please.
PROTO Yeah, you know so in this movie jack insisted that David kill himself to free him from the pain of being undead and I’d like to insist something else. I’d insist that you love yourself this week. You know, be nice to yourself, do something good for you. And that’s all.
SLIM Wise words as always from Proto. We’ll see you next week for Suspiria.
[70mm theme song ramps up, plays alone, fades out]
SLIM 70mm is a TAPEDECK production with original artwork provided by Danny Haas. Spiritual guidance and VGER, the robot who loves movies created by Protolexus. Producer emeritus Dale_a. Transcript provided by Sophie Shin. Prints and other merch are available on 70mmpod.com. This episode was mixed, edited and produced by me, Slim. Support our Patreon for access to the VHS Village Discord to talk movies with new friends, access to exclusive episodes, discounts on merch, and a physical membership card mailed to you. To check out other TAPEDECK podcasts, find the link in the episode notes. And if you’d like to support our friends at Letterboxd and upgrade to Pro or Patron status, you can do so with a 20% off discount using the links at 70mmpod.com. Goodbye!
