In the opening credits sequence of An American Werewolf in London, writer/director John Landis makes it clear that this is not going to be your typical werewolf movie. As the plain credits unspool over shots of the Yorkshire moors at dusk, the soundtrack fills with the gentle rhythms of Bobby Vinton crooning “Blue Moon.” It is a disarming opening sequence in a disarming horror movie, and it is key to what Landis is up to: He wants to keep you completely off-balance so you never know what to expect.

This is why no one can agree on what An American Werewolf in London is. Is it a comedy or a horror movie? After all, it is very funny, and when he directed it, Landis was known exclusively as a comedy director, having had several comedic hits in a row with The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978), and The Blues Brothers (1980). But, at the same time, it is a grisly, gory horror movie complete with clever jump scares, a creepy soundtrack, spectacular werewolf metamorphosis effects, and graphic blood and guts. Such a mix is, of course, not new, as those dealing in horror have known for ages that the use of comedy from time to time as a tension reliever works very well in priming the audience for the next scare. Yet, few movies had mixed comedy and horror with such utter aplomb as An American Werewolf.

Although it turned out to be a smash hit, this casual oscillation between the humorous and the horrific caused some critics and audience members to miss the boat, including Roger Ebert, who wrote, “Landis never seems very sure whether he’s making a comedy or a horror film.” Actually, it was the other way around: Landis was absolutely sure of what he was making—a funny horror movie—and the uncertainty was in Ebert the viewer, who was not prepared for a movie that was both at the same time in such a flamboyant manner.

An American Werewolf is both a loving homage to the old Universal flicks that kickstarted the horror genre in the 1930s, most notably the The Wolf Man (1940) and its sequels, and a gentle spoof of them. Updated with the best in special effects that, even decades later, retain their full effectiveness and a wicked sense of humor, An American Werewolf in London is a unique horror-comedy hybrid that paved the way for others who realized that the scary and the funny can exist side-by-side without undermining each other’s impact.

The story takes place entirely in England where two American students, David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne), are backpacking for three months. Stranded in the middle of the moors after dark and having received several stern warnings from ominous locals to “stick to the road,” David and Jack are attacked by what appears to be a giant wolf (we only see fleeting glimpses of yellow eyes and huge teeth and fur). Jack is mauled and dies and David is maimed, waking up three weeks later in a London hospital. The doctor (John Woodvine) tells him that the police have closed the case, saying that it was an escaped lunatic who attacked them. But, David is insistent that it was an animal. The only person who seems to listen to him is a nurse named Alex (Jenny Agutter), who doesn’t necessarily believe him, but is willing to comfort him.

David begins to believe he is losing his mind as his nights are tormented with strange nightmares that become increasingly bizarre. At one point, he dreams that he is naked in the forest hunting deer like an animal, and in another dream that can only be described as Buñuelean, he sees his entire family massacred by Nazi zombies with machine guns. And, if that weren’t bad enough, Jack suddenly reappears, still bearing the gashes across his face and the torn-out throat inflicted by the wolf, and tells David that he was attacked by a werewolf and that, at the next full moon, he will become one, as well. “Has it occurred to you that it might be unsettling for me to see you rise from the grave to come visit me?” David says in one the movie’s many humorously deadpan responses to the fantastical.

An American Werewolf in London was a groundbreaking movie in more ways than one. Not only did it help to establish the tenor and tone of the modern horror-comedy hybrid, it was immediately recognized as a quantum leap forward in the art of make-up special effects, so much so that Rick Baker, best known at the time for his work on Star Wars (1977), was awarded the first-ever Oscar for best make-up. One of the central ideas Landis had in writing An American Werewolf was a realistic on-screen depiction of the transformation from man to wolf. Not satisfied with the use of lap dissolves that had previously suggested metamorphosis, Landis encouraged Baker to go for broke, which is exactly what he did. The sequence in which David first changes into a wolf remains a stunning achievement in visceral on-screen transformation. Baker’s make-up effects realistically depicy what it might look like for a man to transmute into a wolf—from the elongation of his hands and feet into paws, to the sudden growth of hair, arching of his back, and the expansion of his skull and face from flat human proportions into a long, canine snout. Even modern CGI effects would have a hard time topping the realism that Baker achieved here, and it is made all the more effective by Landis’s smart direction that never lingers on the effect too long —just enough to shock you, but not so much that it becomes redundant. Plus, he has the nerve—the nerve!—to score the whole sequence with yet another version of “Blue Moon” in the background.

Landis isn’t content to stop there, as he continually pushes the envelope in both horror and humor. Jack reappears twice more, each time further decomposed until, at the end, he is little more than a talking skull. Jack tries to convince David to kill himself so that Jack can rest in peace (because he died an “unnatural” death at the claws of a werewolf, he is doomed to walk the earth as the living dead until the werewolf’s bloodline has been severed). One of the movie’s funniest and most surreal moments finds David in a porn theater, sitting next to Jack the talking skull and surrounded by the bloody living-dead reincarnations of the six people he had killed the night before as a werewolf, a few of whom absurdly maintain their oh-so-British politeness.

The movie climaxes in the infamous scene in which David the werewolf rampages through the internationally known Piccadilly Circus in London, causing utter, bloody mayhem. Yet, what is even more impressive is that Landis still manages to convey the essentially tragic nature of the werewolf at the end—the monster as victim of its own curse. Despite all the blood and laughs that have gone before it, An American Werewolf finds a note of poignancy in its final moments, which is perhaps its biggest and most effective surprise.

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