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The feral Yank in Old Blighty, a gag perhaps on the Brit's view of beastly irruption into New World academia (Altered States). American backpackers on the Yorkshire moors, off the sheep truck and into the Slaughtered Lamb pub, an attack by a mysterious creature leaves behind a torn casualty (Griffin Dunne) and a clawed survivor (David Naughton). An escaped lunatic is the Scotland Yard's official story, the doctor (John Woodvine) investigates the "mass neurosis" of superstitious villagers while the nurse (Jenny Agutter) gets cozy with the patient. The only issue is the lycanthropic curse that befalls the lad, as he painfully learns on the next full moon. "The supernatural, the power of darkness... it's all true," warns his undead bud, turning up increasingly putrefied to grouse about otherworldly limbo: "Have you ever talked to a corpse? It's boring!" John Landis in the land of Hammer grisliness and Ealing understatement, a movie buff's ingratiating mix. Nothing to do in a downtown pad but notice how morbid Creedence Clearwater Revival lyrics are ("Hope you got your things together / Hope you are quite prepared to die"), the Ovidian metamorphosis departs from Lewis' The Nutty Professor as a Rick Baker aria of crunching bones and elongating skulls. ("Violence belongs with puppetry," observes Kermit the Frog on the telly.) "Carnivorous lunar activities" include a Steadicam prowl of Tube stations and a vagabond's view of London Bridge, the awakening in the zoo tips its hat to Val Lewton. Landis shades the jocular into the macabre, dabs in piquant subtext (Gestapo goblins raid the circumcised New Yorker's nightmare), brings it all to a head in a Piccadilly Circus porno theater. "Puts you in mind of the days of the old demon barber of Fleet Street, don't it?" The punchline is a note of potential poignancy coldly curtailed by the raucous doo-wop of the closing credits. With Brian Glover, Lila Kaye, David Schofield, Paul Kember, Don McKillop, and Frank Oz.
--- Fernando F. Croce |