Virtual Seminar: An American Werewolf in London

One of the greatest directors of the 1980s, John Landis (The Blues Brothers, Trading Places), expertly combines macabre horror with dark humour in the lycanthropic classic, An American Werewolf in London. American tourists David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) are savaged by an unidentified vicious animal whilst hiking on the Yorkshire Moors. David awakes in a London hospital to find his friend dead and his life in disarray. Retiring to the home of a beautiful nurse (Jenny Agutter) to recuperate, he soon experiences disturbing changes to his mind and body, undergoing a full-moon transformation that will unleash terror on the streets of the capital. 

An American Werewolf in London had audiences howling with laughter and recoiling in terror upon its cinema release. Landis’ film has gone on to become one of the most important horror films of its decade, rightly lauded for its masterful set-pieces, uniquely unsettling atmosphere and Rick Bakers’ ground-breaking, Oscar-winning special makeup effects.

Mark Anastasio is a lifelong cinephile and the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s Program Manager. Mark’s many duties at the theatre include: programming, promoting, and pulling off the Coolidge After Midnite film series, curating the Annual Halloween Horror Movie Marathon, and co-programming the Coolidge’s various repertory signature film series. In 2014 the Boston Society of Film Critics awarded the Coolidge After Midnite a special commendation “for its idiosyncratic programming and remaining dedicated to 35mm exhibition”. Boston’s NPR station has said of him, “It’s an understatement to say that Mark Anastasio knows horror movies. This guy knows horror movies the way Ted Williams knew hitting and Stephen Hawking knows physics.”