Terrified by the howling monster we as spectators can’t help but know is pursuing them, in between fearful gasps of “What is that?” they revert to jocular small talk about girls they want to sleep with. Simple cuts instead of dissolves tell us they’ve been walking awhile. The deeper space around them is dim, but the surrounding area is brightly lit for film, which completely obscures the distance - anything could come from anywhere - but also creates a sort of stage for the characters that we know something will have to enter. Director John Landis shoots the whole thing like a comedy of the ’30s or ’40s, simply tracking alongside the two friends as they walk and talk, not cutting between them. David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) have already hurriedly excused themselves from a pub in the middle of nowhere (The Slaughtered Lamb, yikes) at which they stopped to escape the rain after being warned by its less than welcoming clientele to stay off the moors. And it’s not just that the jokes land or that the shocks sting rather than the former deflating the tension of the latter, humor is deployed to enhance discomfort and exacerbate dread. Not merely because it’s both really scary and really funny, but because it constantly makes counterintuitive choices - in tone, in pacing, in simple shot selection - to keep its audience off-balance. Horror-comedy is one of the hardest cinematic lines to toe, but 1981’s An American Werewolf in London is perhaps the greatest existing instance of that alchemy.

Monsters in the movies by john landis