Slashing The Seats

Despite the greying beard, John Landis has about him the youthful, upbeat air of a man who can’t believe his luck. His enthusiasm and good humour are infectious as he jabbers about the upcoming blu-ray release of An American Werewolf in London, premièring at this year’s FrightFest, as well as touching on his greatest hits, upcoming Universal Theatrical re-releases and his relationship with the late Michael Jackson. STS was lucky enough to catch the man at the recent Midnight Movies showing of Werewolf at Soho’s Curzon Theatre, where he proved to be as amiable and amusing as many of his films…

Werewolf was written a good decade before you made it. Were you waiting for special effects?

It was written in 1979 in Yugoslavia and I made it in 1981, which goes to show, if you’ve written a script that you think is good and everyone tells you it’s shit – just wait! But it was a very odd script, because it was funny. Although, personally, I don’t think it’s a comedy. It’s a horror film that happens to be, I hope, funny. I made another film later called Innocent Blood, about a vampire in the Mafia that is a comedy, so that’s a little different, but when I wrote it I was trying to think of a monster that was international, and where I could shoot it. But honestly, it was actually designed for the Edie (Lord Edie, the plan designed to attract Hollywood to British studios thanks to judicious tax breaks) plan – this was actually the last British quota picture. One of the first things Margaret Thatcher did was to drive a stake through the heart of the British film industry by stopping the Edie plan, but this is a British film, so I wrote it to qualify. Which meant, of course, only two Americans!

But it’s interesting because London is the home of Gothic horror. You had R.L. Stephenson, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker. Dracula came to London, Jekyll & Hyde was in London, Jack the Ripper… It’s ripe with atmosphere, so I wrote it for London. Actually, It’s an interesting script because when I made it, I’d made Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House and Blues Brothers, and they were all very successful, so I could finally make this, and the only change from the screenplay was the Aero Cinema.
In 69 when I was first here, and also in 75, I spent a lot of time here as one of the 12 writers of The Spy Who Loved Me and there used to be cartoon cinemas around town – the Aero in Piccadilly, one in Leicester square… and, they just showed really good prints of cartoons – like Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. And I thought it was great! Of course, Cubby Broccoli thought I was crazy, like “Why the hell are you going to see cartoons?” you know? But anyway, when I wrote it, it was at the Aero and it was a RoadRunner cartoon, but when I came back in 81, it was a porno theatre, and that’s literally the only difference. We shot that little English… you know… ‘Whoops, my knickers…’type thing.

It is an astonishingly accurate recreation of a type of cinema that almost no-one cares about! How did an American like you even know who Lindsey Drew was?

Well, actually she wasn’t yet Lindsey Drew – she was just a page three girl then. But all those movies like What The Plumber Saw or Keep It Up Downstairs or something… there were all these British double entendre movies that were just so bizarre! So I watched a couple, and it was the first thing we shot because we needed to project it, and I remember the British crew were like “Um… Mr Landis, the boom’s in shot”. And I was like “Good!”

Actually, it shows how times have changed. When we made this in 81, those boys were immediately identifiable as Americans, because they wore jeans and work boots and parkas. What do you call them? Anoraks? But now they could be from France, or Italy… they just wouldn’t look so obviously alien as they did at the time. The only other period thing was, it was the very beginning of punk on Kings Road, before it got commercialised, and when I saw them I thought they were so fabulous. I said “hey, come and be in the movie”and when it opened in the States, they’d never seen Punk. And they were all “what the hell is this!?” But now it’s dated.

Really? I’m not sure it has dated that much, if you go into a rural pub, these guys are still there and you’ll still get exactly the same reaction…

It’s interesting, because obviously I didn’t grow up here and it’s a movie based on my observations. Well, it’s a movie based on..movies – and my observations as a foreigner. I was always amazed how much I got away with. The boys turn up in a truckload of sheep and go into the Slaughtered Lamb – it’s not subtle! They’re dead, you know? But what is interesting is, in 1971 when I made my first film Shlock which is appropriately titled, Rick Baker was 20, I was 21, and he did the makeup which was quite sophisticated then, so I gave him this script then and said “figure this out!” And he actually did over the years. And it was years before I could get it made, so by the time I came back to Rick, I called him and was all “Rick! I got the money!” and he was like… [makes nonchalent whistling sound]… because he had just taken the job of The Howling. And I was like; “Joe Dante’s doing a werewolf movie? What the fuck? You didn’t show him the change-o-heads did you? And he said, “well, yeah, I did. Sorry”. “You bastard!!” But eventually Rick came and did Werewolf and his assistant Rob Bottin did The Howling and actually Rob went on to do Carpenter’s The Thing, which is a brilliant movie.

That actually links the movies, because The Howling opens in a porno theatre too.

Actually The Howling is an interesting movie. It’s more jokey, not that Werewolf is serious, but there’s that scene in the peepshow which I thought was terrifying. But then there’s that weird poodle werewolf…

It did seem like werewolf films came back in the 80s. I think in Stephen King’s book, Danse Macabre, he talks about the lack of good werewolf films and then there’s a dearth of them, even one King wrote. Teen Wolf, The Howling, Cat People…

Well, Cat People isn’t a werewolf movie…

It’s a werewolf movie with cats! Silver Bullet…

That’s a werewolf movie with werewolves! Did you ever see My Stepmother Was A Werewolf? Worst film ever!

Not Stirba: Werewolf Bitch?

[Laughing] How would you even know that? Anyway, I got an email about a year ago saying “I’m making a movie about the making of American Werewolf…” and I wrote back saying “You don’t have any of the rights to that! What’s wrong with you! You won’t be able to do anything with it!” [more laughter] But he said, “well I’m doing it anyway and I’d love to show you” and they showed me, and it’s amazing. They had all the British cast and I kind of bullied Universal and Werewolf comes out on Blu-Ray this summer, and it’s gorgeous. They went back and hi-res’d the negative, and the documentary will be on the DVD. It’s actually longer than the movie! But it’s really good, I don’t mean to sound surprised. It’s premiereing at FrightFest, and I don’t know if you’ve seen Werewolf in a cinema, but I was concerned, mainly about the detail on the makeup. But it looks amazing.

It’s actually very brave that the transformation takes place in a well lit place. In The Howling it’s in the dark, but you can see all the detail...

It was actually a huge challenge for Rick Baker. Actually, when I did Thriller I did every cheat I left out of Werewolf. Girls screaming, big music, cutaways… but here the whole point was that it was painful. I still think I show the wolf too much, but Rick’s work is really remarkable even now.

How did you go about casting the Brits in it? It’s a remarkable array of British acting talent, but not obvious choices.

Well, Jenny Agutter I’d known for a long time. She was friends with my wife. In terms of the rest of the cast, it was the RSC performance of Nicholas Nickleby! We saw it on Christmas Eve, and it was so fantastic I took John Woodbine, Lyla Kaye, David Schofield… he was the original elephant man. So I got 12 actors and I went with – Jim Henson and Frank Oz were shooting the Muppet Show here – and we went and saw Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson at the Comic Strip, basically screaming at each other! But Adrian was shooting a commercial at the time – I always remember Rik not knowing what a spit-take was! And Brian Glover was a wrestler at the time, a lovely guy. He had that accent… “That’s Enoof!”

I’m actually very fond of the movie, not least because you rarely get to make your 18 year old movie. There are things that embarrass me. Thank god I had Jenny Agutter, because some of her dialogue is very clearly written by a teenage boy! But in terms of experience, it was great. We did it as a negative pickup, where the studio says “When you give me a finished film, on time to this script, I’ll give you £10 million or whatever and then you just take that note and borrow the money from a British bank, which you could do in those days. There was no Studio, just us. And Joyce Hurley, who I hired as producer, because Michael Winner at the height of the IRA bombings had used a smoke bomb in a taxi with no permission and just shut down the whole city, so the Met had banned all filming in London. But Joyce just said “well, we’ll have to work out how to make it happen”, so I hired her on the spot!

Actually it was the Chicago police who brokered my cooperation with the Met, and there wasn’t much filmed here. You couldn’t get permits, it was just down to the bobby on the beat. So we shut down Piccadilly for two minutes at a time. Actually, the bus driver is Vic Armstrong – the great old stuntman – and there’s a lot of those guys hiding in here. It was a lot of fun to make.

How did you feel about the reception the movie got?

Well, in Britain it was a big hit. Actually, in Australia they were like “hey! Americans and Brits get killed, fantastic!” [laughs]. In the US it did… okay, but it was too wacky. At the time it was quite radical – it was a different approach. I think it did have some bad effects because people are jokey all the time now, but it was great, and it’s how I met Michael Jackson.

Given recent events we are kind of obliged to mention your connection with Michael Jackson.

Michael saw Werewolf and contacted me and said he wanted to turn into a monster. He was, obviously, fascinated by metamorphosis. But what’s interesting about Thriller is that the album had been out a year, it was already a big hit. The news always gets it wrong. It was the number one album in the world, so I said I wanted to make a theatrical short. It’s a two-reeler. CBS records wouldn’t pay, but it was fun to make, nothing planned and when it came out, it quadrupled the sales. It created the sell through market, established MTV, it was a phenomenon.

How do you feel about all those things?

Well, I liked Michael very much, I mean, he was nuts, yeah, but I liked him, and he was a truly tragic figure. I worked with him again on Black & White, and he was a great talent – but a truly tragic figure.

What do you think about American Werewolf in Paris?

Well, now it’s years later I can say I was horrified and disappointed! Anthony Waller, he made a film called Mute Witness which was excellent, and they had PolyGram’s rights. So they approached me and had a very good script about skinhead, neo-fascist gangs in France, who were basically Werewolves killing tourists. But it had nothing to do with that script. I was very disappointed. I should probably mention that I sold remake rights recently to Dimension, so I hope they do a good job and, if not, then my version still exists!

Actually I’m excited, I’m making another British film. I just got hired by Ealing and I’m doing Burke & Haire. It’s a really good script. It’s 75% accurate, 25% fantasy, and it’s in the old Ealing style of very black comedy, about serial killing and grave robbing.

How do you feel about Werewolf’s enduring appeal?

Well, it’s always gratifying when you make a movie and people like it. Actually, Universal this summer are putting out a lot of their stuff. They’re doing Spartacus and Blues Brothers and Animal House in theatres. Including Carpenter’s The Thing. If you haven’t seen that in a theatre, then you really should.

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With this the call for the screening calls Landis away, and he bounds off happily to greet Jenny Agutter and fellow director Neil Marshall.

A truly unique director with a body of work that stands repeat viewing.

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