2. Full Moon Rising

Despite his freshly acquired status in Hollywood as the writer/director behind several hit films, John Landis still had trouble getting anyone to finance his horror throwback about two Ameeican backpackers who fall foul of a creature while visiting the UK.

Many possible financiers came and went, with most turned off by the fact that it seemed too frightening to be a comedy and too silly to work as a horror movie. "American Werewolf In London is not a comedy," says Landis. "It's called a comedy, they keep calling it that, it's very funny I hope, but it is not a comedy.

We meet these two boys in a truckload of sheep. This is not subtle! These boys are doomed - it's not a happy story.

I was trying to make a contemporary version of an old movie."

Yet despite falling between the two genre stools, the director eventually dragged together $10 million to get the thing made.

"The picture was an independent. I made it as a negative pick-up - a financial arrangement in which a studio/distribution company agrees to purchase an unmade film upon the film’s completion - for Polygram, and then Universal distributed it in the US. We had complete control and it was fun!"

With the money in hand, Landis set his heart on production in London.

"I always loved those 1960s films and the things Dick Lester had done with the Beatles, and I conceived Werewolf with that spirit in mind. London was horror central, of course, home of Jack the Ripper, Jekyll and Hyde, so I wanted all that Victorian Gothic, but I also wanted to show the real London of 1981."

Landis also hoped to curry favour with British film authorities by largely staffing the film with UK crew members. Cinematographer Robert Paynter, the majority of the construction crew and Vic Armstrong's stunt team were all British.

One prominent member of the production was American, though - makeup effects man Rick Baker who, like Landis, had seen his own career skyrocket thanks to work on Star Wars, It's Alive, The Exorcist and The Howling.

But An American Werewolf In London would be his masterpiece…

Next: Making The Make-Up