The Story Behind An American Werewolf In London
How an iconic horror film howled to life…
BY Sep 23rd 2009 15:15PMFILED UNDER: Features
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8. The Werewolf Lives On…
Since its release, the film has gone on to enjoy hefty success - early on, it was bigger over here. "The picture was a mild success here in the US, but in England, it was a huge hit, says Landis"
It's been back to the remixing studio for at least one brush-up, as Landis was approached to to create a fresh soundtrack for the print, which was originally recorded as mono only.
Polygram - which owned the rights to the film in the UK - was organising a theatrical re-release a few years ago to capitalise on the recent success of The Exorcist's own return to cinemas.
"I went back to London, to Twickenham, the studio where I made the movie, with Gerry Humphreys, the original mixer, 20 years ago, all the same post-production sound guys," recalls Landis.
"It took them approximately two months, but they rebuilt all the tracks. Some were difficult because it was very difficult to find source material for some of the tracks. In fact, for the Sam Cooke cover of 'Blue Moon,’ we ended up having to find the record. I mean, we couldn’t even go to a CD! We has to find a collector’s edition of an album that cost 400 dollars.
"I went to London and spent a week remixing the soundtrack into 5.1 DTS. It was really fun. I really had a good time with the original guys, and the movie in a theatre, I would say, would be 50 percent scarier now."
Sadly, the film never did get the big re-release as Polygram folded before it could happen. But the new soundtrack was perfect for the DVD release and will be included in crisp Blu-Ray clarity on this month's version.
It lives on in other ways - Werewolf has long since taken hold of pop culture, and just as Landis loved to reference other movies and filmmakers in his work, so fans of the original have been endlessly homaging and tipping the wink to him.
Yes, it crops up everywhere - playing in the background of werewolf movies to win some horror cred, while the likes of Edgar Wright have slipped mentions, dialogue and even similar moments into everything he and Simon Pegg have produced.
Even the sound effects have been endlessly borrowed and recycled - in Underworld, the very first wolf sound you hear was taken from AWIL.
All of which, of course, means that someone would eventually want to take a stab at remaking it...
Next: Beware The Remake?
Print Comments (1)
1: silvio says
extra...extra jean claude van damme in jcvd 2.
a production of 85 million dollars!
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