John Landis had trouble setting ''American Werewolf'' expectations
Was it funny? Was it scary? Was John Belushi in it?
Just like an actor can be pigeonholed and typecast due to past success, so too can a director be tied too heavily to an earlier work. Take, for instance, Jordan Peele, of Get Out fame. He'd been primarily known as a sketch comedy performer, having starred on MadTV and his own Key and Peele. So when it came time to pivot to horror blockbusters, who would've guessed he'd be so adept?
Even Martin Scorsese has to switch things up occasionally, taking a break from crime movies with his family movie adventure, Hugo, in 2011. This is just one example in a storied career wherein Scorsese bucked the trends of his previous successes to shake things up in his filmography. The guy made a musical the year after Taxi Driver. Still, Hugo proved that Scorsese's skills as a filmmaker could lend themselves to any genre. He's just that good.
So, when comedic director John Landis readied the release of his An American Werewolf in London, he had to really set the record straight. People love labels and wanted to put Landis in a box as a director who only made comedies. And not just "comedies"— Landis made hugely successful comedies. His back-to-back hits with Animal House and The Blues Brothers weren't just box office bonanzas; they also redefined what an entire generation thought was funny. For better or worse, Landis was a gas.
It's no shock, then, that folks might have a problem adjusting to the surprising amounts of violence in An American Werewolf in London. According to a 1981 article in the San Antonio Light, Landis worked hard to set expectations before anyone sat down in the cinema.
"Indeed it's not a satire," said Landis. "People think it was since I made it. But I tried to do something different with it. It's a tragic story with comic overtones. It's also a monster tale that I wrote almost a dozen years ago and had trouble convincing a studio to handle."
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