10 Sadly Overlooked Horror Movie Moments

2. €œThis Is Not The Least Bit Amusing!€ €“ An American Werewolf In London

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ss0nT5DGHw John Landis makes his second appearance on our list here (his first being the Twilight Zone clip). It may have been surprising to some that, when the Masters of Horror TV series was introduced, Landis was included among the group of said masters, since Landis is known for his comedies, including Animal House and The Blues Brothers. However, Landis definitely deserves a place in such a group, for, like Tom Holland, he demonstrates both an understanding of his audience€™s basic fears and also a knowledge of the tools of horror filmmaking. No place are these skills better exhibited than in this scene, arguably the best from Landis€™s horror magnum opus, An American Werewolf in London. In this scene, a London commuter steps off of a subway train at a deserted tube station. As he pauses to get a pack of cigarettes, he hears two growls, coming from the tube tunnel. He tries to shrug it off at first; after all, there are nuts everywhere. He eventually grows nervous, however, and decides to get away from the rails immediately. The commuter ascends an escalator, only to find himself in another abandoned tunnel. He hears another growl, only this time, he sees the creature making the sound. Justifiably frightened, our commuter turns and runs, the creature (which we, the audience, do not see€ more on this soon) hot on his heels. It seems that our commuter is going to escape when he trips on another set of escalators. As the escalator rises, our commuter turns and sees the werewolf coming up on him. The scene ends before we see his demise, but the scene has provided us with more than enough information for us to provide our own grisly denouement. In this scene, Landis borrows a technique made famous in Steven Spielberg€™s masterpiece Jaws: not to show the monster. Rather, he allows the audience to provide their own imagery. Landis provides us with all the information we need to form our own mental pictures with camera moves down the abandoned tube tunnels, camera moves that are animal-like in their fluidity and speed. These shots are from the point of view of the werewolf, putting us in the mind of the monster. We close in on the commuter with the werewolf through these shots, giving us a greater sense of urgency and leaving us hoping for the commuter€™s escape even harder than we would otherwise. Another benefit Landis takes advantage of in not showing us the werewolf until the end of the scene is that he allows us to make the creature as ugly as we want. Not that Rick Baker€™s makeup creations are bad (because they€™re definitely not; in fact, they were good enough to get Baker nominated for an Oscar), but, as we said earlier, what we can conjure up in our heads will always be more terrifying than anything a filmmaker can put on the screen.