Throughout cinema history, there have been some iconic nude scenes that have transcended the bounds of the films in which they appeared. Our weekly column Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy will take an in-depth look at these scenes, their history, their deeper meanings, and their legacy.
This October, we're offering up some seasonally appropriate chills and thrills—along with our patented spills—with a month of horror movies that bring more male nudity to the table than their contemporaries! This week, a fully nude David Naughton is "makin' it" with his fully nude transformation into a leading man in John Landis' An American Werewolf in London!
Horror and comedy mix as frequently today as virtually any two other disparate genres out there, as filmmakers discovered the joy of making audiences laugh while also being scared. However, fifty years ago, when John Landis first tried to get his horror/comedy An American Werewolf in London made, he was told it was too funny for horror audiences and too scary for comedy audiences. He shelved the project until 1980 when he was on top of the comedy world having directed The Kentucky Fried Movie andAnimal House back-to-back. While making The Blues Brothers, he finally got the green light and ten million dollars from the now-defunct PolyGram Pictures to make his funny werewolf movie.
By 1981, both the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises were underway, though they were both still firmly in the world of horror and neither had yet devolved into that dreaded realm of being neither scary nor intentionally funny that plagues so many horror series. In time, A Nightmare on Elm Street and the revival of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would further push horror into the realm of camp, but An American Werewolf in London remains an outlier in the world of 80s horror and 80s comedy.
It's much more often lumped in with horror films of the time, but to do so doesn't give the film's sly comedic undertones nearly enough credit. It's much more of a scary comedy than it is a funny horror movie, if that makes any sense at all. It also requires a lead actor of some substantial talent to carry off both elements of the script in equal measure. Someone who could be both a pitiful figure but also a sympathetic one. David Naughton was far from an unknown commodity in 1981 having been the face of Dr. Pepper's "Be a Pepper" campaign in the late 70s, and landing a Billboard Top Ten hit with "Makin' It" the theme song to the sitcom Makin' It, in which he also starred...
At that time, however, television success meant nothing if you couldn't make it in the pictures, and Naughton was a complete unknown as a leading man. He obviously proved a willing collaborator for Landis, gamely going nude a bunch of times as the titular Yankee who survives an attack by a werewolf only to become one himself. The film certainly deals in matters of survivor's guilt—Naughton's buddy played by Griffin Dunne didn't survive the attack—and paranoid fears of being a stranger in a strange land, but it never loses its light touch thanks to Naughton's commitment to the role and the whole tone of the film.
From the moment the film was released, all anyone has ever talked about in conjunction with An American Werewolf in London is the spectacular transformation scene just prior to the one hour mark! Special effects wizard Rick Baker won his first of a whopping seven Academy Awards for his work and it's well deserved, especially considering the tech you're looking at is 40 years old at this point...
The sad irony is that his nude appearances in this film would cost him his job as the face of Dr. Pepper, which is apparently a family organization that doesn't associate itself with werewolves. Naughton's career as a leading man in Hollywood was D.O.A. He would continue to work and carved out quite a niche for himself as a genre star, working the fest circuit and earning a loyal fanbase. However, it's a real shame that his work in the film was virtually ignored in the hubbub around the film. Obviously the effects work is terrific, but it wouldn't work as well without Naughton right there in the middle of it all.
Much like in our present entertainment climate, the film's success didn't launch a horror/comedy renaissance so much as it launched a period in which horror movies began adding jokes. An American Werewolf in London isn't looked back on as a film that started a trend so much as it stands as a solitary example from the time period of what happens when you trust an audience enough to be scared and amused all at the same time. If anything, the film gave independent filmmakers who wanted to operate within these various milieus the opportunity to mix and match genres with great success.
The Coen Brothers mixed comedy with a thriller to make Blood Simple, Sam Raimi blended horror and comedy for Evil Dead II, and it more or less launched Edgar Wright's entire aesthetic into existence. An American Werewolf in London isn't great because it's funny and scary, it's great because it cares deeply about the comedy and it cares deeply about the horror. That attention to detail on both ends of the genre spectrum is what separates it from the pack. That and the fact that most horror and comedy movies of the time didn't feature full frontal male nudity.
Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Manatomy...
—Oliver Reed Alan Bates in Women in Love
—Ewan McGregor in Velvet Goldmine
—A Pair of Stars are Born in Y Tu Mamá También
—Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant
—Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises
—Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall
—Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game
—David Bowie Rip Torn in The Man Who Fell to Earth
—John Cameron Mitchell in Hedwig and the Angry Inch
—Ross Lynch in My Friend Dahmer
—Rocketman vs. Bohemian Rhapsody
—Bruce Willis in Color of Night
—Robert De Niro and Gerard Depardieu in Bertolucci's 1900
—Louis Garrel in Godard Mon Amour
—Henry June and the NC-17 Rating
—The Gay Cowboys of Brokeback Mountain
—Eddie Redmayne in Danish Girl
—Tom Cruise in All the Right Moves
—Christopher Atkins in The Blue Lagoon
—Sylvester Stallone in The Italian Stallion
—9 Songs Combines Real Music with Real Sex
—The Naked Men of A Room with a View
—John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus
—Ben Affleck's Abnormally Smooth Dick in Gone Girl
—Joseph Gordon-Levitt inMysterious Skin
—Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation
—Richard Gere in American Gigolo
—Ralph Fiennes and Matthias Schoenaerts in A Bigger Splash
