There is a debate to be had about which is the best werewolf movie ever made, The Howling or An American Werewolf in London. This is not, however, a debate article. This is about something different.
Also, there is no debate. People who think The Howling is better are just wrong. It is like comparing Piranha (The Howling) to Jaws (American Werewolf). Sure, Piranha is great fun, and worthy of cinematic mention. But it isn’t Jaws.
This article is about a myth. A legend. A version of An American Werewolf In London that is just a whisper on the wind, and was once thought lost to the mists of time. Perhaps it isn’t quite as lost as once thought.
You see, when An American Werewolf In London was released, it had it’s debut in the UK before the US. A select few UK audiences have, over time, reported seeing a different film to the one that was since presented both in cinemas and across many different home release versions.
The official line is that a lot of deleted material that made up an original cut of the film, one prepared for test audiences, was lost. This was because these so-called “trims and cuts” were accidentally thrown out at Twickenham Studios in the UK.
Yet stories of this alternative version have never gone away. The original test screening was cut as some scenes, one in particular, made test audiences very uncomfortable. It seems a version of this test cut may have been screened once or twice in UK cinemas by mistake at the very beginning of its release.
Adding to the legend were rumors of a VHS bootleg cut doing the rounds back in the heyday of video piracy that contained many of these cut scenes.
Then, for the 20th Anniversary DVD, a few of these cut scenes were included in the DVD extras, and a few were in surprisingly decent quality. Others have surfaced from time to time on the internet but then seem to vanish. So what differences are we talking about? Some of these might be familiar to officianados of the film, some of these might be new to you.
At the very beginning, the farmer was listening to the radio in the cab and a news report about “Larry Talbot”, an escaped lunatic from a local asylum. David and Jack are oblivious to this in the rear flatbed. This matches the BBC Radio adaptation of an early version of the script that features the lycanthropic prisoner escaping, and also reveals he is a relative of one of the customers of The Slaughtered Lamb, meaning all of the locals, including the village authorities, were in on the cover-up.
The “blood moon” shot from the original teaser was included, and it is implied that the Talbot-wolf has just killed a sheep.
When in hospital and suffering his delusions, David suffered a dream within a dream, and upon waking, he is gunned down in his own hospital bed by the Nazi ghouls before waking again.
In one outtake, after his dream of hunting the deer in the forest, he tells the nurse, “I killed Bambi!”
When Jack first visits David in the hospital, Jack eats a bit of toast, and the toast falls from his slashed-open neck, where Jack then wipes it off his own bloodied coat.
The sex shower scene was longer and more explicit.
There is quite a lot more to the transformation scene, including the first really good look at the werewolf. It is likely this was excised in order to save the first full looks at the beast for the climax of the movie.
Similarly, for the banker attack on the London Underground, there was a fully lit shot of the wolf stalking around the corner of the tunnel as the banker runs. This scene can be seen in rough form on several documentaries about Rick Baker, and it is pretty impressive. It was chosen to only allow the smallest glimpse of the wolf from the escalator downshot instead.
Following his carnivorous lunar activities, when he wakes up in London Zoo, David spits out the banker’s thumb.
There was also much more of the wolf in the Picadilly Circus rampage scene, with more angles and a much more graphic decapitation scene, with the head flying off that segued into the known shot of the head bouncing off the car. There were also more shots of more injuries, including more bus passengers being sent through more windows.
An original cut of the movie was also supposed to include songs by Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan, but the rights to their moon related music couldn’t be obtained for release.
The most famous “missing” footage of all is an extended scene where the tramps near Tower Bridge encounter the werewolf. The full version showed their end. This was the scene that made test audiences uneasy, as it was legendarily gory and graphic. The final tramp meets his doom, bent backwards over the hood of a wrecked car as the wolf pins him down.
So, will anyone ever get to see any of this? The tramp scene, in particular, has been discussed by Landis. He has admitted he regrets cutting it out.
So does Landis own an original cut of his own movie? Could we ever see a full Director’s Cut of An American Werewolf In London? A few years ago he was asked this and, referring to George Lucas and the Star Wars movies, he said:
“I’m not lucky like George, I don’t own the movies so I can’t go back and change them. They won’t let me.”
So does this mean he has the footage? Or knows where it is?
The mystery of the missing An American Werewolf In London deepens.
