MASTERS OF TERROR
Linda Blair coming to Horror-Con
For the first couple of days of filming, David Naughton had no reason to believe making the 1981 horror-comedy classic American Werewolf in London would be anything but a stress-free and relaxing experience.
Apparently, director John Landis decided to shoot the film in sequence, which was a rarity back then. So filming began with those relatively benign opening scenes of Naughton and co-star Griffin Dunne playing doomed American backpackers David Kessler and Jack Goodman as they amicably roam the moors. Sure, there were sheep and surly villagers to contend with, but compared to the blood, nudity, frigid temperatures and werewolf transformations that were to follow, it was a walk in the park.
This, Naughton emphasizes, was not done for the benefit of the actors to ease them into the film. It was so renowned makeup artist Rick Baker had time to prepare for all the gruesome effects he had to create. Baker, of course, would go on to win the first of his seven Oscars for makeup for his work on the film. Still, the result was that the first couple of days were not particularly gruelling. This was both misleading and short-lived, Naughton says.
“That sort of fooled me,” says Naughton, who will be in Calgary to discuss the film as part of Calgary Horror Con on June 2 and 3 at the Clarion Hotel. “It was like ‘Hey, this is going to be easy.’ Then we get out there and — can you imagine? — we were in England and it’s not raining so they made rain. Why would you make rain in England? We’re out there on the moors with these rain machines. It was so cold the rain machines were freezing. ‘Hey, wait a second, that’s not fair. If the rain machines are freezing, then we shouldn’t have to be in the rain, should we?’”
It wasn’t just the cold and the rain and the fake rain and the frozen rain machines. As fans know, Naughton often faced these elements while stark naked, including one memorable scene where he is in a cage with real wolves. Then there’s that startling two-minute transformation sequence, where Kessler strips down before agonizingly turning into a werewolf. Still considered one of the best in cinematic history in terms of practical special effects, much of the scene was filmed with Naughton in a hole underneath the set’s elevated floor with only his head and arms sticking out.
The sequence took months to plan and a week to shoot, relying on old-school special effects that are rarely used these days. Along with the teeth, prosthetics and fur, Naughton was fitted with glass contact lenses. In fact, the actor routinely spent up to five hours a day in the makeup chair.
“I did a panel with John Landis and Rick Baker and they said: ‘Man, stop making it sound like it was torture,’” says Naughton with a laugh. “I said ‘It didn’t happen to you guys! You guys were talking while I was in the floor wondering if I (was) going to get out of here today.’”
An American Werewolf in London eventually became a hit, grossing $19 million in its first four weeks against a modest $5.5-million budget. It has since become a bonafide classic and a pioneer in the now-ubiquitous horror-comedy sub-genre. Landis was barely out of his teens when he wrote the screenplay. But, by 1981, he was coming off a hot streak after directing Animal House and the Blues Brothers, which presumably allowed him a bit of leeway when it came to pitching this bizarre mix of cringe-inducing laughs, pure horror and realistic gore to studio brass.
Initially, not everyone knew what to make of it. Renowned critic Roger Ebert griped that “the laughs and the blood coexist very uneasily in this film.”
“It wasn’t a gigantic, runaway smash out of the gate because it was such a strange idea,” Naughton says. “I remember Siskel and Ebert, they led the charge with ‘Where do we put this film? How do we (pigeonhole) it? How do we characterize it? It’s very funny, but it’s not a comedy. It’s not a spoof.’ And Landis was saying ‘No, it’s a horror film!’ But he had a lot of humorous scenes to keep people laughing nervously.”
Naughton may not have seemed the likeliest choice to star in a horror film. He had studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art before becoming an understudy on Broadway. Oddly, he also had a Top Five pop hit with the theme of his short-lived sitcom Makin’ It and the lead in the 1980 Disney comedy, Midnight Madness (which also featured Michael J. Fox in his film debut), before Landis came calling.
The director actually knew him as the cheery song-and-dance pitchman for Dr Pepper soft drinks. It was Landis’s groundbreaking film that became, and remains, Naughton’s moment in the sun, even if he did his best to avoid horror films for a short period afterwards.
Among other movies, for instance, he followed up the Oscarwinning American Werewolf in London with the sex romp, Hot Dog ... The Movie, which did not win any Oscars, but did apparently become the highest-grossing ski movie of all time.
In a 1981 article in People Magazine, the then 30-year-old Naughton expressed concern about typecasting, suggesting he was mostly being offered horror scripts after Werewolf became a hit.
In retrospect, Naughton says it wasn’t so much the genre he was avoiding.
“After the makeup experience, I was so over the whole idea of sitting in a chair for hours on end,” says Naughton. “And I had worked with the best, or the person who would soon become one of the top makeup artists. So, yeah, I was not in any hurry to go out and do anything related to hours of makeup, prosthetics; any of that business.”
Still, he said he is not surprised that affection for the film has not dwindled over the years. Fan gatherings like Calgary Horror Con prove that it has gone from being a successful oddity to what is now considered a classic.
“People are very upfront about the film and how much it meant to them and where they were in their lives in terms of the impact it had on them,” Naughton says. “So many adults are bringing their kids now and saying ‘My dad introduced me to horror with this movie.’ I get that a lot. Or things like ‘This film scared me to death.’ Good, that was the idea. Or ‘Well, I saw it when I was about 10.’ I’m like ‘You know, it’s rated R! What’s wrong with your parents!’”
The organizers of the Calgary Horror Con have a beloved tradition each year. They take their celebrity guests on a field trip to the mountains.
Devotees might salivate at the prospect of going on a road trip to Banff with some of this year’s genre-topping guests. As in past years, the lineup for the Saturday and Sunday horror love-in is a bit of a who’s-who when it comes to representatives from iconic horror films and franchises.
Top of the list is Linda Blair, who earned an Oscar nomination for her supremely unsettling turn as Regan MacNeil, the possessed child in the 1973 classic The Exorcist. There’s also David Naughton, who underwent one of the most memorable transformations in cinematic history as a backpacker-turned-lycanthrope in 1981’s An American Werewolf in London.
The list of talent continues. C.J. Graham is one of many actors who has donned the hockey mask to play persistent killer Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th franchise. James Remar is the American character actor who has played everything from chief villain in 1982’s 48 Hours to a gang member in the 1979 cult classic The Warriors. John Jarratt plays the deranged killer in the Australian Wolf Creek series.
George P. Wilbur has played Michael Myers in the Halloween franchise, while Daeg Faerch played the same role as a child in Rob Zombie’s 2007 reboot. P.J. Soles was in the original 1978 Halloween, in Brian DePalma’s 1976 classic Carrie, and in Zombie’s 2005 The Devil’s Rejects. Ken Foree battled his own zombies in George Romero’s 1978 classic Dawn of the Dead.
“Scream queen” Tiffany Shepis starred in Tromeo & Juliet, Sharknado 2 and Chainsaw Cheerleaders. Tiffany Helm was one of Jason’s victims in 1985’s Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Eugene Clark played “Big Daddy ” in Romero’s 2005 film Land of the Dead.
All in all, an interesting crew for a mountainous road trip.
“You obviously have respect for the person before you even meet them,” says Calgary Horror Con spokeswoman Katrina Kryzalka. “But they are just normal people. I’ve never really fan-girled out about anyone because everyone is so down to earth that we’ve brought in every year. It’s just really
nice to have that one-on-one connection. We’ve gone to karaoke with film stars before. We’ve done everything with them.”
Which is part of the appeal of fan conventions. Now in its eighth year, the Calgary Horror Con is part fan expo and part film festival that allows fans to meet some of their favourite genre stars and watch films from up-and-coming directors from around the globe. This year, the convention will be screening 70 international films Saturday and Sunday at the Clarion Hotel. Other than the Spanish film Sant Marti and the American serial-killer thriller The Basement, which are both feature-length, all the films are shorts. The films run the gamut in the ever-expanding genre of horror.
“We have some submitted that are super cheesy B movies,” Kryzalka says. “If you don’t like cheesy movies, you wouldn’t be a fan and would just think it’s pure trash. But there are horror fans who can appreciate that part of it.
“We’ve gotten a lot of silent films. We’ve gotten suspenseful horror. We’ve gotten slasher horror. We get tons of submissions from people of every age group. It just depends on what inspired them to make movies, because that is going to translate into the films that they make.”