An American Werewolf in London (1981) - Part 1: Kessler's Demons

American Werewolf in London was a project that John Landis had been trying to get off the ground for over a decade, with the intent of Rick Baker handling its effects.

Baker and Landis had developed a friendship when making Schlock, a parody of monster movies that was filmed in 1971. During the shooting of Schlock, Landis told Baker his premise for American Werewolf, which he had already written the script for.

Baker and Landis discussed their aims for the werewolf and its transformation, and how it would diverge from earlier werewolf films. Landis later described the tone he was going for with American Werewolf in an interview with Fangoria;

'This is an all-out horror show, a total monster movie. A lot of people will be shocked by it, I think. It is unrelenting, uncompromising, extremely horrific, terribly violent, very tragic.'

By 1981, it had been at least a decade since working with Landis on Schlock, and Baker had naturally assumed the project would never be filmed. At that moment, he had accepted an offer for another werewolf film; none other than Joe Dante's The Howling. Baker recalled;

'I had kind of given up on it. I figured it was never going to happen; and as the way things work out, I get a call one day from Joe Dante and Mike Finnell saying, ‘We have this werewolf movie we’re gonna do, would you be interested in doing it?’ I said, ‘Yeah’, and this was The Howling.

I started out doing some designs, working on it, and thought this’ll be my chance to use my transformation stuff I’ve thought up, and I didn’t really wanna tell John about it.'

Unbeknownst to Baker, that same year was when American Werewolf had finally been greenlit by Polygram Pictures, thanks to Landis' commercial and critical success with National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers.

Baker didn't find out until Landis phoned him to break the good news. The phone call turned sour after Baker said he was working on The Howling, as Landis screamed at Baker for moonlighting on Dante's picture, insisting that Baker's effects concepts were 'for MY movie!'.

Baker left The Howling's producers a compromise that he could only serve as a 'consultant', leaving it in the hands of his protege Rob Bottin; I will go into detail on this front in the section on American Werewolf's transformations, as well as on my article on The Howling.

Rick Baker's formed a new effects company, EFX, to take on American Werewolf's effects. EFX counted among its number Steve Johnson, Craig Reardon, Tom Hester, Shawn McEnroe, Kevin Brennan, Doug Beswick, Bill Sturgeon and Rick's wife Elaine Baker.

Many of the EFX crew members, such as Johnson (who himself would go on to be a major player in makeup effects), were only just out of their teenage years when taking on the American Werewolf assignment!

Due to the location filming, EFX were some of the only Americans on a predominantly British film crew. There was some assistance from British makeup artists like Robin Grantham, who were tasked with the more minimal gore effects that will be covered in the follow-up article.

The first of EFX's tasks were for the dream sequence in which David Kessler's family are slaughtered by demonic werewolves in Nazi uniforms. Baker sculpted and painted the first demon mask, as a rotting undead werewolf.

The demons were just pullover masks, which Baker was nervous about; 'I was kind of hoping to do makeups with these guys, because I was a little concerned about them just being basically Halloween masks. But John was 'It's going to be fine, I know how I'm going to shoot this (...) they just need to be scary-looking'.'

Baker sculpted the second demon, a bald design with a twisted grimace, by left Tom Hester to finish the mask and give it a paintjob. EFX also sculpted a set of 'evil looking' stylized stahlhelm helmets that could fit over the masks, but only one helmet was used in the film.

Baker also sculpted the third werewolf demon, a much more 'classic' werewolf design, but left the mask to be finished by Shawn McEnroe.

Baker felt he was running out of ideas at this point, and so left the last of the dream demons to Steve Johnson. Johnson sculpted and painted the final demon mask entirely on his own, coming up with a wolfman-like design with a 'mohawk' hairdo.

Sources: 

• 'Beware the Moon: Remembering An American Werewolf in London' (2009)
• Fangoria #13 & #16

Read more on An American Werewolf in London's special effects in the 'Part 2' article, covering the undead Jack Goodman and other gore makeups.