TRACK #41:

Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival

This annual addition to most Halloween playlists and radio stations is made all the more relevant to The Shindig for its inclusion in John Landis’ lunar based soundtrack for An American Werewolf In London.

One of my first experiences with the wonders of special makeup FX, Rick Baker and his team won the category’s first Academy Award for the groundbreaking and amazing work on display here. If anyone tells you the effects in this film appear “dated” or “cheesy,” discontinue conversing with that person post-haste.

Cinematic werewolf transformations, until this point, had mostly been the stuff of cutaways and time-lapse photography. Baker (along with Rob Botin over on The Howling) reinvented the wheel with a combination of animatronics, change-o-heads, reverse photography and skillful editing, to show a man literally transforming into a creature of the night right before your eyes. And that’s to say nothing of the intense murder and slow decay of Jack Goodman, played to perfection by Griffin Dunne.

Speaking on the film itself, I feel American Werewolf is hanging out near the top of the horror/comedy heap for its ability to separate the 2 so effectively. When it’s joking, it’s hilarious; when it’s deathly serious, it’s fucking horrifying. Nazi werewolves.

Oh, the music, yeah. I love Creedence, and this is a great song, used to great effect here with all the other moon tracks in the film.

Keep off the moors…stick to the roads…