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Welcome, Popversians, to another edition of The Coldest Open, the column where I, your humble horror host, examine the history of scary cinema through the first moments of its standout entries. Tonight's topic of conversation is indeed one of those most renowned pieces in every Horror Movie 101 class, and celebrating a bit of a historic milestone to boot. In honor of its upcoming 44th anniversary, let's talk about creature-feature classic An American Werewolf in London.

The way Coldest Open works is this: I'm going to be breaking down five different hallmarks of every great cold open in horror, then judging whether the movie in question pulls them off. If so, that hallmark will get ranked with a "Cold" verdict; if not, it'll get ranked with a "warm." At the end, we'll tally up those verdicts and determine a temperature, ranging all the way from Lukewarm to Absolute Zero.

Make sense? Fantastic. Go ahead and light some of those very long candles, scratch yourself a pentacle on the wall, and pour yourself a pint - let's get into it.

An American Werewolf in London's Cold-Blooded Killer

Though werewolves are such an iconic enemy in a lot of horror/action fare, many of the best werewolf stories center on an internal conflict - that is, the plight of the person who has been cursed with lycanthropy. Eventually, that person will be poor David (David Naughton), the first American we meet and the person the movie needs to make likable if we're going to care about his incoming curse.

Unfortunately, I don't think the intro of this movie achieves that. David feels a little flat compared to his backpacking buddy Jack (Griffin Dunne); his dialogue isn't as funny, he is both too relaxed and too pushy about the elements the pair are facing on their walk through the English moors. Fortunately, though, we will care about David's werewolf plight down the line, mostly because of the relationship between him and his best pal.

Which is not to say that the best pal exactly survives this cold open.

Verdict: Warm

An American Werewolf in London's First Person to Get Iced

Yeah, poor Jack bites the dust (or rather, gets bitten) at the inciting incident moment of this film, but the movie does a great job before that of introducing him as a lovable side character. Save for an off-color joke about a woman that "has to" have sex with him (yikes, isn't that Charley Brewster's line?), Jack is consistently funny and easy to watch onscreen. It's also Jack that sees all the signs of trouble awaiting the travelers on the moors and comes to the right conclusion (that there's something supernatural going on) very early.

Which makes it all the more tragic that, because his best friend refused to listen, poor Jack winds up a languishing ghost and David winds up a creature of the night.

Verdict: Cold

An American Werewolf in London's Polar Plot Intro

Speaking of folks that are wise to the truth, let's talk about those English folks at the wonderful Slaughtered Lamb pub. Those are the older blokes (and one lass) that speak to Jack and David after they come into the pub to escape the elements, but clam up once Jack notices the pentacle on the wall. They ask the Americans to leave, despite it being night time, and it comes out that they didn't want the pair knowing the supernatural secret underneath their community.

And that, I have to say, doesn't quite make sense to me? If you don't want to call down suspicion on your community, why wouldn't you take action to, I don't know, stop the preventable deaths that are about to go down there? Sure, this is a time before smartphones gave all the world everybody else's business, but wouldn't there be, like, cops? Two kids (international kids, by the way) disappear in your community, and you don't suspect that might come back to bite you?

Just saying, one available pullout couch coulda solved this whole thing.

Verdict: Warm

An American Werewolf in London's Frozen Snapshots

But of course, those of us sickos who come to this for the terror are happy that David and Jack do wander back onto the moors for the full moon, and not just because of the fuzzy freak that's on his way. The picturesque English countryside is one of the strongest pieces of this film - director John Landis captures its strange combination of alienness and familiarity, its almost "uncanny valley" way of looking so innocent that you just know some godawful stuff is going to go down there.

Or indeed, has gone down there.

Verdict: Cold

An American Werewolf in London's Bone-Chilling Music

Let's stay on the subject of "so innocent it's creepy" for a moment here to talk about the music that begins this movie - that is, the jukebox pull Blue Moon, as sung by Bobby Vinton. I won't lie to you, reader, I spent quite a lot of time debating whether this song appropriately sets the mood of this movie. In the end, I decided that Blue Moon does NOT, in fact, match the tone of these opening moments...

Which is why it works?

Look, there's so much about this movie that's done purely for the sake of pitch black comedy. Eventually we'll see a man's decomposing spirit in a porn theater - I'm pretty sure if Tim Burton did stand-up, that's exactly how it would begin. Blue Moon is much too sweet and sincere for this bleak and blasphemous of this film, and in a deeply messed-up way, that kinda makes it perfect.

Verdict: Cold

An American Werewolf in London's Cold Open Temperature: Midwinter

As we approach this anniversary of An American Werewolf in London, it's more than likely that you'll hear ravings about the movie's famous werewolf transformation scene, probably the best yet committed to film. And while I absolutely agree with everyone who praises it, I'd remind you that that scene is just a crescendo following plenty of build-up music. And if the orchestra didn't succeed at the beginning (albeit with a few wrong notes here or there), that famous moment in horror history would only be so much noise.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.