Critic's Pick — Shocktober: 'An American Werewolf in London'

As the Belcourt will dissect the stateside horror-comedy genre with its “Who’s Laughing Now?!” seminar on Saturday morning, they’ll also screen writer-director John Landis’ freaky, funny frightfest An American Werewolf in London later that evening. Fresh off helming the anarchic smash comedies National Lampoon’s Animal House and The Blues Brothers, Landis had enough pull in the biz to dust off the shelved script for this 1981 horror-comedy mashup, in which former Dr. Pepper pitchman David Naughton plays a U.S.-born grad student whose grisly run-in with a lycanthrope leads to him turning ravenous during full moons and wreaking havoc in jolly ol’ England. Landis properly brought the scares, working with makeup-effects whiz Rick Baker to create some gnarly shit that would land Baker the first-ever Oscar for Best Makeup. But it’s the bizarrely comic moments — like Naughton’s cursed Yankee at a porn theater, watching a laughably cheesy/sleazy skin flick with his surprisingly polite, walking-dead victims (they may be dead, but they’re still British!) — that make it one of the most memorably off-kilter monster movies made.

6 and 10 p.m. at the Belcourt

2102 Belcourt Ave.