John Landis ("National Lampoon's Animal House," "The Blues Brothers") is a member of the wise-guy generation of movie directors. The wise guys include major talents like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and lesser talents like Landis and others. What they have in common is their neo-hip attitude. "I am a movie camera," the wise guys might say, and what they see through that camera is not so much the real world as other movies, which they parody, put on, take off and otherwise play with like the brilliant kids they are. Landis has now come up with An American Werewolf in London, a nearly perfect specimen of the wise-guy movie.

This film is a spoof of the old wolfman horror classics starring beloved cornballs like Lon Chaney Jr. Landis's heroes aren't corny, they're college smoothies….

The wise-guy essence of the film is its blend of gory horror and...