If you’re a fan of director John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London, we’ve got a really cool treat to share with you today! The video below comes from Paul Davis, the same guy who released all that awesome behind the scenes footage from The Exorcist, and in this video, he presents the iconic werewolf transformation scene with the original rejected musical score.
The original score was created by Elmer Bernstein who scored other films such as Ghostbusters, The Magnificent Seven, True Grit, The Great Escape, The Ten Commandments, Three Amigos, Airplane, and more. Davis explains:
“Here is something that myself and the team at New Wave Entertainment tried to pull off back in 2008 as a bonus feature for the first Blu-ray release of An American Werewolf in London in September 2009. With the blessing of John Landis and Universal Home Entertainment, we attempted to restore Elmer Bernstein’s original score that was recorded and subsequently rejected for the legendary transformation sequence.
“Couldn’t quite get there because there were no separate audio tracks to remove the Sam Cooke audio, but it was an interesting experiment. While it wasn’t released on the Blu-ray as a separate feature, we thought the result was pretty interesting, and certainly changes the tone of the scene.”
He went on to tell Bloody-Disgusting:
“We showed it to Rick Baker, who had not heard the score, in the cutting room in LA in ‘08, and he was stunned by it. Just seeing that reaction from the guy who created all the FX for the scene was worth it.”
Davis also said in the video: “I think you will see in this sequence, as Elmer Bernstein recorded it, it completely changes the scene. It makes it a horror transformation.”
The original version of the scene features Sam Cooke’s song “Blue Moon” playing during the transformation. It’s explained that Landis wanted the vibe of the sequence to be “sad and painful” rather than “scary.”
I actually like the Bernstein score with the scene a lot more! It gives the scene that classic chilling horror vibe to it and it’s much darker and more haunting. I think it’s perfect for the scene, but I understand why Landis chose to go in another direction. I’m just happy that we actually got to see the scene with Bernstein’s score!
Watch the scene for yourself in the video below and let us know what you think! I also included the original scene so that you can compare the two.
