David Naughton: The actor Edgar Wright called “the film version of a one-hit wonder”
It’s a true shame when an actor gives a great performance, only for them to fade into the ether that sends them down a path into obscurity.
When you hear the name David Naughton, you might not be able to list off any movies he has appeared in, if any, but the actor actually starred in one of horror’s most influential movies.
Naughton played the leading role in An American Werewolf in London, portraying the backpacking young man who makes the near-fatal mistake of wandering onto the Yorkshire moors in the dead of night, resulting in his encounter with a vicious creature. While his friend, Griffin Dunne’s Jack, is ravaged by a werewolf to the point of no return, he instead walks the Earth in a horrible state of limbo: David survives, only to turn into a lycanthropic beast when the moon comes out.
John Landis’ film blended horror and comedy in a way that felt fresh during the early 1980s, making a change from the increasing number of Halloween rip-offs emerging in the wake of the slasher boom. Clever, gory, and ultimately tragic, An American Werewolf really piqued the interest of British filmmaker Edgar Wright when he was young, and it inspired him to use that same humorous approach to create horror movies like Shaun of the Dead.
In fact, the latter feels like a spiritual successor to An American Werewolf in London, with both standing as two of the most iconic horror movies to be set in England. When idiosyncratic British humour of normal everyday people is paired with them having to face grisly kills and terrifying creatures, the distinctly un-Hollywood approach to the scary movie becomes a brilliant brainwave.
Naughton could’ve become a huge star in the wake of the film, just like his co-star Griffin Dunne, but unfortunately, he became “the film version of a one-hit wonder”, according to Wright.
In Robert K Elders’ book The Film That Changed My Life, the director expressed his admiration for Naughton in Landis’ movie, theorising on why his career never took off in the way that it should have. “I used to think aloud, ‘Why didn’t David Naughton do more?’ David Naughton was so good in that. I wasn’t aware that maybe he had any baggage from those Dr Pepper commercials or that disco hit. He had that hit called ‘Makin’ It’.”
Unfortunately, advertising teeth-rotting fizzy drinks and singing a cheesy disco hit prevented Naughton from becoming known as an actor to be taken seriously, even if he did transform into the greatest werewolf cinema had ever seen just a few years after the fact.
Wright continued, “I only found this out later, but David Naughton was in a network sitcom that was essentially a rip-off, spin-off of Saturday Night Fever, where he was playing a sitcom version of Tony Manero. And he had a hit single called ‘Makin’ It’ [which was also the name of the show]. He’s almost the film version of a one-hit wonder in terms of being in that film and not really being in a great deal else. Griffin Dunne is great in the film, but David Naughton, I think, is brilliant in it.”
Naughton’s film career never really took off, and you’re more likely to have spotted him in odd episodes of shows like Grey’s Anatomy and American Horror Story than any good films. It’s a shame, because his appearance as a man caught between the horrors of morphing into a werewolf, trying to sustain normal human relationships, and dealing with the guilt of surviving a werewolf attack (unlike his friend), is one of the greatest horror performances of all time.
