The small Surrey town pub that made Hollywood horror gold
It was inconceivable for 1981’s An American Werewolf in London to be shot anywhere but across the UK.
Even the original gradaddy lycanthrope horror, 1941’s The Wolf Man, authentically set Lon Chaney Jr’s cursed Larry Talbot among the eerie Welsh moors of the fictitious Llanwelly, with the same Universal Pictures monsterhouse also dropping Werewolf of London six years earlier.
Werewolf folklore is embedded in European culture and played a menacing threat in many of the continent’s oral story traditions, and even prompted several cases of state persecution in tandem with the witch hunt hysteria of the 17th century.
The werewolves of cinema seem to keep one clawed paw in the British Isles, however. It’s a trope well understood by filmmaker John Landis. First conceiving of a horror comedy involving an American backpacker’s “carnivorous lunar activities” while passing a Romani burial ritual in Yugoslavia, Landis’ movie literacy knew that the UK’s gothic presence in the silver screen canon would serve his uniquely humoured fright flick in the venerable tradition of his former horror heroes.
Virtually all of An American Werewolf was shot in England and Wales. While Rick Baker’s groundbreaking practical effects were handled at Twickenham Film Studios, Landis and the crew were on location around Wales’ Black Mountains for the opening moors sequence, with Crickadarn village standing as the East Proctor village. It’s here that one of the most memorable scenes takes place.
Traipsing through the eerie North York Moors at night, New York graduate students David Kessler and Jack Goodman take some respite in the Slaughtered Lamb pub. Met with a frosty reception and alarmed by the sinister pentagram daubed on the wall, the hostile locals begin to warn of the dangers that lie ahead should the two stray from the road. Failing to heed their caution, the two trek back through the moors to be met with the vicious attack of a werewolf, triggering Kessler’s lycanthrope curse from then on.
Everything about the Slaughtered Lamb is pitch-perfect, the entire pub feeling as authentic as any British pub of the day, boasting a welcome screen time from Rik Mayall, and featuring one of Brian Glover’s best performances as the foreboding chess player. The pub exterior was, in fact, a cottage in the Crickadarn village, but the interior was shot over 180 miles away in England’s Surrey county.
Nestled just east of Ockham village in the Martyrs Green hamlet, Old Lane’s Black Swan pub took in Landis’ production crew, standing as a fully-functioning pub; little set-dressing had saved the false wall erected where the pentagram was painted to foster a more claustrophobic setting, covering the area now the entrance to the main dining room.
For any hardcore An American Werewolf in London fans or even horrorheads in general, a pilgrimage to the Black Swan today may be an underwhelming experience, everything refurbished toward a more plush dining establishment, but the large door remains more or less the same, still standing as a relic to the weary American’s immortal entrance to horror comedy legend.
