After achieving success in Hollywood with the comedies The Kentucky Fried Movie, National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers, Landis was able to secure financing from PolyGram Pictures to produce An American Werewolf in London.

He wakes up the next morning naked on the floor of a wolf enclosure at the London Zoo, with no recollection of what happened, and returns to Alex's flat.

After learning of the previous night's murders and realizing that he is responsible, David unsuccessfully attempts to get himself arrested in Trafalgar Square.

Landis developed box-office status in Hollywood through the successful comedies, The Kentucky Fried Movie, Animal House and The Blues Brothers before securing $10 million financing from PolyGram Pictures for his werewolf film.

[9] Universal Studios execs were pressuring the director to cast Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as David Kessler and Jack Goodman but Landis went with unknown actors instead.

[11] The moors were filmed around the Black Mountains in Wales, and East Proctor is in reality the tiny village of Crickadarn, about six miles (9.7 km) southeast of Builth Wells off the A470.

The Angel of Death statue was a prop added for the film, but the red phone box is real, though the Welsh road signs were covered by a fake tree.

Landis accomplished this by inviting 300 members of Greater London's Metropolitan Police Service to a screening of his new film The Blues Brothers.

[11] Other filming locations included Putney General Hospital, Chiswick Maternity Hospital, Redcliffe Square in Earl's Court, the area around Tower Bridge, South Kensington Underground station, Tottenham Court Road Underground station, London Zoo, Putney High Street, Belgravia, Hampstead and Southwark.

[16] The score was composed and conducted by Elmer Bernstein and recorded at Olympic Studios in London, engineered by Keith Grant.

[20] It included an audio commentary with actors David Naughton and Griffin Dunne, interviews with John Landis and Rick Baker, a 1981 promotional featurette, silent outtakes, storyboards and production photographs.

The scene takes place near the end of the film when David calls his parents from a public telephone box.

[23][24] On October 29, 2019, Arrow Video released a 4K restoration as part of a Blu-ray box set that contains all previously released extra material; the documentary Mark of The Beast: The Legacy of the Universal Werewolf; the 2009 making-of documentary Beware the Moon; filmmaker Jon Spira's video essay "I Think He's a Jew: The Werewolf's Secret;" a new interview with Landis; lobby cards and a booklet.

[23] At the time of its release, Roger Ebert reviewed the film unfavorably, giving it two out of four stars and writing,"An American Werewolf in London seems curiously unfinished, as if director John Landis spent all his energy on spectacular set pieces and then didn't want to bother with things like transitions, character development or an ending.

"[26] Entertainment Weekly listed it in their 1996 "Greatest Movies Ever Made", saying that the transformation effects by Rick Baker changed the face of horror makeup in the 1980s.

He cited Rick Baker's makeup effects and Jenny Agutter's performance as genuinely powerful, but concluded that "thanks to the director's insincerity, slapdash approach and what appears to be a thinly veiled contempt for the material, [An American Werewolf in London] succeeds neither as comedy nor as horror.

The website's consensus reads: "Terrifying and funny in almost equal measure, John Landis' horror-comedy crosses genres while introducing Rick Baker's astounding make-up effects.

[29] Kim Newman of Empire magazine gave the film a rating of four out of five stars, writing that "carnivorous lunar activities rarely come any more entertaining than this".

Tom Huddleston of Time Out also gave the film a positive review, calling it "not just gory but actually frightening, not just funny but clever".

[35] Director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) cited the film as a major inspiration for his own film-making and a milestone in the genre.

Pat Reid of Empire, reviewing the film in 2000, thought that the blending of comedic and horror elements "don't always sit well side-by-side," but called the transformation scene "undoubtedly a classic" because of its "good old-fashioned makeup and trickery making the incredible seem real.

"[37] Rolling Stone's Joshua Rothkopf, writing on the 35th anniversary of the film's release, called An American Werewolf in London an "allegory of exoticized Jewishness".

This is embodied by the character of David and his growing awareness of his "otherness" as a werewolf alongside his own outsider status as a Jewish American in England.

"Hiding a secret deep within one's body, strange urges, xenophobic glances, accusatory feelings of guilt: David's condition already has a name, and this won't be the first film in which Jewish otherness is made monstrous."

[11][40] A radio adaptation of the film was broadcast on BBC Radio 1 in 1997, produced by Dirk Maggs[41] and featuring Jenny Agutter, Brian Glover, and John Woodvine reprising the roles of Alex Price, the chess player (now named George Hackett, and with a more significant role as East Proctor's special constable), and Dr Hirsch, respectively.

[48] But beginning in late 2017, accusations by a number of women that Landis had abused them emotionally or sexually began to emerge publicly.

[49] In November 2019, Variety reported that Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead comic book series, was in consideration as a producer for a new reboot of An American Werewolf in London.