An American Werewolf in Paris

John Landis' 1981 An American Werewolf in London was hardly an inviolable classic, but it was crafty and creative, a comic horror film which was both genuinely scary and genuinely funny. An American Werewolf in Paris, on the other hand, is genuinely unwatchable--a collection of bad ideas thrown onto the screen without any apparent consideration of such apparently minor details as coherence or audience appeal. Director Anthony Waller regurgitates the basic premise of Americans abroad who wind up on the business end of lycanthropic fangs. What follows is horrifying for all the wrong reasons: inane dialogue, humiliatingly unnecessary nude scenes, pointless token efforts to add new twists to werewolf mythology and such wild examples of hilarity as having our protagonist bump his head on everything in sight. Even the computer-generated visual effects are likely to leave genre fans nostalgic for Rick Baker's superior work in the original. By the time this lame quasi-sequel reaches a cringe-inducing happy ending out of some mid-'80s Andrew McCarthy schlock comedy, you may wish there were some method as effective as silver bullets to rid yourself of the responsible parties. Not recommended. (S. Renshaw)