Beyond the deleted scenes, the film’s very conclusion was almost drastically different. In the original first draft of the script, the story did not end with the werewolf’s death in Piccadilly Circus. Instead, the film concluded with a surreal, ghoulish vaudeville-style musical revue in the afterlife. In this bizarre sequence, the film’s deceased characters would gather together and sing “Shine on Harvest Moon!” in a macabre celebration. While this ending was never filmed (and thus does not qualify as a deleted scene), it reveals just how much darker and more absurd Landis’ original vision for the film was.
This turns “deleted scenes” from a passive curiosity into an analytical tool for editing, horror screenwriting, and practical effects study—while serving the film’s specific cult obsession with London as a layered, nightmarish space.
Before David transforms for the second time, he encounters three unhoused men in a trash-strewn alleyway. In the theatrical cut, this meeting is brief and violent. The original version featured a longer conversation. David desperately tries to warn the men that he is dangerous and that they need to leave immediately. The men dismiss his warnings as the ramblings of a madman, making their subsequent deaths tragic rather than just a monster attack. The Gore and Censorship Cuts
But even a film as tight and iconic as this one left pieces of the puzzle on the cutting room floor. While the movie runs at a lean 97 minutes, Landis actually shot a significant amount of footage that has never seen the light of day on a DVD or Blu-ray release. an american werewolf in london deleted scenes
Several seconds of extreme gore were trimmed from this sequence. Lost footage includes: A pedestrian being cleanly decapitated by a crashing car.
The status of this footage remains one of the great “what ifs” of horror cinema. While there is an extremely rare “unrated” cut of the movie that circulates among collectors, which contains more blood and gore than the theatrical version, it notably does not contain the lost tramp death scene.
A shot of David's hair aggressively tearing through the back of his shirt. Beyond the deleted scenes, the film’s very conclusion
Originally, the scene was far more gruesome. Director John Landis reportedly filmed an extended death sequence where the werewolf did not simply chase the tramps off-screen but graphically killed them. Whispers from those who saw the original cut suggest the scene showed the werewolf grabbing one of the tramps, dragging him away, and then throwing him back into the frame with missing limbs. It was a moment of explicit, brutal violence that proved to be too intense even for a horror film.
While the theatrical cut is the standard version, certain home video releases have minor differences due to editing or mastering errors: Missing "Suicide Phone Call"
: A brief shot was filmed where undead Jack (Griffin Dunne) attempts to eat toast, only for the food to fall out through his mangled, torn-open throat. Hospital Spitting In this bizarre sequence, the film’s deceased characters
Pacing was the primary issue. Landis realized that the audience understood the joke within the first few seconds, and lingering on the fake movie detracted from the tension of David interacting with his increasingly decayed victims. Additional Dialogue Between David and Alex
John Landis is famous for inserting inside jokes and meta-humor into his films (such as the fictional movie See You Next Wednesday ). One specific pop-culture joke had to be excised entirely. What was cut:
👻 The scenes featuring David’s decomposing friend, Jack (Griffin Dunne), and his ghostly victims were originally longer. These extensions included more "rotting" makeup effects by Rick Baker that were deemed too disturbing or pacing-killing for the final film.