An American Werewolf in Paris

""It took me four years on a stairmaster to get a package like this. You ripped through it like a lamb chop!""

- Amy Fitch, newly risen as a zombie

An American Werewolf in Paris is a spin-off of An American Werewolf in London that was released to lukewarm reviews (at best) in 1997. It includes some of the elements of its predecessor, such as attempts at lighthearted humor and having a werewolf's victims appear as mutilated ghosts. What it lacks, and what caused many reviewers to complain, are the brutal yet enthralling make-up effects of the first movie, which have been replaced with a heavy dose of CGI.

The story is centered on Andy McDermott (Tom Everett Scott), an American student who is traveling in Europe with his two friends when he falls in love with a French girl named Serafine (Julie Delpy), after saving her life during her suicide attempt. He tracks her down in attempt to get in her pants woo her, and eventually winds up getting invited to a club by one of her friends, who promises that she'll be there too. The club turns out to be a trap, where the owners lock the doors, transform into werewolves and feast on the unwitting patrons. One of his friends is killed, but Andy escapes... with just a bite. He is surprised to wake up in Serafine's bedroom, who is kind enough to take off her shirt for the audience him, offer him a glass of freshly-pureed hearts and tell him he's a werewolf now... and she would know, because she's one too.

He refuses to accept this and flees her house, but is forced to accept that it's true after he kills a fellow American tourist named Amy, who also rises as a member of the undead to torment him. He goes back to Serafine, who tells him that the club owners are after a serum her stepfather created that will cause them to transform into werewolves instantly, even when it's not a full moon. Sure enough, they succeed in stealing it, so Andy and Serafine team up to stop their fellow werewolves' reign of terror, avenge their friends' deaths, and maybe even put and end to their own curse....

The film, despite having a relatively uninspired storyline with plenty of humor that falls flat, is actually not that bad when compared to most other movies that have lycanthropy as the main plot point. It was also not a box office bomb-- its earnings exceeded its budget by a few million dollars. Regardless, it is not widely regarded as a good movie and fans almost universally prefer An American Werewolf in London to this film. --


 * Action Girl: Serafine's condition means that she can throw a guy halfway across a café in human form. And when she transforms, well....
 * Death by Sex: Andy hooks up with Amy, and the two are having sex-- in a cemetery, no less-- when Andy transforms into a werewolf for the first time and kills her.
 * Fan Service: You can catch a glimpse of Serafine's breasts during her first transformation scene. The filmmakers decided that was too subtle though, so she rips her shirt off shortly thereafter to make sure everyone got a damn good look at her goods.
 * Our Werewolves Are Different: American werewolves in Europe are literally haunted by the people they kill, as well as by anyone close to them who was killed by a werewolf. They are essentially ghosts, whose bodies look identical to the mutilated state of their physical forms, and likewise tend to decay over time. They cannot rest until the werewolf that killed them is slain.
 * Psycho Serum: The serum that Serafine's stepfather created was his attempt to synthesize a medication that would prevent her from turning into a werewolf. Instead, it caused her to transform instantly, and rip his legs off.
 * Transformation Sequence: Has plenty of them, but the Painful Transformation found in most other werewolf movies is averted.
 * Werewolves Own Night Clubs
 * We Can Rule Together: When the werewolves running the nightclub scheme learn that Andy is one of them, they offer him the chance to join them.
 * We Can Rule Together: When the werewolves running the nightclub scheme learn that Andy is one of them, they offer him the chance to join them.