Film’s comedy/violence à la title wolf/man itself + Jewish history of laughing in face of horror, set in London partly for Brits’ early coddling of Hitler (pub scenes, w/ locals coldly united against Jewish outsiders + sending them to deaths on moors [after one tells racist joke] via silence, pentagram on wall à la swastika).

Sheep-to-slaughter backpacking Yank duo (Wandering Jews + original primal unity) Kessler + (Hawthorne’s "Young) Goodman (Brown") let off at crossroads w/ warning to stay on main road (assimilate) + avoid moors/unconscious; G’man slain by werewolf (cf Zentropa/Europa definition as still-active Nazis) while K (à la Kafka’s Josef) runs loss of the virginal otherself (G anticipating 1st-time sex w/ longtime love in romantic Italy [vs repressed UK], several others later frustrated trying to "eat": connect w/ the physical), at which point K’s animal-self emerges (enacting G’s carnal wish-fulfillment).

After similar attack, Goodman, still attached to unfulfilled body, returns (decomposing: dreamer’s diminishing relation to physical/world) to urge traitor-friend (Judas) to suicide: Kessler’s survivor guilt, later father-figure Dr Hirsch similarly remarking on having "survived Rommel"; G appears 1st at hospital, later at K’s nurse/new gal Alex’s apartment, finally grindhouse: deteriorating eros/hope for eager collegiates, sex G thot wd save him – as K thinks loved one wd redeem wolf – degraded + finally abandoned.

Kessler’s 3-wk post-mauling coma dreamless sleep + lapse btwn originating events + dream-representation, reveries thereafter violent: 1st disembodied (POV running thru woods return to nature preceding de-/re-evolution [cf previous-yr Altered States, same-yr Caveman + ’84 Iceman]), 2nd participatory (sees self [presaging later schism] scaring Alex [as Landis audience]: realizing beast-w/i), 3rd as passive victim (masked Nazis invading + destroying suburban home/complacency: evil invading self via earlier cowardice, recalling also Landis’s assaultive directorial style]; occurs while Alex reading from Twain [title pastiche of not only An American in Paris + Werewolf of London but A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT] about similarly displaced [+ invasive/disruptive] Yank [as JL h’self, on location in London], killing her at dream-climax rebelling against ostracization).

Believes only (ambiguously named: feminine part of self) Alex can kill/redeem him/beast (society’s salvation integration of disparate halves: fe/male, anima/animus, minority/dominant culture), contra actual conclusion (in [fitting] dead end), where hail of bullets seemingly pass thru her to him: as last sleeper to awaken, dream hers (posters of Casablanca + Gone w/ the Wind in apartment mental wallpaper presaging Unhappily Ever After conclusion), he also her liberating Christ ("Jesus Christ!" his memorable 1st words on transfiguration) in beatific closing shot: the masculine in herself. Mocking doo-wop 3rd version of "Blue Moon" at abrupt climax cuts to blackness + leaves us, as her, thrown for loop(-garou), punchline similarly unprovoked attack on audience (as she frequently is to Kessler) as wolf’s seeming softness just before final leap.

After 1st transformation, K awakes in zoo (cf JL’s ’78 Animal House + ’71 Schlock – in which he himself played, according to Maltin, a "missing link on the loose in small town" – + Trading Places’ similar ape subplot) + later begs people to lock him up, film’s frequent charges of lunacy (literally, influenced by the moon) ending w/ onlookers/audience: disturbing self-portrait of man who seemingly can’t help self (cf film’s mindless post-theater-scene car pileup, as tho dropped in from another movie [JL’s Blues Brothers, e.g.]) blaming "society," from dir infamous for tripping key figure in own Twilight Zone negligent-homicide trial (he was acquitted); as in Dementia 13, character initials Goodman, Hirsch, John [Kessler] Landis leaves missing "I", failure to find + identify self in film possibly JL’s greatest tragedy.