Director John Landis first wrote this script in 1969, during the time he was working in the film Kelly’s Heroes. The script got him lots of jobs, but none of them involved directing this movie! The studios said the script was either too funny to be scary, or too scary to be funny. They couldn’t see both elements existing in the same film. After the success of National Lampoon’s Animal House, Landis got the opportunity to prove that his script would work—and it still does today. David Naughton stars as the ill-fated David Kessler, assisted by Jenny Agutter as his nurse and lover and Griffin Dunne as his dead and progressively rotting friend Jack.
