An American Werewolf In London and Animal House, two of director John Landis’s biggest hits, are re-released soon, and the man himself is back behind the cameras for a new Burke and Hare movie.

Animal House and An American Werewolf in London ... the re-release of these movies, both directed by John Landis and back in UK cinemas in the coming weeks, reminds us what a great talent the 59-year-old American film-maker once was.

I use the past tense here because Landis – from the late 1970s to the late 1980s was one of the crown princes of Hollywood, on par, commercially and critically, with his friend and friendly rival Steven Spielberg –has long since been a much less visible figure in the film industry.

Revisiting American Werewolf and Animal House, however, it’s clear why the man was honoured with a retrospective at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in the 1980s.

Combining scares with laughs in a film is very tricky; often one cancels out the other. In 1981’s American Werewolf, however, they’re not only both very much in evidence, but actually feed off each other, heightening the effect of the horror and the comedy.

The key to the success of this two-tone film is the deadpan treatment of an inherently ridiculous subject. Landis himself has suggested as much: “American Werewolf in London is not a comedy. People keep calling it a comedy. It’s very funny I hope, but it is a horror film.”

In keeping with that, the film’s other enduring achievement was the creation of what was then, in the days before computer graphics, the most impressively visceral monster transformation scene in horror cinema.

Working with special effects guru Rick Baker (who won a well-deserved Oscar), Landis had leading man David Naughton change into a werewolf before our very eyes. No falling behind a desk and reappearing with hair and fangs. This was genuinely groundbreaking stuff, and it still looks impressive almost three decades later.

By contrast, Animal House, the 1978 college fraternity comedy, might not have been particularly groundbreaking but it was certainly trendsetting.

American college comedies are 10 a penny these days, and you can trace the influence of Landis’s riotous and utterly hilarious romp about horny, drunken, anti-authoritarian kids from the slew of immediate rip-offs (Meatballs, Porkies, et al) through to recent efforts such as Superbad and Old School (which branded stars Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn the “frat pack”).

Landis’s film – which introduced the world to Tom Hulce, Kevin Bacon, Karen Allen and the late and lamented comic genius John Belushi – was an instant hit.

It put its maker on the map and it prompted Universal Studios to give the then 28-year-old director an astounding $30 million to direct what was at the time one of the most expensive comedies ever made: the film that’s still arguably Landis’s best and most loved, The Blues Brothers.

“When Animal House turned out the way it did,” Landis recalled years later, “(the Hollywood studios) all rushed to me with barrels of money begging me to make them rich.”

Well, that’s one definition of success.

Landis, who was born in 1950 in Chicago and moved with his parents to film-making Mecca Los Angeles when he was four months old, didn’t waste any time pursuing it.

As a teenager he dropped out of high school and entered the film business via the mailroom at 20th Century Fox.

Aged 18, he headed to Europe, where he got his first professional job as production assistant on the Clint Eastwood men-on-a-mission war movie Kelly’s Heroes (in which he also played “Sister” Rosa Stigmata) and then signed up to Sergio Leone’s stunt team for The Good, The Bad And The Ugly and Once Upon A Time in the West.

“I worked on all kind of movies,” Landis recalled. “I worked as a stunt guy, a dialogue coach, an actor, a production assistant. I worked on a movie where Toshiro Mifune puts a sword through me.”

He then made his writing-directing debut aged 21 with Schlock, aka The Banana Monster, a tribute to the monster movies of the atomic age he was born into ... and in which he himself was the man in the giant monkey suit.

The Monty Pythonesque sketch comedy The Kentucky Fried Movie followed in 1977, then Animal House, The Blues Brothers and American Werewolf.

On a roll, along came the Eddie Murphy comedy Trading Places; Twilight Zone: The Movie (a homage to the old TV series, forever to be associated with the tragic on-set death, in a helicopter crash, of star Vic Morrow and two child actors); the hugely influential Michael Jackson zombie-themed pop promo Thriller; Into the Night; Spies Like Us; and a profitable reunion with Murphy, Coming to America.

Those films put Landis at the top of the heap in Hollywood, but his output over the next decade was disappointing at best, dismal at worst.

Oscar, a 1991 dud, proved that Sylvester Stallone couldn’t do comedy; vampire noir Innocent Blood was Near Dark-lite; Beverly Hills Cop III tanked at the box office and no-one even remembers The Stupids or Susan’s Plan.

That last film, a wannabe Elmore Leonard-style caper, was made the same year as the ill-advised sequel Blues Brothers 2000 (actually shot in 1998) and Landis hasn’t directed another film since.

Whether it was fame or fortune, age or becoming a family man that got to him, Landis lost his film-making mojo.

He has kept himself busy these last 10 years, but with less hands-on and strenuous jobs: executive producing television shows, directing commercials and a couple of personal project documentaries and lecturing in film at Yale, Harvard and Sundance.

But Landis has also maintained his interest in horror, directing episodes of the TV shows

Masters of Horror, Fear Itself and Psych, proving homage to and the affectionate parody of the genre is his enduring love.

And so for all those fans who regard American Werewolf as a modern classic, it’s a genuine thrill to hear that Landis is getting back behind the camera to call the shots on another comic horror film.

At the invitation of Ealing Studios, the rebooted London-based producer of eccentric post-war comedies that most recently gave us Dorian Gray, Landis is to direct Burke And Hare, the story of a pair of Irish grave-robbers up to no good in 19th-century Edinburgh.

To be filmed at Ealing and on location in the Scottish capital next year, an updated version of the story will pair Simon Pegg (last seen with a Scots accent in Star Trek) and Bathgate boy and outgoing Dr Who, David Tennant.

“Working at a revitalised Ealing Studios will be a great honour,” Landis said. “Films like Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Ladykillers have been guiding examples to me over the years, and I hope to honour that mix of darkness and comedy again with Burke and Hare.”

Let’s hope Landis also honours himself with a return to form.

At least it looks like he’s sticking with what he’s done best in the past: his next-but-one film is scheduled to be Ghoulishly Yours, William M Gaines, a biopic based on the life of the publisher of the notorious 1950s American horror comics, Tales of the Crypt and Vault of Horror. Now, he just needs to nail those Old Town grave-robbers …

An American Werewolf in London is out on October 30, Animal House is released on November 6.