Night of the Werewolf, The / Vengeance of the Zombies (Double Feature) (Blu-ray)
APPROX. 183 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1972 - MPA RATING: NR
" All I could think about was that sketch on SNL with Michael Bolton singing to set the chickens free.
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Until I had the chance to review "The Night of the Werewolf" and "Vengeance of the Zombies," I had never heard of Jacinto Molina. I was familiar with other monster movie masters like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney (Jr. and Sr.), but Molina completely slipped under my radar. It turns out that the Spanish actor, better known as Paul Naschy, is Spain's reigning king of classic horror films, growing quite the cult following for his productions. BCI Entertainment includes not one, but two of Naschy's films in this Blu-ray release.
"El Returno del Hombre-Lobo" is the ninth of a dozen films in the "Hombre Lobo" series featuring the werewolf character Waldemar Daninsky, and is one of Naschy's own personal favorites. It's a remake of Naschy's highest grossing film "La Noche de Walpurgis" and goes by many titles translated to English namely, "The Craving," "Return of the Wolfman," and "Return of the Werewolf," with the most popular being "The Night of the Werewolf."
The film opens sometime during the Middle Ages in Eastern Europe, where an old-fashioned lynching is underway. Countess Elizabeth Bathory (Julia Saly), accused of vampirism and Satanism by the townfolk, is sentenced for execution. Among her cohorts put to death by all sorts of methods like hanging, beheading, and burning alive at the stake is the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky (Naschy), forced to wear an iron mask while a silver crucifix is driven through his heart.
Fast-forward a few centuries to modern times. An obsessive archaeology student named Erika (Silvia Aguilar) has been studying up on the Countess' history and has discovered a way to revive her. By doing so, Erika believes she'll be rewarded with extreme power and eternal youth. She heads to the castle to complete the ritual with a couple of her clueless girlfriends to be the sacrificial lambs. But it just so happens that around the same time and by sheer coincidence, graverobbers accidentally awaken Waldemar Daninsky from his eternal slumber when they open up his tomb to pilfer the silver crucifix still embedded in his chest.
This is where the plot becomes a tad murky, since all of a sudden and for reasons unknown, Waldemar now has a personal score to settle with the Countess. It was obviously done so that there would be one monster of a showdown between vampire and werewolf at the film's climax, but there needed to be more of a trigger besides waking up on the wrong side of the coffin that morning.
A little bit of romance also enters the picture when Karen (Azucena Hernández), one of Erika's sexy friends, becomes a love interest for Waldemar. Now I'm sure that love at first sight exists, but I really had a hard time buying it here. For one thing, Waldemar is no George Clooney. He isn't even George Lopez. He's just your average-looking weirdo clad in an old-fashioned medieval tunic, living in a rundown castle with creepy looking servants. Definitely not the type of guy that girls fall head over high heels for the moment he comes into visual contact.
On the plus side, I did like how the filmmakers took the extra step to use actual Spanish castles for the settings, and the special effects weren't bad considering they are a little dated by today's standards. There's lots of mist, hovering tombs, some gore, and the werewolf design and transformations paid homage to Universal Studio's old black-and-white Wolfman classics.
Even so, for a film classified as a horror, I wouldn't call "The Night of the Werewolf" scary by any means. It played out more like a soap opera or an overly dramatic theatrical stage production. That being said, it was still somewhat entertaining to sit through for an hour and a half, and I've definitely seen a lot worse.
"Vengeance of the Zombies" on the other hand, didn't fare as well. Naschy returns as a triple-threat this time in three roles. The main one being, of all things, an enlightened Indian guru named Krisna. If you're wondering what the hell a guru character is doing in a zombie flick, then take a number because I'm still waiting in line to find an answer to that one myself.
From what I could gather, the plot involves a mysterious masked person in a black cape and hat, skulking about the shadows like the ancestor of the vigilante in "V for Vendetta." Only in this case, the "V" stands for "Voodoo." Using little wax voodoo dolls and mystical chants, "V" is responsible for a string of murders and reanimating the corpses to do his (or her) bidding. Like committing more murders.
