HALLOWEEN WITH PAUL NASCHY

Halloween Month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog. 

Paul “Jacinto Molina” Naschy was Spain’s King of Horror decades ago. Many of his films featured his recurring character Waldemar Daninsky, a tormented lycanthrope who was seeking a cure for his curse.

Long ago I reviewed Assignment: Terror (1969), which pitted Waldemar against aliens, a faux Frankenstein Monster, a vampire and a mummy. Here are three more from Naschy:

Dr Jekyll vs The Wolfman (1972), in which a descendant of the original Dr Jekyll uses the family formula to cure Waldemar of lycanthropy. Trouble is he starts turning into a kinky and murderous Mr Hyde on the nights of the full moon. (This is better than being a werewolf?)

There’s even a scene in a disco, for that quintessential 70s touch. (Don’t you hate people who use the word “quintessential”?] 

The Werewolf vs The Yeti (1975), in which Waldemar joins a mountain-climbing expedition in the Himalayas so he can seek out a rare herb which will cure him of being a werewolf. He also encounters a violent Himalayan war-lord, the war-lord’s kinky mistress and 2 women who are either cannibals with a few vampiric qualities or vampires with a few cannibalistic qualities.

And yes, they have a threesome with Waldemar at one point. This IS Eurohorror after all! There’s also a Yeti seeking the same herb our hero is after. In the tradition of Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster the title bout lasts about a minute. The rest is buildup.

The Hunchback of the Rue Morgue (1973) – This is one of Naschy’s non-Waldemar movies. In this one he plays a hunchback who steals corpses from the morgue of the title and takes them to a mad scientist who uses parts of the corpses to create a shambling monster. The mad doctor keeps an acid bath handy for useless body parts. Guess what happens?

This bizarre mish-mash sets Poe, Victor Hugo and Mary Shelley all spinning in their graves at once! And, remember, it was made in the homeland of bullfighting, and rats really were hurt during the making of this film.

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