HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Balladeer’s Blog wraps up its 2025 Halloween blog posts with a look at the horror films of the one and only Paul Naschy, real name Jacinto Molina, Spain’s King of Horror Cinema.
Over the past 15 years of writing this blog I’ve only covered Naschy’s more Psychotronic offerings, like Werewolf vs the Yeti, Dr. Jekyll vs the Wolfman, The Hunchback of the Rue Morgue and my all-time favorite – Assignment: Terror.
However, there’s much more to Paul’s filmography than those oft-recycled staples of Movie Host shows. Naschy also starred as a mummy, as Dracula, as slashers and so on. In honor of Halloween here are my brief takes on more of the man’s star vehicle horror films.
THE MARK OF THE WOLFMAN (1968) – Paul Naschy wrote and starred in this first of his many movies as the tormented lycanthrope Waldemar Daninsky. This movie was also released under the title Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror with an edited-in introduction claiming that a branch of the Frankenstein family was cursed to become werewolves. That was done purely so the distributor could pass this off as a Frankenstein film.
In Eastern Europe of long ago, a pair of drunken gypsies accidentally revive the werewolf Imre Wolfstein by curiously removing the silver crucifix his heart was impaled with. The revived Wolfstein kills the gypsies and eventually passes his lycanthropic curse on to Polish Count Waldemar Daninsky.
After snacking on a few people during a full moon, Waldemar realizes what he has become. He sends for faraway specialists Dr. Janos de Mikhelov and his wife Wandessa, who can supposedly cure him of his curse.
It turns out the couple are actually vampires who prey on victims all over Europe. They kill a few of Waldemar’s friends and then sic Wolfstein on him. Daninsky wins that battle of werewolves and kills Wolfstein, then fights and kills the Mikhelov vampires. Continue reading
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN THE GREAT MURDER MYSTERY (1908) – Shamelessly, the Crescent Film Company of New York adapted Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue but replaced his master detective Auguste Dupin with Sherlock Holmes and the orangutan of the original story with a gorilla. 
THE SEALED ROOM (1909) – Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado was adapted by film pioneer D.W. Griffith in this movie. Besides changing the title, Griffith altered the story to feature a philandering man and woman being walled up to die. Showing up in small parts during this 11-minute short were America’s future sweetheart Mary Pickford, and Mack Sennett, future comedy icon. 
AGAINST THE DARK (2009) – As Halloween night creeps ever closer, let’s take a look at the most atypical movie from Steven Seagal’s Down Years. Say what you will, but Against the Dark at least stands out among the Waddlin’ Warrior’s many direct to video turkeys during his Fat Elvis phase. 
Viewers are thrown right into the post-apocalypse setting. A disease has heavily reduced the global population. Many are dead but many more live on as violent predators who feed on the living.
### 1. GRAND VIEW UNIVERSITY VIKINGS ### 2. BENEDICTINE COLLEGE RAVENS ### 3. KEISER UNIVERSITY SEAHAWKS ### 4. MONTANA TECH OREDIGGERS ### 5. DORDT UNIVERSITY DEFENDERS ### 
### 1. HARDING UNIVERSITY BISON ### 2. FERRIS STATE BULLDOGS ### 3. UNIVERSITY OF WEST FLORIDA ARGONAUTS ### 4. PITTSBURG (KS) STATE GORILLAS ### 5. KUTZTOWN STATE GOLDEN BEARS ### 
PHANTASM – Don Coscarelli wrote and directed four of the five films in the Phantasm franchise but let David Hartman write and direct the last one in 2016. 
With this movie franchise Don Coscarelli forever changed the way we look at funeral homes. And funeral home directors. Actor Angus Scrimm (1926-2016) owned the role of the sinister mortician the Tall Man as surely as Robert Englund owns the role of Freddy Krueger. 
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