El retorno del hombre lobo

This is the 9th of 13 films in the Hombre Lobo series featuring the eternally cursed Waldemar Daninsky played by Paul Naschy. His work will soon be much more well known as Fangoria is releasing Werewolf, a brand new, fully painted series of graphic novels based on the film series and its title character.

Vampires versus werewolves. The vampire, Elisabeth Bathory (Julia Saly) controls the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) until they are executed in the 18th century. Two grave robbers (Ricardo Palacios & Rafael Hernández) remove the silver cross from Waldemar and he comes alive, free of the Countess.

Meanwhile, three women (Silvia Aguilar, Azucena Hernández & Pilar Alcón) are searching for the Countess' grave.

While Erika (Aguilar) and Barbara (Alcón) are preparing to revive the Countess, Karen (Hernández) is falling in love with Waldemar. He needs her to kill him to remove his curse.

Erika even sacrifices her friend in the ritual to gain power. Meanwhile, Waldemar is heavily snacking as it is a full moon.

The Countess even manges to use Waldemar's servant Mircalla (Beatriz Elorrieta) to attack him, but Karen is right there to save the day. Too bad, he wasn't there for her.

The next full moon brings forth the battle. Rock breaks scissors, and paper covers rock, and all is well.

Good acting, and a high quality DVD.

I love Paul Naschy's movies. At least his catalog of horror films. In these gems he has portrayed every classic monster (including Dracula), and never cheapened or belittled their impact on our culture. Because all of his films are Spanish productions, they all do suffer one common problem: They have to be dubbed into English to be distributed here. What's interesting is that most do translate well, and the onscreen action lends itself to understanding. Most of the time.

I first caught "El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo" late one summer evening after a trip to the video store. I was in search of B-movie excitement, and found it. The American title was "The Craving" and the box art and plot desription were amateurish at best. The movie teetered on the brink of being equally thin, but redeemed itself somewhat with the lead performances.

Naschy once again portrays Waldemar Daninski, Polish nobleman who, in this this universe, was consort to Countess Elizabeth Bathory (yes, that Countess Elizabeth Bathory). The Countess , Daninski and their followers are dragged before the local Federales and charged with the usual "unspeakable acts of depravity and witchcraft." Waldemar wimps out and accepts the judgement of the court, while the Countess hurls curses before they are all executed.

The slow pace doesn't let up. Waldemar's resurrection and subsequent full moon forays put a dent in the population and add some zest to the stagnant feel. Elizabeth's return is also a highlight, with old-school style thunder and lightning and appropriate symphonic music. Unfortunately, the excitement soon bogs down in tepid melodrama and acting class homework. The plot falls into way too familiar territory. Lead vamp resurrected; collects band of followers; menaces hero and his sweetie; comes close to actually taking sweetie away; is vanquished in knock down-drag out with hero. Slightly misogynistic overtones crop up throughout the movie: the women are evil, and that evil is the source of their power. Erica, one of the trio of hotties who come looking for Bathory's grave, is a devoted follower bent on bringing her back, while Karen, Daninski's love interest, is an ineffective crybaby. The other two women, Barbara and Mikaiya, are there for vampire fodder,and of course, end up assisting the evil. Although he nightly pillages the countryside, in gory Italian-Zombie-Flick fashion, Waldemar's affliction ain't his fault. Getting involved with the wrong woman led to his downfall. And when Karen is visited in the wee hours by Elizabeth, she gives in quite easily to the darkside (granted, this was probably an attempt by the creators to pay homage (read: rip off) Hammer's lesbian vamp movies).

This particular entry into the Daninski saga suffers from two very big problems: continuity and lighting. There were several scenes that left me going "Huh?", like the delivery of coffins in the dead of night by curious villagers. What? They just up and deliver to anybody, anytime? It was also curious that the werewolf's attacks caused so little concern, while the vampires feastings were worthy of a town elders powwow with Waldemar. The lighting was atrocious. Granted, electricity isn't too readily available in most of your Balkan countries, but still, eyestrain is not something you want viewers to leave your films with. That is, if you expect them to come back. The dubbing surprisingly didn't detract from the film; some of the translation actually fit in with the onscreen stuff.

A word about the actors. Paul Naschy/Jacinto Molina is very much Lon Chaney with a matinee idol's looks. He scripted most of these movies (and rewrote others during filming), but never cut out the other actors around him. His Waldemar Daninski is a real tragic hero, despising his condition, but so in love with life he can't put himself down. In all of the "Hombre-Lobo" flicks, no matter how he became a werewolf, he had to find and lose true love to stop the beast within. Julie Saly, who starred with Naschy in several other films, gets kudos for gracing Elizabeth with viciousness and charm. My one complaint is that she only turned up in scenes involving blood. That aside, another excellent performance. Silvia Aguilar is the real star as the conniving Erica, intent on reviving Elizabeth, and, even after being vampirized and ordered about by the Countess, taking control of several situations. The other ladies provide decoration, especially Azuncen Hernandez as the brainless Karen.

"The Craving" is an unbelievable mishmash of folklore, black magic and melodrama. But that's the beauty of these movies, I guess. Not only is belief suspended, but all forms of natural and unnatural law as well. Like the Hammer films of the 70's, each Daninski film was released in America with more and more gratuitous nudity. Most were, of course, filmed with nude scenes, and those were excised for distribution. Pretty much all retailers now offer "original and uncut" versions. I need to snag the uncut version of this one. If only to figure out why Bathory resurrected some moldy guardian that was so easily dispatched. Jeez! Why didn't you just get a dog?

THE CRAVING is possibly the most satisfying (if still flawed) Paul Naschy film I've watched so far: the fact that Waldemar Daninsky here originates from the Middle Ages gives the character a true mythic quality which is not possible with his usual modern-day persona; besides, his medieval 'wardrobe' (beard, coat-of-arms, crossbow and, briefly, an iron mask) is pretty cool - as is the vicious werewolf look which Naschy comes up with for this one, certainly the creepiest of his that I've seen...though, ironically enough, it doesn't see a lot of action (still, I guess, there's really so much can be done differently from one film to the next). The atmosphere (fog, candlelight, color gels) is really laid on thick here and the score, too, is pretty varied for this type of film (I even liked the rock theme heard during the opening and closing credits).

What prevents THE CRAVING from getting a *** rating from me, which would make it a solid and good picture, is a rather muddled storyline (though still the most interesting yet penned by Naschy): when the film opens, Waldemar is supposed to be Elizabeth Bathory's lieutenant but when they are revived centuries later, he is somehow hellbent on destroying her (and the army of women - there's a plethora of female characters here but, alas, very little nudity - which she manages to vampirize)!; the evil Erika, well-versed in the occult and who has no qualms about murdering her mentor, and later sacrifice her best friend in order to restore the vampire lady whom she idolizes, is set up initially as a quite formidable villain - even seducing Waldemar when a vampire - but her role gradually deteriorates to nothing, apparently so as to allow the Bathory character to take center-stage for the climactic duel between the werewolf and his arch-nemesis. Unfortunately, this sequence comes off as anti-climactic because one can hardly discern anything that's going on: either the print is too dark or it was simply filmed that way; however, the ending of this one is really bleak as Waldemar's love interest, already on her way to becoming a vampire, is infected with the curse of the werewolf as well(!) but she is quick to bring the house down in a conflagration which decimates the evil pervading the entire manor...

Ah, the first Daninsky movie of the eighties ... here I refer to Midnight Video's version entitled "Night of the Werewolf", which is pretty good quality but has annoying non-removable subtitles.

When a movie opens with a bunch of satanists being sentenced to gruesome deaths including buried alive, tortured, hanged, beheaded, and so forth ... you know you must be in for good, clean B-movie horror. The chief witch in question of course swears a terrible revenge (haven't we already been here in Molina's "Curse of the Devil"?), and among the condemned is the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky himself, sporting a rather stylish beard. He gets off comparatively lightly, being made to wear an iron mask and having a silver dagger driven through his heart. Centuries later, an evil witch finds a medallion in order to resurrect the ancient chief witch, and as fate would have it a couple of grave-robbers remove the dagger of Daninsky's heart at exactly the same moment. Time for a "Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman" rematch ...

Jacinto Molina opted to direct this one himself, as well as the two other Daninsky movies made in the eighties. This means he has more control over the project than ever before, and contrary to what some say, I think he's actually a very good director. Probably the best ever to direct a Daninsky movie, anyway, and obviously he can capture his own artistic vision like nobody else could. This is probably why it feels more conventional and competent than most movies in the series. The sets are great, the special effects are good for it's time and the whole movie has a fantastic atmosphere to it. There is more gratuitous nudity and gore than in most Daninsky movies, and I'm surprised it hasn't been a bigger hit with fans of the genre. There are certainly enough werewolves, witches, vampires, zombies and horrible sacrifices to keep them entertained! Maybe I'm going overboard with the praise, but if you've seen the earlier Daninsky movies, you'll know that in most ways this is pretty damn good comparatively. The dubbing is actually pretty good (although dubbing is always a crime, of course), and they've tried to make the dialogue as hip as possible. Man, I just love the eighties mentality. The soundtrack is also very cool. Okay, okay, so the storyline is pretty much the same predictable stuff all over again. And once again it has no real consistency with the previous movies. But that's why we love it! Obviously it's not an easy movie to watch, it's arguably slow and there's some particularly dark stuff going on even for a Daninsky movie. Daninsky himself is something of an anti-hero, saving maidens in distress but also allowing his wolf side to run around slaughtering innocents. The vampires are very creepy and unearthly, as Molina has always been good at knowing how to portray them.

"El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo", "The Craving", "Night of the Werewolf" ... call it what you like, this is my favourite Daninsky movie yet. It's "The Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman" as it should have been, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

This is the type of movie where most audiences will just laugh at the film, especially in that it is mostly dated, but people who have seen some really bad movies of this type (like me) will realize that there are actually some good things here.

The lighting and photography are generally speaking very good. There are some good mist effects and lighting effects that use the smoke and colors to create a good spooky effect a la Mario Bava.

The makeup is also quite well done for its time.

The story is the usual cr*p about vampires coming back to life, but it's kind of interesting that they threw the werewolf into it and made him sort of the good guy.

Also a lot of decent gore here for fans of that type of thing.

All in all, a film that should amuse those looking for a "golden turkey" but will also delight those who appreciate good European horror.