La herencia Valdemar

... so don't start unless you intend to watch them both, preferably back to back.

It's worth it.

The comment made by that reviewer from Canada "I didn't expect much from the Spanish Cinema" is so broad and unfortunate about the Spanish cinema that is almost pitiful.

My previous comment was deleted (by a very sensitive reader no doubt) and I'm very sorry (and worried) to see that is so easy for anyone to erase other people commentaries when they do not coincide with their own: Dark Age minds living and interacting now, in the XXI Century.

I could write a long list of magnificent Spanish directors and movies produced in Spain, but I don't think it worthy of my time trying to enlighten closed and prejudiced minds.

To the movie: It isn't the Second Coming, of course, but it isn't the worse movie ever made either. The production is acceptable, the settings and atmosphere quite good and the plot interesting enough to have a pleasant time watching it.

One is left waiting for the second part (something I never saw) since I'm rewriting this review a long time after my first deleted one and since then I completely forgot about the sequel to this picture. In general: Quite an acceptable pastime.

I stumbled upon the 2010 Spanish horror mystery "La Herencia Valdemar" (aka "The Valdemar Legacy") by random chance here in 2021. And reading that the movie was based on H. P. Lovecraft works, of course there was not a moments doubt of me having to sit down and watch it.

Well, writer and director José Luis Alemán might have been reading H. P. Lovecraft, but "La Herencia Valdemar" was not even remotely close to being Lovecraftian in any aspect, neither in storyline contents nor in atmosphere. This was just downright a gothic supernatural horror mystery.

Sure, the writer threw in the likes of actual people such as Aleister Crowley and Bram Stoker into the storyline to spruce things up, but it just didn't really amount to much of anything noteworthy. In fact, you have to venture about 80 minutes into the movie, and the movie runs for 104 minutes total, so it was just too little, too late.

Sitting through "La Herencia Valdemar" was brutally trying. This movie was an ordeal to get through. And it was especially bad since up until 80 minutes into the movie it was essentially just filler to set the stage and build the atmosphere. And then the movie's climax was unleashed around 80 minutes in, and it was about as anti-climatic as it could be. It wasn't worth the wait at all.

The acting performances in the movie were adequate, I suppose. It was hard to tell because the actors and actresses literally had nothing solid to work with in terms of a proper script, storyline or character gallery. I wasn't familiar with a single performer in this movie, and that is usually something I enjoy in a movie, but that fact just didn't apply to "La Herencia Valdemar".

For a horror movie then writer and director just failed to deliver anything wholesome or even entertaining. So this was a swing and a miss of a movie.

My rating of "La Herencia Valdemar" lands on a generous three out of ten stars. The movie was just downright slow paced, uneventful and boring.

The majority of critics have been unfair to this movie. This is a nice homage to the classics of the terror genre and to the world of Lovecraft. Aficionados will enjoy the references with delight.

The story is well told and interesting enough, and though it leaves some loose ends (the second installment will see the light on October), the main story (told in a large flashback) concludes in a spectacular climax that is something to be seen.

The production values are top notch.

The only setbacks are some pieces of dialog, too long and literary, that drag the pace in the middle section.

All in all, this is a remarkable first feature from director José Luis Alemán.

You could be forgiven thinking this is a TV movie of the week two parter (this one being part 1 of course). But the movie begins quite strong. The actors seem to really get behind the concept and the mystery is building slowly, but in a good way.

Of course this being only half the experience means that some characters are just being introduced more or less, so you can see where they will take this with part 2. The late great Paul Naschy is one of the better known actors in this, though don't expect his role to be big (especially considering the age he was when he shot it). For fans of his work this oddity will work, but some may think he should have had a better "farewell" movie. As it is, the movie does fail to live up to its good beginning.