Frankenstein's Bloody Terror
Waldermar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) is a werewolf who goes to an occult specialist couple for a cure. They turn out to be vampires. In Spain this was a big hit (in 3D) and led to eight more films with horror star Naschy as El Hombre Lobo. In America it was released (usually in 2D) with a totally misleading title, a silly prologue, and about 45 minutes of footage missing. Basically an atmospheric old fashioned monster movie with 60's blood, it has an undeservedly bad reputation. In super 70mm "Chil-O-rama." Naschy uses his real name, Jacinto Molina, to write his scripts.
Review by Jeff Frentzen
At a costume party, Rudolph Weissman (Manuel Manzaneque) dances with Countess Janice von Aarenberg (Dianik Zurakowska). A mystery man in red costume arrives and sweeps the Countess off her feet, much to Rudolph's dismay. The man in red, Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy), is an outcast, being related to Irme Wolfstein, a werewolf who rests eternal in a crypt, impaled on a silver cross. A gypsy woman (Rosanna Yanni) steals the cross and the werewolf is unleashed. Before he and Rudolph kill the beast, Waldemar is bitten and sure enough during the full moon he transforms into a wolman.
The Countess, who has fallen in love with Waldemar and Rudolph intervene. They chain Waldemar against a wall in the decrepit Wolfstein mansion. In this film, lycantropy is treated as an incurable disease. Despite this, Rudy and the Countess hire a doctor to cure Waldemar. However, the doctor and his wife are vampires who enslave them! These are soap-opera horror cliches on a large scale.
This is the movie that, for better or worse, kicked off actor - writer Paul Naschy's reign as the King of 1970's Spanish horror. In Europe, it was treated as a true "roadshow" event, filmed in 70mm, stereo sound, and 3D. In the U.S., it was released under the title "Hell's Creatures", shorn of its first reel, and became an instant obscurity.
Paul Naschy fans claim it's a cult classic, but only a handful of people even remember this very seriously played, pallid reinvention of cliches from old Universal monster movies. Naschy's interpretation of the wolfman character has its moments, but he borrows heavily from Lon Chaney Jnr and the original Wolfman (1941). On the other hand, the art direction is excellent, the acting is above the norm, and there's one outstanding sequence in which the doctor and the vampirized Countess escape from the wolfman by ballet-dancing across the fog-shrouded hills of Madrid. The German language version reviewed here is apparently the same one released in theaters in Europe, but without the 3D. I've heard of a company called Manga that has released a complete Spanish-language version on video.
Video Search of Miami has added English subtitles to the German version, so if you want to see one of the dullest horror flicks ever made, that version is the longest, most complete one. One nice thing about the Video Search of Miami tape is, before the movie starts, there's a prologue explaining the checkered history of this movie's exhibition in the U.S.