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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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6
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7 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Paul
Naschy, the Lon Chaney Jr. of Spain, once again
stars as Waldemar Daninsky —
the "Larry Talbot" of Europe —
in this mini-monster rally known to American horror
fans as The Werewolf vs.
the Vampire Woman. It's a leisurely paced
chiller, heavy on gothic atmosphere, with a style
reminiscent of Amando Ossori's better known Tombs
of the Blind Dead.
A fun pre-title sequence gets
things off to good start. On the night of a full
moon, a doctor is performing an autopsy on the
body of one Waldemar Daninsky, shot to death by
rural Austrian villagers who believed him a murderous
lycanthrope. (I can't verify it, but supposedly
this film is a direct sequel to Fury
of the Wolf Man.) The doc scoffs at such
superstitions as he removes the silver bullets
from the corpse's chest. Within moments Daninsky
comes back to life and transforms into a werewolf,
attacking and killing the doctor. The monster
takes off into a nearby forest, where he encounters
a young woman whose blouse he rips off before
biting her. Perhaps the post-mortem should've
been conducted during normal business hours...
After the credits —
which look as if they were created for the DVD
—
the film follows two college gals, Elvira (Gaby
Fuchs) and Genevieve (Barbara Capell), who are
researching the history of a Satan-worshipping
15th Century noblewoman, Countess Wandessa d'Arville
de Nadasdy. (Wandessa was a meanie, all right,
shown sacrificing a virgin to the devil and drinking
the girl's blood in a flashback as Elvira recounts
the legend to her boyfriend.) The two women take
a trip into the French countryside to look for
the Countess' grave, the location of which was
kept secret because she was thought to be a vampire.
Elvira thinks that clues in an ancient text can
pinpoint Wandessa's hidden tomb. The search hasn't
truly begun when their car runs out of gas. Stranded
in the country, the ladies are rescued by a handsome
fellow who lives in a ramshackle manor house nearby.
His name: Waldemar Daninsky. He offers to put
them up for the night, apologizing for the lack
of amenities. His house has neither electricity
nor phone service and he doesn't own a car. Faced
with the alternative of a miles-long hike to the
nearest village, the girls accept Waldemar's hospitality.
Their host seems genial enough. However, he neglects
to tell them about his mentally unstable sister,
Elizabeth, who enters the guest room during the
night and gives Elvira quite a scare. Genevieve's
discovery of manacles and blood-spattered walls
in an outbuilding also doesn't bode well. Despite
these events the girls decide to stay on at the
house for a few days; Waldemar says he can help
them find the Countess' hidden grave. He, too,
is looking for it —
but for a very different reason. According to
legend the undead Countess was slain with a silver
crucifix-dagger fashioned from a sacred chalice.
Waldemar, tortured by guilt for the people he's
murdered as a werewolf, can only know final peace
if he himself is killed by the same holy weapon.
(Hmm. Wouldn't silver bullets work just as well,
providing they're left in his body? He was
dead at the beginning of the movie...) He'd moved
to this part of France with the express purpose
of searching for it. The historical clues provided
by Elvira and Genevieve, combined with his knowledge
of the area, eventually lead them to their goal.
The skeletal corpse lying within the grave has
the crucifix-dagger imbedded in its chest. The
artifact is removed. Almost immediately weird
and terrible things begin to happen. The Countess
(Paty Shepard) is revived by the removal of the
crucifix, rising from her grave to vampirize Genevieve.
Together the two go on a killing spree in the
surrounding countryside. Waldemar, too, adds to
the body count with the coming of the full moon.
Elvira, who elects to stay with Waldemar after
falling in love with him (even after learning
about his curse), is targeted for initiation by
the vampire women. Her lover keeps them at bay
with the holy crucifix. With Elvira's promise
to keep him chained up during nights of the full
moon, Waldemar vows to destroy the Countess and
end her reign of terror once and for all. But
what of his own fate?
Werewolf
Shadow is slow and plodding at times, a
low budget affair that redeems itself with a healthy
dose of gothic atmosphere. Like the undead Templars
of Tombs of
the Blind Dead,
the vampires in the film are often shown in slow
motion —
a simple yet surprisingly effective technique
that ups the creepy quotient considerably. Thus
the vampire scenes possess a languorous, dreamlike
quality imparting a sensuality not present even
in more explicit fare. (It doesn't hurt, either,
that Barbara Capell's Genevieve makes for a very
sexy nosferatu.) Continuing the Blind Dead comparison,
director Klimovsky makes good use of actual ruins
for many of the settings; the music of Anton Garcia
Abril, who also scored Tombs,
is quite similar. (I have it on good authority
that the success of Werewolf
Shadow directly inspired the Blind Dead
filmmakers.) As for headliner Naschy, the bland
and stoic Waldemar is offset by his dynamic, physically
demanding portrayal of the Wolf Man. When in werewolf
mode he really throws himself into the role full
throttle. The monster makeup isn't exactly the
greatest —
nor, certainly, is it the worst —
but Naschy handily sells the character with his
performance.
So that's the good stuff. On
the down side, Waldemar and Elvira's almost instant
romance isn't very believable. The story is supposedly
set in northern France, although Waldemar's villa
is located in a rugged mountain range —
hardly the topography of Normandy or Picardy.
(Why not just have it take place in the Pyrenees?
That would've at least helped explain some of
the Spanish-style architecture.) The battle between
the werewolf and the Countess during the finale
is about as anticlimactic as one can get. And
for such a deliberately paced film (sometimes
almost glacially so), time is remarkably compressed.
Most inexcusable is what may be the shortest night
in film history —
Walpurgis Night in the movie, the time when evil
rules supreme. The sun goes down, the Countess
rises from her tomb, we get the not-so-thrilling
battle of the monsters, and then the sun comes
up... all within five minutes!
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1 Naschy fans should be most pleased with Anchor
Bay's new disc. Supposedly the film — under the
Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman title, as
well as Blood Moon — looked pretty wretched
on American VHS. I can't speak to the quality of
these previous incarnations, having never seen them,
but for a low budget Eurohorror over 30 years old
the flick fares rather well on DVD. It's letterboxed
(anamorphic 1.85:1), with good color balance and
no noticeable print damage to speak of. The digital
mono audio track was perfectly acceptable. Extras
include the somewhat worn U.S. TV spot and a "theatrical
trailer" that I suspect was created for the DVD.
(It looks too new.) There's also a substantial image
gallery of Paul Naschy movie posters spanning his
long career. The
most significant bonus feature is a 15-minute video
interview with Naschy (cheekily entitled Interview
With the Werewolf), conducted fairly recently.
Speaking in his native Spanish (with English subtitles),
the athlete turned actor/screenwriter/director (real
name: Jacinto Molina) recounts his entrance into
the film world and his great love for the Universal
horror classics of the '30s and '40s, most notably
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf
Man, the film that has served as inspiration
and muse throughout his career. He also explains
his development of the long-running Waldemar Daninsky
character (a part he played a whopping 13 times
between 1968-96) and the birth of Spanish horror
cinema in the late '60s-early '70s.
8/22/02 |
| UPDATE
The disc reviewed here went OOP in 2007. In June
2008 BCI/Deimos released a new remastered edition
with different bonus features. (It, too, was OOP
as of 2010.) |
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