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The Night Of The Werewolf
[Deimos]
1980; color
Directed by Paul Naschy (sa Jacinto Molina)
Starring: Paul Naschy, Julia Saly, Silvia Aguilar, Azucena Hernandez & Narciso Ibanez Menta
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Loosely translating to The Return Of The Wolf Man, El Retorno Del Hombre Lobo (here called The Night Of The Werewolf) naturally features Paul Naschy returning to the character that made him "famous," Waldemar Daninsky; the Polish count with at least nine metaphoric lives and, depending on the status of the moon, more than the normal amount of facial hair. When we first meet Daninsky, he's moments away from being put to death by of some sort of tribunal, after having been caught consorting with the evil Countess Bathory. She's a vampire vixen who fancies bathing in the blood of the town's virginal young women in order to preserve her youth; he, of course, is a werewolf who seduces beautiful women by day and tears both attractive and unattractive people of either gender limb from limb at night. (Uh, on the night's when there's a full moon at least. Which seems to happen daily in these films.) For these crimes he is sentenced to a death that will not only include his heart forever being pierced by a pointy religious object, he must also don some sort of "man in the iron mask" type iron mask. They place that on him first actually, then ram the cross into his heart, causing blood to splort out of the mask's scant openings. (Either way, that's gotta hurt. And, we presume, lead to death. Which it does.) Not to worry though, the Count will be reborn soon enough - meaning as soon as someone removes said pointy object from his chest. Which we the viewer can see happening from a mile away as soon as we see grave robbers happen on the scene and start lurking around his tomb. Fortunately, this does not make his positively Friday The 13th-esque awakening any less awesome. After this, he somehow takes up residence in a somewhat dilapidated on-site mansion, acquires a woman servant who is hot on one side of her face and horribly disfigured on the other (a la the classic sideshow man-woman character), and saves three beautiful young women from sexual and otherwise assault from a group of roaming thugs with a seemingly automatic crossbow. The lovely ladies have come to town in hopes of finding the grave of (and, in the case of two of them, become the life-force of; but they don't know it yet) the Countess Bathory. Yep, the same woman from the pre-credit sequence. Crazy, right? (That whole thing is a long story in itself by the way.) Then one of them falls in love with him… and another goes on a murderous rampage… and the third gets turned into a vampire. And if you think you've seen this all before… well, you probably have. (Especially if you've seen Werewolf Shadow or The Werewolf vs Vampire Woman.) I mean, all of his werewolf movies are basically the same. Nonetheless, fans of Naschy can appreciate the subtle changes from film to film and don't mind seeing him re-do the same movie a whole bunch of times. You know which category you fall into. Proceed accordingly.
—Bunny
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