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Curse Of The Devil
[Deimos]
1973; color
Directed by Carlos Aured
Starring: Paul Naschy, Fabiols Falcon, Vida Molina & Maritza Olivares
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When I started watching Curse Of The Devil I had the feeling I'd heard / seen it's story before; a feeling I attributed to the fact many of Paul Naschy's turns as Waldemar Daninsky follow a similar plotline. (The Countess Bathory character is present in a number of his other films as well, so it was actually a fairly reasonable attribution on my part.) But then I went and looked it up and realized it was so familiar because the Kommandant reviewed the Anchor Bay release of this film a couple years ago. I couldn't think up a good reason not to revisit the film again though, plus the booklet kind of implies this is the end of the road as far as Deimos' Spanish horror series and, obviously, we here at the Buffet would like to see that series continue. So... here we are. I guess we should talk about the movie now? OK, I'll start. As already mentioned, if you have seen any of the other entries in his werewolf cycle this will probably seem familiar to you as well and if you haven't, it shouldn't be too hard to follow along. It will be kind of hard to hear though so you might want to turn the sound up a bunch. If you watch it with the subtitles, obviously this won't be an issue. We had a bit of an issue with the audio set up for this one (I'm sure it's our fussy DVD player, not anything wrong with the disc itself) and somehow ended up watching it with the dubbed English audio track and the English subtitles running simultaneously. Which was odd at first but we decided to leave it that way because it proved to be quite entertaining. Almost as entertaining as the dialogue itself. (The Kommandant actually remembered some of the more hilarious lines from the film, and started blurting them out right before the characters did. The translations, for the most part were just as hilarious, but often completely different from what was said in English.) My favorite line is when the younger sister says to Waldemar, "I came into this room a virgin... I won't leave as one!" (I'm way past the point of me ever being able to use this line in my personal life but it still makes me laugh.) Needless to say, this has all the things we've come to love and expect in our Naschy werewolf films - bloodshed and boobs; sparse logic and dense facial hair; the transformation from man to beast and back; the seemingly nightly full moons; etc. This one also has a creepy homicidal escaped lunatic ax murderer operating in and around the town, just to throw in another twist and give cause to many scenes of angry mobs contemplating and getting ready to exact angry mob justice. The girls are pretty hot too. The plot is almost fully described (and, dare I say, spoiled in his previously published review) so you can read it about it there if you like or you can track down a copy and just dive in. I recommend the latter.
—Bunny
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