The Ninth Gate (1999)

Rich and ruthless collector of books about the Devil Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) hires sleazy and also pretty ruthless bookhound Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) for a somewhat delicate job: to verify the authenticity of Balkan’s copy of the snappily titled The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows. The only other copies still known to be in existence are in the hands of two other collectors, and Balkan is sure that only one of the three copies is actually not a fake – he’s just not sure if his own is the right one.

So Corso is to get access to the other books, find out which of them is the right one, and, if Balkan doesn’t happen to have lucked into the the original, acquire the true Nine Gates by means fair or foul.

Corso is game for a lot of misdeeds, and likes the heap of money Balkan is promising him, so he begins to travel Europe looking for the other copies. On his way, he will get into rather more trouble than he probably expected, stumble upon a number of dead bodies, cultists and dangers to life and limb, and make increasingly immoral decisions, while smoking in the presence of rare books wherever he goes. A Girl (Emmanuelle Seigner) Corso believes to be working for Balkan seems to work as his guardian, ahem, angel, though she has somewhat different plans for him than he initially believes.

Up to this point, I appear not to have written a single word about this meeting of the toxic asshole titans Roman Polanski and Johnny Depp. These men, very much like Corso, are of great talents and dubious personal ethics, which may bother any given viewer a little or very much indeed. Me, I prefer to take the good people like them put into the world while damning them for the bad, but if your mileage varies, I’m not going to blame you.

I like The Ninth Gate rather a lot. In part, I love the chutzpa of turning Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s literary entertainment “The Club Dumas” into the Dennis Wheatley potboiler version of itself, replacing the book’s somewhat mild-mannered mood with a wilder and edgier playfulness.

Yet playfulness this still is. Polanski seems to have a hell of a time going through bits and pieces of Satanic conspiracy thriller tropes, crossing them with elements of hard-boiled detective fiction and watching what pretty sparks fly when you just mash them together like a child with a somewhat destructive idea of fun. This approach lends the film a mood of sardonic humour even before Depp encounters the line of European and American character actors – Jack Taylor and James Russo in one movie! - playing twisted eccentrics who make up most of the cast. This is the noise of a director having fun with his material.

The direct horror elements, and quite a bit of the rest of the movie, do carry a very late-90s kind of cheesiness that actually mixes rather well with the overblown Gothicism of Polanski’s set pieces, especially when set to Wojciech Kilar’s even more overblown – and utterly wonderful – score. There’s an air of deep un-seriousness about the whole affair, yet it is not exactly irony that seems to be the driving force here. Rather, it’s as if the sardonicism of the plot is actually the film’s main philosophy, so that a certain kind of winking sneer is the only appropriate tone for this tale about a pretty horrible little man who either loses the rest of his soul or wins the exact kind of enlightenment that’s appropriate for him.

In short: Cuadecuc, vampir (1970)

Supposedly, this started out as a behind the scenes documentary about the making of Jess Franco’s version of Dracula. But something must have happened with director Pere Portabella on the way, for what we actually get is a film that uses the behind the scenes material, B-roll from the Franco movie, and assorted footage to tell its own version of Dracula in the proper chronological order. Shot in beautifully grainy black and white this looks like the somewhat more concise ghost of the Franco movie.

To make matters more interesting, Portabella doesn’t use dialogue or location sound for most parts of the movies – until Christopher Lee gets the final word, as he so clearly loved to have. The soundscape instead consists predominantly of electronic and not so electronic drones, manipulated jazz orchestral music and indefinable noises composed by Carles Santos. This not only adds to the movie’s avantgarde score card (or is it a bingo card?) but also combines with the atmospheric quality of the footage and Portabella’s often striking editing rhythms to produce a curiously eerie mood.

More often than not, things feel downright spooky, and even perfectly normal and natural moments like the application of a bit of bloody makeup on Soledad Miranda’s face (which Portabella quite sensibly seems to love as much as Franco did) can take on a tense, perhaps even mildly disturbing, quality. Other viewers’ mileage may vary considerably, of course, for my mood of ineffable eeriness might very well be yours of goofy camp, imaginary reader. Which either demonstrates the magic of filmmaking, or the pointlessness of all movie writing, depending on one’s mood.

In short: Rest in Pieces (1987)

aka Descanse en piezas

Helen Hewitt (Lorin Jean Vall) inherits all money and property belonging to her estranged aunt Catherine (Dorothy Malone), facts presented to Helen in a jaunty video message recorded right before auntie’s suicide. The bequest includes what appears to be a whole housing block of villas. Or is it a street of mansions? Obviously, Helen and her husband Bob (Scott Thompson Baker) move right into the main villa.

There, they learn that Catherine has a whole bunch of weirdos and loonies (among them characters played by Jack Taylor and Patty Shepard) living rent free on her property. Weirdos who, the audience quickly learn, do like to end an evening of a string quartet playing the German national anthem with murdering the players. Which isn’t crueller than the choice of music, really. They also may be the living dead. Other complications include the possible return of aunt Catherine from the dead, a hidden cache of eight million dollars that may or may not exist, a bit of the old mutilation and murder, and a shovel duel.

The easiest way to explain Rest in Pieces to myself is to imagine its director, the great José Ramón Larraz, waking up one day believing to be Juan Piquer Simón. At least, Rest feels a lot more like the work of Larraz’s differently esteemed colleague than what you’d expect from its true director, even in the late stages of his career when things got weird, or rather, even weirder than was Larraz’s normal. So don’t look for the director’s particular sense of the perverse, or the strange elegance of his filmmaking, but be prepared for the typical goofiness of European genre films in the 80s at least pretending to be made in the US, where everything – the way people walk, talk and emote - feels inauthentic in the most peculiar, and typically very entertaining, way.

One should probably also go in prepared for some mind-bogglingly horrible main performances by Vail and Baker, where neither facial expressions nor line delivery suggest more than the tiniest knowledge of human behaviour. These two are so stiff, your usual typical piece of wood would be embarrassed to be associated with them; consequently, the performances are also very funny indeed, particularly once the plot goes off into its particularly weird last act full of plot twists and character reveals even a great thespian would have a hard time selling.

You cannot blame Larraz for making a boring film, at least. There’s hardly any scene going by that isn’t at least mildly bonkers in the Piquer Simón way. Add a smidgen of gore, and plot twists – well, also a plot - so nonsensical it boggles belief, it’s difficult not to love the film, even though it is not the sort of thing one hopes for from its director.

Edge of the Axe (1988)

Original title: Al filo del hacha

An axe murderer with a nice blank mask is making his way from an introductory murder in a car wash to a small town with the adorable name of Paddock that seems situated in Northern California, the Deep South and New York State at the same time. It’s probably part of the great state of Spain, USA.

Anyway, while the killer is murdering an ever increasing number of women, the local Sheriff publicly declares most of these axe murders to be suicide or accidents, while everybody else calls them axe murders, and the Sheriff himself also investigates them as such, badly. We can’t blame the man for failing, though, for there are a lot of suspicious people around this particular small town, and even more that get a “isn’t that guy suspicious?” kind of close-up from director José Ramón Larraz.

We don’t spend a lot of time with the sheriff, fortunately, but pop in with various characters around town on their daily business, mostly consisting of getting murdered or finding corpses. Among the town’s population are characters played by Jack Taylor and Patty Shepard, so you know we are in good, Spanish genre cinema hands there.

The closest we have to protagonists are new in town 80s computer geek Gerald (Barton Faulks) and his fresh charmed-by-absurd-computer-talk local girlfriend Lillian (Christina Marie Lane). Unlike actual protagonists, they are only kinda-sorta involved in amateur investigating the murders. Mostly, they are around to show off the various suspects, until the film eventually gets up to other business with them when things come to the climax.

Apparently, this is the least-favoured film of its director, the great cult filmmaker José Ramón Larraz, and I can see why. However, it’s also a greatly entertaining film if you’ve got the appropriate sensibilities, and don’t have to defend your own dignity like he did.

At the very least, this is a very interesting film in that it is one of those late period giallos (let’s just call Spanish thrillers in the Italian vein that, too) taking elements from the US slasher genre which took rather a lot from the giallo in the beginning, mixing both genres in strange and not necessarily effective ways. The film’s interest in whodunnit and the actual resolution of the killer’s identity is pure giallo, of course, but the staging of kills, as well as the US small town setting are really coming from the slasher side of things. It doesn’t quite work to make for a good mixture – the investigation is just not terribly interesting or excitingly done, or even an investigation, most importantly – but it is definitely an interesting one. The curious nexus of influences sometimes makes the film feel like an attempt by a non-American to make a US regional movie.

Even though the investigation parts are not all that exciting, Larraz actually manages to milk the Spain-Americana vibe to entertaining effect, doing to the rural US what the German Krimi did to London, turning it into a place of clichés and concepts taken from books and movies and no actual human experience. It’s like a slightly peculiar dream of America (sorry, Greil Marcus), and therefore a place that’s fun to visit for the length of a movie or two.

Plus, while this certainly isn’t the most stylish of its directors’ films, at least the murders are shot quite wonderfully, with some really enthusiastic axing by the actor playing the killer, moody light, and occasional pigs. The rest of the film looks pretty great, too, actually, Larraz making things at the very least attractive, and usually not boring to look at.

Other joys include the utterly ridiculous ways the film talks and thinks about computers, the pleasantly bizarre ultra-giallo revelation of the killer (here coming complete with a childhood trauma that’s only in their mind) leading into a downer ending that’s neither giallo nor slasher but the sound of scriptwriters giggling madly made picture, as well as the general air of watching interactions taking place in a somewhat peculiar neighbouring universe version of the USA. It’s pretty great.

Past Misdeeds: La Venganza De La Momia (1973)

aka The Mummy's Revenge

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


Egypt during the 18th Dynasty. Pharaoh Amenhotep (Paul Naschy) - please don't ask which Amenhotep he's supposed to be - is too much of a tyrant even for ancient Egyptian expectations of leadership. The pharaoh and his favourite concubine Amarna (Rina Ottolina) just love to enliven a meal by torturing virgins to death, and making a drink out of said virgins' blood.

The couple lives the evil dream until the high priest of Amun-Ra decides that enough is enough with the virgin killing, and poisons them. Because a mere death by poison isn't enough to pay for Amenhotep's misdeeds, the priest curses the pharaoh's soul to be forever trapped in the body of his mummy, never to be able to even step in front of the gods for them to weigh his worthiness.

Centuries later, in the Victorian era to be exact, a couple of married American archaeologists, Nathan (Jack Taylor) and Abigail Stern (María Silva) open Amenhotep's hidden tomb, and carry the pharaoh's mummy, his sarcophagus and a few papyri to the British Museum for Natural History. The couple's expedition was financed by Sir Douglas Carter (Eduardo Calvo). Carter once was an adventurous archaeologist like them, but now he is elderly, wheelchair-bound and rather sickly. Taking care of him takes up most of the time of his daughter Helen (Rina Ottolina again - and we all know what that means in a mummy movie).

Some time later, Egyptian archaeologist Assad Bey (Naschy again) and his girlfriend/assistant Zanufer (Helga Liné) arrive in London and take an interest in Amenhotep's mummy. Carter is surprisingly willing to share his findings with them. The first thing he does is excitedly reading one of the papyri to the new colleagues. In it Amenhotep - warned of the danger to his life by prophetic dreams - lays down how his mummy can be revived. It only takes the sacrifice of three virgins…

And wouldn't you know it, Assad Bey and Zanufer are cultists out to revive Assad Bey's ancestor Amenhotep, so that he can punish those who steal and abuse Egyptian culture?

London's virgin population soon finds itself greatly threatened and Amenhotep's mummy (also Naschy, of course) is revived and "disappears" from the museum after unnecessarily crushing the skull of a poor watchman. Amenhotep turns out to be a talking member of the mummy species, so he explains the next step of his plans to Assad Bey and Zanufer himself. Before he will do anything else, the ex-pharaoh wants to revive his beloved Amarna - say what you will about him, but at least Amenhotep is devoted to the woman he loves. To that end, he needs another seven virgins. Poor virgins of London.

While the virgins are hunted down - I'd really love to know how our Egyptian friends manage to hone in on them so easily, they are not all brides just before the wedding night after all - London's police force is doing sod all. Fortunately, Professor Stone wants his mummy back, and even though he doesn't believe in walking mummies and curses, he does think Assad Bey and Zanufer are somehow involved in the disappearance of Amenhotep. Hopefully, he and Abigail can do something about it before all seven further virgins are bled dry. Obviously, Amenhotep has set eyes on Helen as the obvious choice for his new Amarna.

Everyone even slightly familiar with the body of work of Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy probably realizes that one of the ambitions of his life must have been to play the role of every classic (as in "featured in a classic Universal movie") movie monster at least once in his life. By 1973, there was only the mummy left, so a mummy Naschy became in a film directed by Carlos Aured, and of course written by himself.

For once, and very much to my surprise, Naschy doesn't write his character as a jerk the script insists is a tragic figure even though he clearly isn't. Amenhotep is an unrepentant bastard whose only positive character trait is his love for Amarna, but since Amarna is just as much of a monster as he is, this theoretically positive character trait is only cause for a lot of dead virgins and crushed heads. Of course, Naschy still can't help himself and includes a kissing scene between the mummy and Helen, but at least she's pretty much sleepwalking in that scene and it's important for the film's ending, so we don't necessarily have to read it as another one of Naschy's thousands of attempts to write all of his characters as sexually irresistible to all women they meet.

Naschy's other role as Assad Bey is a bit more complex. He's not a much more moral character than Amenhotep is, but his evil is of a more human dimension, infused with enough doubts to make him somewhat sympathetic without the film ever making the mistake of some of the Daninsky films of pretending he is the film's true hero. It's not too difficult to understand Bey's motivation - the slow bleeding out of his country's culture by western graverobbers with a more pleasant title - the problem lies with his methods. Insert my "what have these virgins ever done to you speech?" here.

There is a surprising amount of interesting and likeable detail in the film's script: there's the insinuation that Sir Carter's marriage with his Egyptian wife couldn't withstand the pressure that sort of thing would have had to survive in the Victorian era; the lovely way the American archaeologist couple does everything together, from archaeology to puzzling over mysteries Scotland Yard is too dumb to solve to breaking and entering, an idea of how couples are supposed to work together that is also darkly mirrored in Zanufer and Amenhotep and absolutely speaks to my romantic spirit; the way Zanufer changes her mind about her life's work once she realizes what a bad influence Amenhotep is on Assad Bey and learns to like Helen. It's all a bit deeper than you'd need things in what is at its core a simple monster romp to be, and makes the movie a much more interesting watch. The script is also more tightly constructed than many of Naschy's films are, with all appropriate transitional scenes there and accounted for, no important scene only talked about after the fact instead of shown, and character development that makes perfect sense in the world of pulp horror.

Carlos Aured's direction works well with this script. The film's detailed (how do I know the film is set in the Victorian era? Because there's a picture of Victoria hanging on the Inspector's wall) yet not exactly naturalistic sets and the handful of location shots seem deeply - and fittingly - influenced by early Universal horror, with a lot of fog and shadows whenever Amenhotep stalks his virginal prey but also with some minor, appreciable, gore effects like in the scene where Amenhotep decides that none of the seven virgins he, Assad Bey and Zanufer caught is pretty enough to host Amarna's soul to his satisfaction, and goes on to crush one virgin head after the other like a petulant child. One wouldn't call Aured's direction tight today, but there's a nice enough flow to the proceedings.


All in all, La Venganza De La Momia may be a relatively minor entry into Naschy's body of work, but it's also one of the man's films that is neither batshit insane nor slapdash mummery, and might make a good entry point for viewers looking to start with Naschy without wanting to go in at the deep end. It should be a fun time for anyone.

On ExploderButton: Assignment Naschy - La Venganca De La Momia (1973)

aka The Mummy's Revenge

Fellow M.O.S.S. agent Kevin's WTF-Film has transformed into a shiny new beast made of pop culture and is now the less movie-centric, even more awesome ExploderButton. I'm still doing my weekly column there, so the Internet can rejoice/sigh with disappointment.

As anyone reading my blatherings for some time will know, I've developed a rather large enthusiasm for the body of work of Spain's sexiest (he did after all usually write his own scripts) horror actor/director/writer/enthusiast, the immortal Paul Naschy.

So it'll come as no surprise that my inaugural column on ExploderButton enthuses about Naschy's turn as that most well-dressed of monsters, the mummy. Please click on through to hear about the film's wonders.

Technorati-Markierungen: reviews,spanish movies,horror,other places,paul naschy,jack taylor,maría silva,helga liné,rina ottolina

In short: El asesino está entre los treces (1973)

aka The Killer Is One Of Thirteen

Two years after the death of her husband in the crash of his private plane, rich widow Lisa Mandel (Patty Shepard) calls thirteen of his friends and associates - among them a bored looking Jack Taylor, Simón Andreu and other familiar faces - for a big reunion. On the group's first dinner, Lisa reveals that she has proof her husband didn't die accidentally, but was murdered, and that she's convinced one of the attendants is his killer. After all, everyone had motive and opportunity to do the deed, which she then proceeds to reveal. Let's just say that the rich in this movie really are involved in a lot of things, reaching from the rather more typical mass adultery, to art forgery, to deeply Freudian mother-son relationships, to drug smuggling.

Unfortunately, the motives and opportunities are so ample, Lisa has her difficulties deciding who actually is the killer, so she's obviously decided to just bring everyone together and wait until the killer reveals his or herself. It's a sound plan, as it turns out, for once everyone's secrets are revealed or hinted at, the guests spend the next few days with attempts at digging each other's holes deeper. And after a time, the killer cuts the phone lines, wrecks some cars in the knowledge nobody here knows how to walk, and begins to thin the herd of people who might know something about him.

In theory, Javier Aguirre's The Killer should be a rather pleasant mystery of the "rich bastards die in an isolated place" type, but in practice, it's mostly a bore.

I suspect the higher number of the guests here is an attempt to outdo And Then There Were None, but it really leads to a film with so many characters there's no room to properly develop any of them or to find time to amuse the audience with their decadent hobbies for more than five seconds. The only bits of decadence the film finds time showing are various deeds of adultery, but those are filmed as the sort of face rubbing that wouldn't be steamy in a 70s soap opera, with little of interest to the friend of sleazy entertainment nor the viewer in hope of anything visually or emotionally interesting. It's just a very bland film that even manages to waste an excellent set-up for Freudian shenanigans.

This blandness is further increased by the film's snail-like pacing, Aguirre's decision to tell his story as a series of overlong and perfectly boring dialogue scenes, and the fact that it takes an hour until the killer decides to finally off a member of the horde of suspects (of course in a bland and uninvolving manner). It's difficult to understand how the same Javier Aguirre was able to direct the insane Hunchback of the Morgue in the same year as this snoozer, but there you have it. As it stands, the only connection the two films have is the presence of beloved Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy, but where Hunchback is his film, this one sees him only doing a short guest star part in which he looks as bored as Taylor does.

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,in short,mystery,javier aguirre,patty shepard,paul naschy,jack taylor

The Night of the Sorcerers (1973)

Original title: La noche de los brujos

Post-colonial Africa, probably Kenya. A very small expedition is making its way through the countryside to do something ecologically important discerning the reasons for the dying out of the local animal population. The group consists of Professor Grant (the inevitable Jack Taylor), his younger colleague Rod Carter (Simón Andres) who will later turn out to be the kind of guy you really don't want to have on guard duty, Liz (Maria Kosty), the bitchy and whiny daughter of the rich man financing the whole business, Carol (Loreta Tovar), who is frequently nude, and Tunika (Kali Hansa), even more frequently nude and Rod's girlfriend. There's some jealousy plot or between everyone and their mothers, but it's never going anywhere.
When our heroes (cough) camp at their first point of interest, a trader in furs (living in exile?) named Tomunga (José Thelman) attempts to warn them off, for the area is supposed to be cursed by the ghosts of a dozen sorcerers once (as seen in the movie's first scene) killed by the colonial powers during a sacrificial ceremony meant to create a were-leopard. Supposedly, the sorcerers rise from their graves every night to do Very Bad Things™ to whoever they come in contact with - preferably white women they like to turn into wereleopards too.
The merry gang waves Tomunga's warning off, and - what do you know? - soon are one after the other killed or wereleopardized. Will anyone survive? Do I look like I care?
I harbour a deep and abiding love for Spanish director Amando de Ossorio's first and fourth Blind Dead film, and am therefore always willing to give his other movies a chance. Unfortunately Night of the Sorcerers is much closer to the much-hated third of said Blind Dead films, mixing a bit of the old ultra violence, stupid plotting, and huge amounts of sleaze into a concoction that's often pretty boring. I'd say surprisingly boring, but then I have been bored by a lot of things that sound exciting in movies.
As frequent readers of this blog will probably understand by now, I have hardly any moral qualms about violence and sleazy nudity in my films, so it's not that its mind is in the gutter that bothers me about Night of the Sorcerers. In fact, de Ossorio's desperate attempts to shoehorn nudity into the least fitting situations (personal favourite: a completely pointless "character moment" taking place with one of the female characters discussing her emotional life while sponging herself off) is one of the film's more sympathetic features. It's just too bad that all that sleaze stops the rest of the film dead in its tracks and really does a good job at hindering any attempt at mood building that could turn this into an atmospheric horror movie too.
It's not as if the film did not have other problems: there's the sluggish pacing, characters who only ever act like idiots, a male hero who is responsible for people's death by skipping his guard duty for a long sex scene with his girlfriend not once but twice, and the little innocent fact that an actual plot only makes an appearance in the film's last thirty minutes or so. Before that, it's all women undressing, a bit of murder, and people doing and saying nothing of consequence.
Ossorio also attempts to use some of the stylistic tricks that worked so well for him in the first Blind Dead movie made the year before, but never manages to get the all-important details right that would let the film work on that rewarding non-naturalistic level. In fact, I don't think de Ossorio actually realized why the respective tricks did work in his earlier movie. Just take the use of slow-motion: where the blind dead in their decrepit state are made more threatening and unreal by being filmed in slow motion so often, the skimpy fur bikini leopard women are only ever made more ridiculous (and the acting surely doesn't help) and less threatening.
Where the earlier film oozes a strange and dream-like quality all of its own, Night only ever works as more than a mild piece of softcore sleaze in a handful of scenes during its final thirty minutes: there, Ossorio seems to find his lost horror filmmaker again. Suddenly, the director shows the return of a murdered character as a zombie in a red-lit scene (again very reminiscent of another scene from the first Blind Dead film) that is actually as dream-like and frightening as its content deserves, treats the abduction of another (sleeping-pill addled) character by a leopard woman as a moment right out of a fairy tale or dream, and - in an imaginary moment that for once positively reminds of the strange rules the Blind Dead have to follow - explains why the leopard woman all wear little green collars round there throats.
These few scenes aren't exactly enough to turn Night of the Sorcerers around - there's still a very dumb climax standing in the way, and too much boredom before - they do however make the film worthwhile beyond the ogling of pretty women and Jack Taylor (if he floats your boat), and demonstrate how strong a director of the fairy tale-like and strange type of horror de Ossorio could be when he applied his talents to it.

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,reviews,horror,amando de ossorio,jack taylor

Assignment Naschy: Dr. Jekyll Y El Hombre Lobo (1972)

aka Dr. Jekyll versus The Werewolf (and variations thereof)

After having a little party with their friends, including a certain Doctor Jekyll (Jack Taylor) who doesn't like to be reminded of his grandfather, aging industrialist Imre Kosta (José Marco) and his freshly married wife Justine (Shirley Corrigan) are off to a most romantic honeymoon. The loving couple visits rural Hungary to let Imre breathe the air of the land of his birth and give him an opportunity to visit the graves of his parents - that's what all people do on their honeymoon, right?

The local villagers warn Imre off from going to the old graveyard where his parents lie buried, for the area is infested with murderous bandits and opportunity rapists, and the castle next door is supposed to be inhabited by a monster, but the industrialist, being a man of the world, takes it all for superstition and nonsense. It turns out that we're witnessing darwinistic principles at work here. After visiting the graveyard, Imre is knifed to death by a trio of the non-existent bandits, and Justine's life is only saved with the help of a barrel-chested man dressing like a French existentialist novelist. Hello again, Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy), the world's most frequent werewolf. Waldemar - no slouch even when he's not wearing a face full of fur - kills two of Justine's attackers and takes the - by now fainted - woman to his castle where he lives with the local leper and an elderly woman the villagers take for a witch.

After the expected hysterics, Justine just as expectedly falls for the irresistible manly and tragic charms of Waldemar (yes, of course this was scripted by Naschy), even when she learns of his curse; things seem to go well.

Alas, the last surviving bandit is a very bad loser with highly dubious ideas of right and wrong, and begins to obsessively plan Waldemar's demise. The jerk's first plan of attack only costs the lives of some more bandits when he happens to learn that trying to kill a guy you know to be a werewolf on the night of the full moon is a pretty stupid idea. The jerk's second plan is a bit better - not attacking on the night of the full moon, beheading the old woman, and exciting the whole village into a state of torch-wielding mob-dom to do his dirty work for him.

Despite these dangers (and thanks to the modern commodity we know and love as the motorcar), Waldemar and Justine escape to London. There, Justine tells her friend Jekyll all about Waldemar's little werewolf problem, hoping for help.

Although Jekyll is pining for Justine himself, he's putting an honest attempt into helping Waldemar, quite to the disgust of his assistant Sandra (Mirta Miller), who for her part is a) pretty mad and b) pining for Jekyll. The doctor has a fantastic plan to cure Waldemar, too. Just wait for the night of the full moon, pump the man full of the serum that turned Jekyll's grandfather into Mister Hyde, wait until "the absolute evil kills the wolfman", and inject Waldemar with the antidote to the serum Jekyll invented killing off (off-screen, in the past) dozens of guinea pig patients. I can't imagine what could go wrong.

As you will have realized by now, Dr. Jekyll Y El Hombre Lobo is - in a different version of the usual structural eccentricity all scripts written by Paul Naschy I've encountered thus far feature - a film of two very different halves that do suggest an interesting production history to me, what with them being of so very different style and content. The first one is a slightly silly, yet very atmospheric piece of neo-gothic filmmaking that shows off director Leon Klimovsky's talents at more than just racking the zoom lens.

This part of the film is dominated by moody shots of an atmospheric winter landscape (with only a little snow), and is blessed with a modernized version of the play of light and shadow that's so important for everything gothic even in a film that doesn't take place in the olden times. There's also a surprising narrative consistency to the film's first forty minutes. Scenes flow into each other in a manner that makes logical and narrative sense, all important scenes are actually happening on screen, and for once, Naschy's script even manages to convince me that Waldemar is a somewhat tragic figure. The latter may very well have something to do with the simple fact that Waldemar's attempts at not killing random people when he wolfs out seem less half-hearted this time around.

Then, quite abruptly, the film's style and content change. Neo-gothic turns into mock-psychedelic, Spain in winter standing in for Hungary turns into some classical "look, we actually carted Paul Naschy to London for two days" scenes and some not very interesting looking sets, while the not exactly clever, but up to this point at least coherent, plot turns into raving lunacy of the sort that may be inspired by late period Universal movies or poached from the scribbling of an overexcited twelve year old boy. I'm not complaining about it, mind you. As much as I would have liked to watch a Naschy wolfman movie that is coherent yet still good, I won't ever complain about a film turning this delightfully strange.

I can't help but admire the absolute, beautiful wrong-headedness that leads to Paul Naschy playing a wolfman and Mister Hyde - for no good reason but tradition dressed like the Fredric March version - in the same film, as if these figures weren't different sides of the same archetype anyway. As nobody who has ever witnessed Naschy's werewolf performances will doubt, the man plays his Hyde scenes with great relish and enthusiasm.

Our man's script for its part attempts to cram variations on all of Hyde's traditional misdeeds into about fifteen minutes of misdeed time, with a high degree of success. It's as if Naschy and Klimovsky had decided to not just give their audience two films for the price of one but to also cram both films as full with fun stuff™ as they could in a technique that reminds me a bit of the wild abandon of 90s Hong Kong cinema. Sure, this way the pair had to leave sense and coherence behind in the end, but who wants coherence when she can have scenes of Paul Naschy with grey make-up and yellow eyes strolling through early 70s London dressed like a Hollywood Victorian, and nobody around him caring?

If my explorations of Naschy's work have taught me anything, then I surely don't

 

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