La furia del hombre lobo

Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) travels to Tibet and is bitten by a yeti, which causes him to become a werewolf. He is accidentally killed after he attacks his cheating wife and her lover, and is later revived by a female scientist, Dr. Ilona Ermann, who uses him in mind control experiments. Daninsky later discovers an underground asylum populated by the bizarre subjects of the doctor's failed experiments.

Upon hearing of Naschy's death from colleague Jon Kitley, I rummaged through my collection for a suitable film to watch. In my scramble, I found I own not one but three(!) copies of "Fury of the Wolfman". The film is of questionable video quality, the sound is dubbed in a mediocre fashion, the cinematography is sort of slapstick style at times. And the American versions have two love scenes removed. Quite frankly, without a remastered, uncut copy, I wasn't really getting the proper movie in all its glory.

This film claims to be the fourth in a long series about the werewolf Count Waldemar Daninsky. I suspect this is true, but you wouldn't know this from the film itself. The plot is confusing at times, and there's really no indication that this is a sequel. If you read the plot summaries on Wikipedia and compare them to what is printed on the box, you'll see that I'm not alone in my confusion.

Perhaps the film's shortcomings can be forgiven if we understand the production hell it went through. While floating around for years, it was only released in 1973, due to problems involved in finding a distributor. And Naschy said in his autobiography that the director, Zabalza, was an incompetent alcoholic, and that he hated working with him. Those really aren't light accusations, and I have no idea what Zabalza had to say on his own behalf.

Chances are, sooner or later you'll come across a low-grade version of "Fury of the Wolfman". It appears in a variety of three-packs and box sets, so you might accidentally acquire it and not even know. What really needs to happen is an American uncut version, with a decent sound and video mix, and the love scenes thrown back in. As far as I know, this does not exist. Let us honor Paul Naschy's legacy and get his films to a wider audience in a level of quality he deserves.

This thing has it all.

We've got the plot that can't be deciphered, bad acting that can't be stopped, large dogs that serve no purpose, fully visible full moons during horrible storms. You've got the tortured soul Wolf-guy, the mad scientist gal, dungeons with prisoners hanging from chains, orgies where the males expose more flesh that the ladies. There's grave robbing and revived corpses and we can't forget the masked phantom guy who resolves a plot issue with his dying three words. Revived dead lady becomes zombie-werewolf and dukes it out with leading wolf man. For the science freaks there are Chematodes that allow one to control a brain, whether in a lady friend or wolf changing thingy. Nearly non-existent color, Twilight Zone theme moments ... and the name Wolfstein (get it?).

Horror hauled itself out of the dark with movies like this Spanish production. For those of us who sweat every step with them, these films, as sorry as they are, are cause for celebration when we happen upon them on cheap DVDs.

If you're riding the current wave of horror (a really, really rare happenstance these days - most of that which passes for modern horror doesn't reach deeply enough within us to trigger the "horror" reflex) please don't waste your time with this. Honestly.

If you're an old codger and can remember tricking your parents so you could get with an older friend to a showing of "Lady Frankenstein", this one will make you smile.

"The Fury of the Wolfman" is one of the loyal thankless that trudged and lugged and slogged horror along the decades. So, like the focus of their stories, "it wouldn't die".

Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy stars in this, one of his weakest werewolf films... but bear with me for a moment. Most people will be familiar with it under its most common television title, THE FURY OF THE WOLF MAN, and there have been many home video versions of it over the years. If you want to be serious about giving it a fair shot though, the most workable edition I've seen of it goes by the title THE WOLF MAN NEVER SLEEPS, and it's an unedited and complete European version which restores a couple of disturbing scenes and contains the original nude shots which are missing from FURY's print. It is also letterboxed.

Naschy plays Waldemar Daninsky, returning home from a trip to Tibet only to find out that he's contracted a werewolf curse and that his wife has been having an affair. He takes care of her and her lover while in animal form, but then becomes a guinea pig for a sexy woman doctor and her female assistant. Apparently, the doc attempts to "tame" the werewolf, and there is a very strange sado-masochistic love scene between her and the hairy and fanged Daninsky who is under her trance, at least in the original version. Ultimately we get two werewolves for the price of one as Daninsky battles a she-wolf!

The biggest problem with the movie is that the director (according to Naschy's claims) was often drunk, and the results are indeed rather incoherent. When watching THE WOLF MAN NEVER SLEEPS copy, it's not quite as difficult to make out what's going on, though the editing remains atrocious in spots. Worst of all is occasional non-matching footage of Naschy's ravenous werewolf swiped straight from another previous film (LA MARC DEL HOMBRE LOBO, aka "FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR") and mixed into this one without any sensible reason! The wolf's clothing changes from black shirt to white and back again, as does his demeanor; one moment the wolf is walking around lethargically in a hypnotic trance from FURY, next he is growling and running around savagely from BLOODY TERROR. Really bizarre. *1/2 out of ****

This was the first paul naschy werewolf movie i saw and i thought that it sucked when i first saw it but after seeing it a couple more times i have come to like it. It focuses around a scientist named Waldemar Daninsky who is bitten by a Yeti?! on a trip to the Himalayas. He comes back as a werewolf, kills his wife and kills himself 25 minutes into the film. Then his colleague an evil doctor named Illona Wolfstein brings him back to life using chemotrobes that put electrical signals in his body. She tries to control him but fails he kills the villagers destroys the lab and has time to battle it out with his zombiefied/werewolf wife and gets shot in the heart by Illona. This had potential but Naschy went to a bad director who was always drunk and hired a extra for all the long shots of the wolfman without even telling Paul Naschy. The film had stock footage from his first werewolf romp and has been a cult classic infamous for being cheap and awful. But is actually kind of good.

This is one very confusing movie. The film is very hard to follow and the plot just didn't seem to make any sense. The Fury of the Wolfman was made in Spain and I think that when any film is dubbed from one language to another, it doesn't translate exactly as it was first meant. Maybe this is part of the problem but I doubt if it can account for all the problems with this film. The dubbing is pretty bad and the voices don't match the characters very well. The scenes are choppy, there is an array of strange and irrelevant characters that do little more than confuse the viewer even more. What I did like about this film was the look of the wolfman himself and the scenes where he attacks. Now if they could have put it all together and had it make some sense, they might have had something. Don't waste your time on this one.