Fury of the Wolfman

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.

Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) returns from Tibet bearing a scar on his chest in the shape of a pentagram, a pentagram, a pentagram. Cursed to change into a werewolf under the full moon, he seeks help from ex-flame Dr. Ilona Ellman (Perla Cristal), who is conducting experiments on mind control, but finds his animal side taking over when he discovers that his wife has been unfaithful, unfaithful, unfaithful.

Electrocuted after tearing out the throats of his wife and her lover, Waldemar is believed dead by the authorities, but Ilona know otherwise and returns him to full strength, attempting to make him her slave with the use of chematrodes, chematrodes. This can't be scientific, this can't be scientific.

Fury of the Wolfman, the dubbed U.S. version of Paul Naschy horror The Wolfman Never Sleeps, appears to have suffered under the censor's scissors, for it is remarkably light on the both the blood and boobs that one might reasonably expect from such fare. However, what remains is so utterly bewildering and completely boring—easily one of Waldemar Daninsky's least entertaining adventures—that I imagine an uncut version would still be a chore to sit through.

Moments guaranteed to confuse: a bunch of hippies (including a dwarf) chained up in a basement; Ilona's supposedly dead father lurking around in rubber mask and a suit of armour; bloodhounds that look suspiciously like Alsatians; and a pair of corpses inexplicably sealed up behind a wall.

If you're a die-hard Daninsky fan and are determined to sit through this incomprehensible tripe, try taking a big swig of liquor every time someone repeats part of their dialogue for no reason. That should ease the pain a bit, ease the pain a bit.

The sound and picture quality of my bargain bin bootleg-DVD is so terrible that you must be a gigantic Paul Naschy fan to persist watching. Especially the first 10-15 minutes are unwatchable, so kudos if you try. After that, the quality gets slightly better (or you just get used to it) but only then becomes obvious how horrendous the movie itself is as well. There are many entries in Naschy's "Hombre Lobo" series, but this is my least favorite, together with "The Wolfman and the Yeti".

I love Paul Naschy. I really do, but the entertainment value of his movies and career in general are so wildly uneven! Some of the entries in this (too) long-running series rank among my favorites - like Werewolf Vs. The Vampire Women, while this one was dull & repetitive from start to finish. The blame for this failure can mostly be put on director José María Zabalza, who clearly wasn't interested in shooting a monster movie and did a thoroughly dire and uninspired job. But Paul Naschy's own screenplay isn't staggering this time, either, since he always reverts to the same old and implausible trademarks. For instance, Waldemar Daninski's werewolf is less of a monster than he is a martyr. The poor guy got infected after a scientific expedition to the Himalayas, AND he's captured to be studied & experimented upon by his evil female colleague! Another recurring theme - although I must admit I find it hilarious - is that Waldemar Daninski is somehow irresistible to women. Here again as well, the evil scientist's beautiful and young assistant Karin falls madly in love with Waldemar when he's chained to the wall, even though she has a fiancé who's devoted to her. Sneaky Naschy! He wrote his own scripts, so he made damn well sure he had kissy-kissy sequences with the prettiest girls.

Perhaps, one day, if I stumble upon a decent DVD or BluRay copy of "The Fury of the Wolfman", I'll give it another chance. It'll have to contain a version in the original Spanish language with subtitles, though, because it drove me insane to always hear how they referred to Waldemar as Walter in the English dubbed version that I watched.

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 ****