I’ve always taken a certain fascination in cultural ambassadors. You know, people like Bruce Lee, who introduced the West to the world of Asian martial arts. Or Afrika Bombata, who took a bunch of NYC B-Boys to see the German electronic music band Kraftverk. Another such ambassador, this one to the world from the Land of Horror was Jacinto Molina, better known to world as Paul Naschy.
“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.” – Baudelaire
“...through fantasy we can convey a far deeper message than would appear possible at first sight.” – Paul Naschy/Jacinto Molina
Paul Naschy (1934-2009) is often referred to as the “Spanish Lon Chaney”, having played nearly every classic horror icon in some form or another, including Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, a mummy, a hunchback and even the Devil himself. But he’s best known for his portrayal of the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. Naschy wasn’t merely an actor and filmmaker, though, but a kind of emissary for the Horror genre. Although his films are sometimes crude, they are always sincere and often charming, even when they’re at their most crude.
Born in Madrid and christened Jacinto Molina, he was a natural athlete. After an injury ended his career as a soccer play, he became a champion weightlifter (which would give him his signature barrel-chested physique), which he later gave up to pursue his artistic inclinations as an illustrator and writer of Western Pulp novels. After working as an extra in big Hollywood productions like Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings and El Cid, Molina was bitten by the acting bug and dived headfirst into the burgeoning Spanish film industry.
But Molina’s most pivotal moment had occurred when he was eight years-old, when he and his mother walked past a movie theater showing Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. The garish, dynamic poster depicting the two titans of terror in a savage battle to the death instantly captivated the boy and he begged his mother to take him to see it. His mother took one look at the poster and had other ideas, but the lad was not to be deterred. He returned the following day and begged the usher to let him in and, when he was refused, little Jacinto returned every day, wearing the man down until he finally conceeded defeat and admitted him. Like all sensitive children, he was more likely to identify with the monsters than be afraid of them and the experience was to launch Molina’s lifelong love affair with Fantasy Horror Cinema.
It seems like Molina was fated to star in what would be the first Spanish horror film, La marca del Hombre Lobo (aka. Hell’s Creatures) in 1967. Scripted by Molina himself, it was a surprisingly big budget affair, shot on 70mm widescreen in 3-D (!) and slated to star none other than the Wolf-Man himself, Lon Chaney Jr.. Destiny, as it were, was not to be deterred. At the last minute Chaney Jr. dropped out (possibly due to his alcholism) and the producers scrambled to find a replacement. They took one look at the screenwriter with the burly weightlifter’s build, and gave him the part.
Censorship in Franco’s Spain was pretty relaxed for a military dictatorship. Stories about vampires, werewolves and vengeful spirits nasties were considered harmless fantasy. The only stipulation the censors made was that the films couldn’t take place in Spain. Werewolves and other Things-That-Go-Bump might be roaming the countryside in other countries, but certainly not under Generalisimo Franco’s watch! So the locale was moved to Germany and, since cases of lycanthropy could only conceivably occur in non-Spaniards, the werewolf was given a Polish name: Waldemar Daninsky. It would be a role Naschy would reprise a dozen more times!
Since his given name as considered too ethnic for the international market, Molina was given a half hour to choose a more saleable stage name. Combining the name of the then current Pope with the lastname of a buddy from his weightliftingdays, he settled on Paul Naschy (as he will heretofore be mentioned).
In Franco’s Spain, Horror was exempt from the usual scrutiny of the censors, and so the filmmakers could get away, comparatively, with murder, using the genre as a convenient cover for political statements about life in under the thumb of the Franco regime. They even shot extra bits of gore and nudity for the German and Italian releases of the film.
The film opens in a lavish masquerade ball where mysterious but good-natured nobleman Waldemar meets Rudolph (Manuel Manzaneque) and Janice (Dyanik Zurakowska), a young couple in the making. Of course, the Janice finds herself drawn to the stranger and quickly finds herself falling in love with him.
A gypsy couple take refuge in an old castle, help themselves to the wine cellar and tipsily descend into the crypt to engage in some casual grave violation. In a scene reminiscent of the opening of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, they yank a cross-shaped silver dagger from the body of the long deceased Count Wolfstein, who promptly returns to life returns to life, transforms into a werewolf and proceeds to tear the n’er-do-well couple to bloody ribbons.
Waldemar joins the village men in the hunt for the creature and kills the werewolf with the silver cross, only to be bitten and cursed himself in the process. Rudolph gallantly steps aside when he sees love blossoming between Janice and the doomed Waldemar and vows to help him for both their sakes and contacts a doctor who may be able to help. Dr. Janos Mikhelov (Julián Ugarte) arrives in town with his wife Wandessa (Aurora de Alba), but they turn out to be a pair of fiendish vampires with plans of their own!
It’s a wild, playful, deliberately outrageous film that never takes itself too seriously. One delirious, intoxicated scene has the vampire couple Janos and Wandessa flogging the heroine in front of the transformed Waldemar, whom they have chained to a dungeon wall, their sadistic laughter echoing off the walls as he thrashes against his bonds. Never before had werewolf maulings been depicted with such sanguine savagery – when the wolfed-out Waldemar comes crashing into the home to a peasant couple, he doesn’t merely bite his victim’s throat, he tears with his fangs and a giant gout of blood sprays through the air
La marca del Hombre Lobo was every bit the success it deserved to be and put Spain on the map as a new player in the international Horror scene. It also defined Naschy’s lunatic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to the genre, clearly inspired by his childhood sweetheart, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, of throwing assorted other monsters into his Waldemar Daninsky films, producing some truly inspired, lunatic combinations.
The American distributor, Samuel M.Sherman, had promised theater owners a Frankenstein movie; the only problem was that neither Dr. Frankenstein nor his monster are anywhere to be found in the movie! Not to be deterred, Sherman re-titled the film Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror and added an animated introduction (still found in some prints) defining the owner of the pivotal castle in the film as a descendent of Dr. Frankenstein who has been bitten by a werewolf, thereby creating the most ghoulishly ghastly hybrid horror of them all: WOLFSTEIN!
Naschy’s films teem with a sense of Catholic guilt, frustrated sexuality, and a strong sense of fate. They also have an unpretentious vibe – not that Naschy didn’t take his monster movies seriously – quite the contrary, they reveal the deep importance these characters played in his childhood and subsequent adult inner life – it’s that he never loses the sense of pure child-like (as opposed to child-ish) fun that gives these characters their enduring appeal.
Assignment Terror (1970) was Spain’s answer to the Universal monster rallies like House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, throwing together Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Mummy and a werewolf, Waldemar Daninsky.
Naschy once again undertook the writing duties, concocting a wonderfully kooky, blatantly camp plot with echoes of Plan 9 From Outer Space-like plot involving aliens (led by a slumming Michael Rennie of Day the Earth Stood Still fame) who use a travelling circus as cover for a plot to conquer the Earth using the monsters who so terrify the human race.
Beset by production problems, such as a rapidly diminishing budget and allegedly up to three different directors, Naschy was forced to gut his own script, which originally had included at least one more monster, a Golem, and flying saucers (although one wonders why they couldn’t just dangle a burning hubcap from a fishing line). Though it fails to rise to the level of its own insane premise, Assignment Terror is enjoyable nonsense for Euro-Horror fans in an undemanding mood.
NEXT TIME:
Naschy’s next effort, La Noche de Walpurgis (1971), marks his first collaboration with Argentinian arthouse director Leon Klimovsky, a relationship that would spawn many more notable Spanish horror films!