Paul Naschy: Spain's Ambassador of Horror pt.4
Where our hero goes to Japan and fights a Yeti (but not in that order).
The Mummy’s Revenge (1975) has Naschy returning to the Universal Monsters stable, in yet another dual role as both the titular mummy, the sadistic Amenhotep, and the loyal pagan Egyptian priest who unleashes him upon Victorian England, Assad Bey. The priest abducts virgins for blood sacrifices to resurrect Amenhotep’s favorite concubine and render them both immortal. Unlike any mummy film before it, this one is jam-packed with gore and a surprisingly high body count. Amenhotep has a particular fondness for crushing people’s skulls (especially when they’re facing the camera). In a gleefully gruesome scene, the mummy has a retinue of virgins laid out on a stone tablet for his evaluation – as he goes down the line he smushes the heads of the ones he deems unfit for sacrifice like they were cherry-filled pastries.
The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975) recasts Waldemar as a kind of Pulp hero, an international adventurer and explorer who joins an expedition into the Himalayas to find the legendary Yeti, only to find himself kidnapped by a pair of cannibal witches who turn him into a werewolf... but not before they’ve made him their sex slave! There are Mongol bandits, gun-battles, sword-fights and the climactic (if rather disappointing) rumble with the Yeti. This one really cranks the crazy up a notch and moves at a swift pace like some crazy candy-colored Republic movie serial on a heavy dose of the brown acid from Woodstock. Naturally, it’s a fan favorite.
On its surface Exorcismo (1975) could easily get lumped in with the flurry of low-budget rip-offs of The Exorcist (1973), but Naschy (who was scrupulously candid when it came to giving credit where it was due) insisted he had written the script some years before. Indeed, the plots are very different, but there’s also no question Friedkin’s masterpiece influenced the last twenty-minutes of the film, where Naschy’s priest squares off with a young lady possessed by the spirit of her Devil-worshiping father.
While his supernatural-themed films are fairly idealistic, even Romantic odes to the monster movies of his youth, in which the line between good and evil is clearly defined, Naschy’s reality-based work tends to have a downbeat, even misanthropic outlook on human nature. One can sense a bitterness, albeit a reluctant one, creeping into these films. But Naschy was a Romantic in the classic sense of the word, and so even his cynical works come from a place of disappointed innocence.
Inquisition (1978) is a pretty crass but well-made cash-in on Witchfinder General, but unlike other rip-offs like Mark of the Devil, it doesn’t put its entire focus on the exploitation aspects of witch-hunt moveies, namely the torture and mutilation of beautiful women. Though there’s certainly no dearth of that, it does something Mark and other Witchfinder rip-offs ignore, which is to say the psychology and pathology of witch-hunts and the disturbing propensity human beings have for cruelty. It’s strong stuff, and Naschy obviously took these themes very seriously.
El Caminante (1979) has Naschy playing a wandering Satan who, in the manner of Christ, has decided to come down (or up, rather) to Earth to gain firsthand knowledge of the human race he has worked so hard to undermine. In his episodic adventures he discovers that the worse he behaves the more human society rewards him. Combining horror elements with bawdy, scatalogical Chaucerian humor, it’s the perfect distillation of Naschy’s dark, bitter, cynical side, something he would explore more in his later career as he became increasingly disillusioned with the Spanish film industry. Not for nothing was it Naschy’s personal favorite in his vast filmography.
Financially, times were getting tough for Naschy and getting films made increasingly more difficult, so he turned for financing to a country where he had long had a popular following, Japan, and it is there where he made his next entry in the Waldemar Daninsky series. El retorno del Hombre Lobo (1981), aka Night of the Werewolf, is a return the Gothic Horror genre that launched his career, a completely unnecessary remake of La Noche de Walpurgis, although most definitely certainly not an unwelcome one! Directed by Naschy himself, it’s easily the glossiest and best-looking of the Daninsky films; it just oozes Gothic atmosphere and revels in its Halloween spookshow aesthetics. Hammer’s Dracula had risen from the grave for the last time in the 70’s, but Waldemar Daninsky still had considerable bite left in him in the early 80’s.
Lavish costumes, heaving bosoms, spooky castles and flying coffins, it’s refreshingly old fashioned for an 80’s Horror film. The werewolf make-up, done in such a way as to incorporate Naschy’s beard, is the best in the series and easily his most professional-looking. With great make-up effects, Gothic sets, atmospheric cinematography, lush costumes and swift pacing, it’s probably Naschy’s most accessible movie for the uninitiated. It would be a swan song of sorts, Naschy’s final foray into the Gothic world. On a personal level, it represented a triumph of his vision, one that he had been trying to perfect for fourteen years.
“....(El retorno del Hombre Lobo) contains all the coordinates of my own life, fitting together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle: the claustrophobic castle, the Gothic tombs, the ill-fated love affair, the menace of the undead, the ostracism of someone who is despised for being different and the all-pervading shadow of death.”
In a scene cribbed whole-cloth from Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Mircalla is resurrected with the blood from a victim who has been dangled over her coffin with their throat slashed. Blood spatters and drips into the opening made for the mouth and, moments later, smoke slowly curls from the stone figure’s lips. In a moment that is equal parts Mario Bava and Jean Cocteau, the lid of the tomb (carved to resemble its occupant in true Medieval style) rises into the air... and rises and rises, drifting away like a hot-air balloon.
The Beast and the Magic Sword (1983), another Japanese co-production and the tenth entry in the Waldermar Daninsky series, is an entertaining cross-pollination of chambara (Samurai movie) and Gothic Euro-Horror sexploitation. The film opens in medieval Europe with Irineus Daninsky (Naschy) pissing off a witch who promptly places the curse of the werewolf upon him and all his descendants. Fast forward to the 16th Century, where Waldemar travels to feudal Japan in search of a physician named Kian (Shigeru Imachi) in hopes he can remove the curse.
Taking up the directing reins again, Naschy does a great job of blending such seemingly different genres by taking a Swords & Sorcery approach. In Japan at that time, even low-budget productions could look pretty slick because they re-used the same sets and costumes as their bigger productions. The Magic Sword prop was made out of actual silver (in Japan when you ask for a silver sword, you get a damn silver sword!) and the scene in which Waldemar tangles with a tiger clearly features a real tiger! The werewolf make-up has a distinctly Japanese look to it: the brow is enlarged and furrowed, the nose has a pronounced indentation creating an Oni like visage.
Given the commercial and artistic success of El retorno del Hombre Lobo and The Beast and the Magic Sword, Naschy had plans to make more films in Japan... but those were dashed when the Yakuza approached him to smuggle guns into the country! Naturally you don’t say no to the Yakuza, so he agreed to the deal and left the country, never to return.
NEXT: Naschy gets personal with Howl of the Devil.