Classic Horrors Club

Depending on whether you believe there was ever a Paul Naschy werewolf film called, Las Noches del Hombre Lobo (Nights of the Wolf Man), El Retorno de Walpurgis (Curse of the Devil) from 1973 is either the sixth or seventh time Naschy played tortured soul Waldemar Daninski. If you believe there was any continuity in the five or six films that preceded this one, it’s finished and Curse of the Devil starts the saga anew. This is my favorite Daninsky film (so far) where there’s only one monster, the werewolf. Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf is my overall favorite (so far.)

The opening third is classic 70’s Eurohorror. During a medieval prologue, Iraneus Daninsky (Naschy) and Barna Bathory (Jorge Matamoros) duel to the death in a fight between good and evil. Representing good, Daninsky wins, and Bathory’s wife, Elizabeth (Maria Silva), witnesses him behead her husband and proudly display his noggin by holding it in the air by its hair. I don’t know if Elizabeth bathes in blood, but she does run a satanic cult and when Daninsky proceeds to round up its female members, remove their gowns, and hang them naked from the drawbridge, she places a curse on him and his ancestors.

I curse you, Irineos Danisky, you and your entire lineage. One day, when one of your people spills the blood of a firstborn of my descendants, the most terrible misfortunes will befall those who bear your cursed name, and their souls will have no rest and will live in eternal hell. You will pay! You will all pay! Damned! Our vengeance will haunt you forever.

We then see a woman and her son standing by a grave. We assume this is Daninsky’s wife, because she talks to the boy about his father and calls him, “Waldemar.” In the present of the story, we meet an adult Waldemar, but probably not the same boy. (I don’t believe we crawled out of medieval times so quickly.) He’s out hunting and shoots a large wolf. When he goes to retrieve it, there’s a man lying dead on the ground with a huge gunshot would on his chest. It turns out he accidentally killed a gypsy man and the rest of his “family” is not happy about it.

Although Daninsky is remorseful and offers to pay them, they place another curse upon him. This must be the first time he’s killed one of Bathory’s ancestors and the gypsy curse somehow reinforces the original curse to make Daninsky turn into a werewolf when the moon is full, which is quite frequent. Well, it’s not that simple. He unknowingly saves one of the gypsy women, Ilona (Ines Morales) and has a torrid affair with her. One night when he’s sleeping, she drags out an old wolf skull, dips its teeth in blood, and fake-bites Daninsky on his chest. (Later, it makes a cool, pentagram-shaped scar.)

Daninsky is a rich landowner and his tight-knit tenants in the village would probably suspect that the Daninsky-wolf is responsible for the subsequent string of murders. However, there is also a madman who escaped from prison on the loose to get them off Daninsky’s scent, as well as perform some gnarly axe murders himself. And so on. After all this has happened, Curse of the Devil isn’t quite as entertaining and drags a little. It’s not the best werewolf transformation or makeup that’s been used in a Daninsky film. At times, the monster either looks like a puppy, or has a bloody mouth that doesn’t move.

Nevertheless, there are things I like about the rest of the movie. First, there are many references to Universal. There are characters named, Bela and Boris. The land is near Borgo Pass. The villagers grab pitchforks and torches. Perhaps the best homage is this variation on the famous poem. It doesn’t quite have the same ring, but I smiled when I heard it:

Even a man of pure soul can go mad if wolfsbane blooms and the full moon shines, and so that this doesn’t happen, and the bodies of Imre and his family don’t return from the grave and rest in peace, I conjure the evil spirits and ward them off.

Naschy’s addition to werewolf lore is that while silver will kill the monster, it must be wielded by someone who truly loves him. Hmmm, that’s not going to be Ilona; she was one of the first victims. It happens that an engineer, Laszlo Wilowa (Eduardo Calvo), is visiting from Bulgaria with his family, including the lovely Kinga (Fabiola Falcon), with whom Daninsky can fall in love; that is, if her sister, Maria (Martiza Olivares) will stop interfering. This is again classic 70s Eurohorror. Not only is nudity among the women nonchalant, but Maria looks inappropriately underaged to me as she drops her gown to seduce Daninsky.

I also like that we can tell characters and stories have advanced between the cycles of the full moon, even if we don’t see them doing so. That’s one of the problems for werewolf movies; if there’s only one full moon a month, how can someone transform every night? Here, it seems like there’s a regular passage of time and we’re popping in once a month to see what the monster does next. Of course, there are flaws with this approach, but in this particular version of the tale, the paradox is more realistic than most.

I don’t know if there’s really a twist at the end of Curse of the Devil, but I choose to believe there is. I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say we return to an earlier scene and it may have not been what we thought it was at the time. I truly enjoyed this movie. One day perhaps all the Daninsky werewolf films will be available, and I’ll watch them to truly rank my favorites and see if I can force a little continuity into them. I mean, if we skipped generations in this one, who’s to say other Daninskys weren’t ancestors of this one?