Although it has some characteristics of a giallo, Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974) is more a thriller in the vein of Hammer’s mini-Hitchcocks. That is to say, it has more twists and turns than it does blood and gore, although the killer does remove the eyes from his/her victims and, you guessed, they’re…

If I was bad-mouthing director Javier Aguirre for my dislike of Count Dracula’s Great Love, he has redeemed himself with The Hunchback of the Morgue (1973.) We’re back to bat-shit crazy Paul Naschy films and this one is another monster mashup between the hunchback, Gotho (Naschy) and a mad scientist, Dr. Orla (Alberto Dalbes) who…

It’s been a good run. I’ve either liked each Paul Naschy film I’ve revisited this month as much as the first time I watched it, or more so. Now, though, I must face the truth. I don’t think I’m ever going to like Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973.) Because of this realization, the movie is…

In his memoirs, Paul Naschy said about his 1973 movie, Vengeance of the Zombies: When I wrote the screenplay, I must either have been under the effects of hashish or, like Bram Stoker, I’d had one hell of a nightmare. Maybe it wasn’t hashish but cheap wine. I wonder if it was anything like the…

Known by many different names, The Hanging Woman (1973) best represents the movie. The name under which I bought the Blu-ray from Full Moon, Orgy of the Living Dead, does not. Sure, there’s a great quote from the film: They say the dead have orgies in that bloody cemetery. However, that’s as close as we…

Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973) was one of the first Paul Naschy films I saw. I watched it on July 2, 1973 and rated it seven stars out of ten. That means I liked it. Re-watching it now, my opinion hasn’t changed. Had I not also recently watched Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf, this…

Based on the quality of the print I watched on YouTube, it’s going to be hard to discuss this one. Keep this in mind as you imagine what it must have been like for original Paul Naschy fans before his Blu-ray renaissance… searching for titles, then finding murky prints with bad sound on bootleg videocassettes…

Finally, Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf (1972) is the Paul Naschy/Waldemar Daninsky movie I’ve been hoping I’d see! It has everything I want in a Eurohorror film and hits all my 1970s sweet spots. If you’ve ever watched a movie and felt energized afterwards, or wanted to immediately watch it again, you know how I…

Paul Naschy’s first attempt at giallo is a solid effort; however, the execution of Seven Murders for Scotland Yard (1972) by director Jose Luis Madrid is lackluster. Additionally, the lighting and camerawork by cinematographer Diego Ubeda is dark and uncreative, giving the film the look of a television movie. I don’t mean that it’s dark…

Paul Naschy becomes more confident with his next genre/Waldemar Daninsky film, which I watched in its American, public domain version, The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman (1971.) However, I wonder how much should be credited to director Leon Klimovsky. The pair would later make several of Naschy’s most popular films, such as Dr. Jekyll vs.…