Director: Paul Naschy
Year: 1981
Country: Spain
Alternate Titles: El retorno del Hombre Lobo; The Werewolf; The Craving
Genre: Werewolf
Plot:
Working on a university project, students head into the Hungarian mountains looking for a special gravesite where they luck upon it and decide to explore the area only to realize their host is a werewolf who was a servant for Countess Elizabeth Bathory that one of them has raised from the grave to take over the world.
Review:
This here is a rather pleasing Gothic affair. The fact that this one takes place mostly inside a grand castle, filled with all the touch-marks of old-school Gothic gloriousness, is a great site and one of the film's biggest pluses. The ruined castle set looks fantastic, complete with the crumbling stone walls, a graveyard on-site, the catacombs entrance and supports over the cob-webbed filled ruins that are fully realized and quite believable. From there, the film gets even more Gothic with the interiors that have plenty to go on, with the candle-lit locations, rat-filled tombs and the other really big sets in here make this a real sight for the eyes, which allows the film a lot of really impressive scenery to add a spectacular setting that fits perfectly in tone with realized curse taking place.
The impressiveness extends over into other areas of the film, especially the individualistic scenes in here. This one here has a generous helping of impressive scenes that get a lot better as it goes on. The early scenes of the ceremonial deaths early on back in the past offer up a fantastic sequence with the gathered folks in the commune and the resulting sentences and tortures that are passed out on each which get this going nicely. The shot of the two vampires bursting through a door before two victims bathed in an eerie white back-glow is simply impressive, as is another shot of a victim being covered from head-to-toe in blood for a ceremonial black mass sacrifice ritual and a shot of the vampire and werewolf fighting on a precipice that nearly falls over several times.
The film's best period is definitely at the end, where this picks up considerably. The werewolf attacks are rather fun and chilling with the random encounters in the woods and surrounding village while the attacks by the vampires to seduce him so he can’t fend them off while they recuperate to full strength set the stage for the great final battle here. The action is well-choreographed, making it look great and has plenty of spots that are just fantastic as it engages in one long, lengthy well-paced fight between the main villains. There's plenty of grappling and a whole host more to enjoy about this particular sequence and altogether is one of the highlights of the film. As well as the great werewolf make-up here, this is a great Gothic masterpiece.
There isn't a lot wrong with this one. The fact that it isn't as out-and-out gory and sleazy as the past incarnations, despite offering up plenty of opportunities to do so, is something that might cause irritation. During the film, there's barely anything from these two elements which will come as a surprise. The number of kills on display should've had some sort of blood in the proceedings, and being as graphic as the kills are, a little more at the least would've been fine considering how the others were before it. Despite the high amount of nude scenes, that there are only a couple mild points here and there for only a few smatterings placed into several inconspicuous scenes that have a couple of little moments in them. This one misses out on opportunities to bump up the film, and is something to be missed out on, but otherwise these are the film's big flaws.
Overview: ****/5
A Gothic masterpiece at a time when it wasn't fashionable, this one is a marvelously fun and enjoyable experience without a whole lot wrong as the problematic issues aren’t even that detrimental anyway. This is highly recommended for Naschy fans, Eurohorror fanatics as well as those who enjoy the more Gothic sensibilities of these films, while those who aren't foreign fanatics won't find much with this one.
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