The Fury of the Wolf Man (1972)

Dreadfully Boring

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

When I think about why I love Italian horror films so much, particularly those from the 60's to 80's, and wonder why the Italians are so good at making them, it dawns on me that it's because they tend to be so passionate and uninhibited in all of their unbridled emotions, and that it's always a very thin, perforated line between love and hate, good and evil, which makes their actions so uncontrollable and their behaviour so decidedly unpredictable. Take it from me and my personal relationship experiences, Italians really know how to express themselves. The sex is always outstanding, but you always have to go through and endure your share of blood, sweat and tears (as The Smithereens once famously sang, 'I get the blues before and after loving you.') In terms of great horror protagonists, Paul Naschy has always been both the saving grace and missing link, the great Spanish hope. Lord Almighty, he always seemed a direct cross between a 60's Marlon Brando (when he was starting to get disillusioned and pudgy because no one could come up with ideas or roles worthy of his monumental talents) and John Belushi. He always possessed this tortured mythos, channeling the very best of Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. Yes, he was a monster, but he couldn't help himself, and his nasty habits went against the very fiber of his being. No matter how bad the material (which he usually wrote, under an alias), he was always fervently watchable.Tangentially, Jean-Luc Godard once said that Roger Vadim was 'with it'. The literal translation: He makes bad films, but he knows what people wants to see. 'The Fury of the Wolfman' is like that. Director Zabalza knows his audience inside and out. EVERY SINGLE female character, without exception, is drop-dead gorgeous, not to mention scantily clad at every possible moment. There are whips, chains, bondage--every type of scenario a full-blooded person, even remotely intrigued in sexuality, would be head-over-heels over. The plot is meaningless and deserves to be. It's never the point. All the filmmakers are looking for is 90 minutes of cinematic fun and excitement that people will want to peruse, and you get that here, and are left completely satisfied. As The Kinks famously said, 'Give the People What They Want!'

Inferior entry about Werewolf with the unforgettable Waldemar Daninsky-Jacinto Molina , under pseudonym Paul Naschy . The king of Spanish terror cinema as immortal Wolfman Waldemar Daninsky in this lousy entry . Third time in which Waldemar stricken by ancient curse that turns into Werewolf at the full moon . Waldemar , the notorious adventurer scientist joins a journey accompanied by friends , all of them to find the mythic Yeti in the Himalayas . Paul Naschy is transformed into a werewolf when an annoyed Yeti attacks and bite him . While on the expedition , with the crew who accompanied him disappeared . Daninsky looks desperately for a cure as he has had a werewolf curse cast upon him . If he doesn't get rid of it, he turns into a killer werewolf when the moon is full . He finds out that the pentagram mark on his chest might function as a sign of what ails him , and Daninsky asks for help to fellow scientific , Dr. Ilona (Perla Cristal as mad she-doctor ) and famous for her innovative experiments in the control of the human mind . Later on , Waldemar learns through an unnamed source that his spouse , Erika( Zorrilla) is having an affair with another man . What he doesn't know is that the couple are secretly scheming to murder him , tampering with the brakes causing a car crash when his vehicle to hit a tree . While not dead, Daninsky seeks the help of Ilona , who will exploit his unfortunate lycanthrope condition for her own experiments on the human brain . Then , Daninsky escapes and accidentally electrocutes himself on a fallen power line . Ilona will later dig up his undead corpse , forcing him to do her will , with assistant-student Karen (Verónica Luján) resisting her teacher's philosophies falling for the victimized Daninsky . Waldemar is locked into Ilona's castle, a place where many crazy patients are held in chains. Meantime , Karen's boyfriend, journalist Williams (Miguel De la Riva) will unite forces with detective Miller to discover the one responsible for the rash of killings and werewolf attacks plaguing the community . While Waldemar goes on a murderous rampage every time the moon is full and unleashing the werewolf from his chains to terrorize innocents round abouts .Continental Europe's biggest horror star again with his classic character and horrifying to viewer . Jacinto Molina Aka Paul Naschy ,who recently passed away, was actor,screenwriter and director of various film about the personage based on fictitious character, the Polish count Waldemar Daninsky . The first entry about Waldemar was ¨The mark of the Wolfman (1967)¨ by Enrique Eguiluz , it was such a box office hit that Jacinto went on filming successive outings as ¨Night of Walpurgis¨, ¨Fury of the Wolfman¨ , ¨Doctor Jekill and the Wolfman¨ , and once again¨The return of the Walpurgis¨, ¨Howl of the devil¨. After ¨The craving¨ it was such a box office disaster that Jacinto was bankrupt. He was forced to turn to Japan for making artist documentaries, as he filmed 'Madrid Royal Palace and Museum of Prado' and he gets financing from Japanese producers for ¨The human beasts¨, the first co-production Spanish-Japan and followed ¨The beast and the magic sword(1982)¨ that is filmed in Japan and for the umpteenth time ¨Licantropo(1998) and finally even directed by Fred Olen Ray in ¨Tomb of the Werewolf(2004) with Michelle Bauer.It's a B series entertainment with abundant sensationalistic scenes and a Naif style and plenty of flaws and gaps .The movie has a bit of ridiculous gore with loads of blood similar to tomato and is occasionally an engaging horror movie full of fights, curses, and several other things. This time Paul Nashy/Jacinto Molina exhibits little breast but he was a weightlifting champion. Here Waldemar takes on a mad doctor , freaks and a werewolf in some moving fighting scenes. Pretty slow going, but hang in there for the struggle Daninsky versus another she-wolf . Very bad cinematography by Leopoldo Villaseñor is accompanied by a lousy remastering . Filmed in Manzanares and Navacerrada, Madrid and Talamanca De Jarama, location in which were shot most part these horror movies. Eerie and atmospheric musical score by Angel Arteaga, saga's usual .The motion picture written by Naschy is absurdly directed by Jose Maria Zabalza and regularly played by Jacinto Molina , a slick craftsman and mediocre actor . The flick will appeal to Paul Naschy fans and terror genre enthusiast.

Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) travels to Tibet and is bitten by a yeti, which causes him to become a werewolf. He is accidentally killed after he attacks his cheating wife and her lover, and is later revived by a female scientist, Dr. Ilona Ermann, who uses him in mind control experiments. Daninsky later discovers an underground asylum populated by the bizarre subjects of the doctor's failed experiments.Upon hearing of Naschy's death from colleague Jon Kitley, I rummaged through my collection for a suitable film to watch. In my scramble, I found I own not one but three(!) copies of "Fury of the Wolfman". The film is of questionable video quality, the sound is dubbed in a mediocre fashion, the cinematography is sort of slapstick style at times. And the American versions have two love scenes removed. Quite frankly, without a remastered, uncut copy, I wasn't really getting the proper movie in all its glory.This film claims to be the fourth in a long series about the werewolf Count Waldemar Daninsky. I suspect this is true, but you wouldn't know this from the film itself. The plot is confusing at times, and there's really no indication that this is a sequel. If you read the plot summaries on Wikipedia and compare them to what is printed on the box, you'll see that I'm not alone in my confusion.Perhaps the film's shortcomings can be forgiven if we understand the production hell it went through. While floating around for years, it was only released in 1973, due to problems involved in finding a distributor. And Naschy said in his autobiography that the director, Zabalza, was an incompetent alcoholic, and that he hated working with him. Those really aren't light accusations, and I have no idea what Zabalza had to say on his own behalf.Chances are, sooner or later you'll come across a low-grade version of "Fury of the Wolfman". It appears in a variety of three-packs and box sets, so you might accidentally acquire it and not even know. What really needs to happen is an American uncut version, with a decent sound and video mix, and the love scenes thrown back in. As far as I know, this does not exist. Let us honor Paul Naschy's legacy and get his films to a wider audience in a level of quality he deserves.

Someday somebody is going to write an essay comparing Paul Naschy's "Fury of the Wolfman" to the great Spanish surrealist films, "L'age D'or" and "Un Chien Andelou". The Naschy film is a masterpiece of delirium from beginning to end. Dali and Bunuel probably loved it, and ate their hearts out seeing someone do with such apparent ease what they had to rack their brains to pull off.The film lacks cohesive structure even though it does have a plot that moves from A to B to C. Some mishmash about a "Professor Walterman" -- his first name, mind you -- who was bitten by a Yeti monster during an expedition to Tibet and hasn't been the same since, which is understandable. One of his jealous colleagues, the insane daughter of the noted Doctor Wolfstein, knows about his condition and reveals that his wife has been cheating on him. But its a setup for a twisted scientific experiment to unleash his inner beast."Walterman" flips out, turns into a werewolf, kills a few people, is electrocuted, dies, is buried, unburied, taken to a castle filled with circus freaks, wired to various machines, zapped with assorted electronic effects, injected with potent elixirs, is chained up, turns into a werewolf, a woman in an evening gown with thigh-high Nazi fetish boots whips him, he escapes, helps the pretty female doctor find her way out of the castle, fends off the circus freaks with a battle axe, eventually turns back into a werewolf, and has to fight to the death against the female werewolf incarnation of his cheating wife. The lady with the Nazi boots shoots him with silver bullets from her Luger pistol, they die together, and the pretty doctor walks off into the morning with the studly reporter, who did nothing. "Look! What a beautiful day it is!" "La furia del Hombre Lobo" was written by Paul Naschy in a hurry. Original director Enrique Eguilez was fired and replaced by José María Zabalza, a drunk who was infamously intoxicated throughout the production. He was often unable to work (though he did find time to instruct his 14 year old nephew to make some alterations to the script) and Naschy ended up directing much of the film uncredited. Zabalza did rally enough to clip some action scenes from one of Naschy's previous movies, "Mark of the Wolfman". The scenes were fortunately good enough to use twice even if the costumes were different, and helped pad out the runtime after Zabalza refused to get out of bed to finish the movie. Post production was a nightmare. Nobody knew who was doing the editing, the money ran out, the master print disappeared for a while, and then at a pre-release screening for a film distributor the executive arrived to find Zabalza urinating into the gutter in front of the theater. He was too drunk to find the restroom but at least he made it to the curb.Yet somehow the film works, if you let it. It keys into those atavistic memories we have about murky castles, vaulted catacombs, chains, whips, gloomy moors. Fans of those sort of things will find it hypnotically watchable even if the story as a whole doesn't make much sense due to the fractured discontinuity of the execution. In one scene its pouring rain and the wolfman howls at the lightning; in the next shot its bone dry and he's howling at the full moon. Then its raining again. And yet you don't look at it as a gaffe. Its like an unfolding dream where contradictions are possible, opposites are the same, and effects proceed causes; First the wolfman picks up the power cable and screams, and then the cable starts sparking with electricity. People say its low budget hurts the overall effectiveness -- I say the film would have been unwatchable if they had a dime more to spend. It is a marvel of making something out of nothing, and succeeds not because of what it could of had, but because of what it does. It's easy to laugh at stuff like this and even easier to dismiss it. The trick is being able to see through the mayhem, or rather to regard the chaos as part of the effect.Paul Naschy died last week at the age of 75. He had been ill with pancreatic cancer for a year or more, was working on film projects right up until his last days, but passed away in Madrid, Spain, with his family while receiving chemotherapy treatment. His rich, varied, and surprisingly lengthy career is a legacy to a man stubbornly pursuing his artistic vision in the face of universal mainstream disinterest. And yet in all of us there is an eleven year old kid who will watch his movies like "Fury of the Wolfman" in rapt awe. Even people who don't like Euro Horror will discover something in this movie to marvel at, if only for just a minute in a couple spots. You can find it for free at Archive.Org or even buy it on a DVD for a nickel. It's worth far, far more.Amusingly, Naschy was horrified to learn that many others like myself regard this twisted, sick, demented little movie as a classic, if not an outright masterpiece of Cinema Dementia. The problems he encountered during the production and the mess of a film that was left after were perhaps too personal an artistic disappointment for Naschy to forgive. I would never presume to dare to forgive it for him, but I will say this: I'd rather watch "Fury of the Wolfman" in its dingiest, most cut and degraded fullscreen public domain print than ever sit though the overbearing, obnoxious crap churning out up at the Swine Flu cineplexes this or any other weekend.The world lost a great artist this month. Watch his films, and remember.9/10