Night of the Werewolf

 Paul Naschy is often called the Spanish Lon Chaney due to the amount of horror movies he has starred in.  He has also ran the gamut on classic horror characters playing the Wolfman, Frankenstein's Monster, Dracula, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Fu Manchu.  Naschy wrote, directed, and starred in 1980's Night of the Werewolf.  The film is one in a series of werewolf films Naschy starred in where he played Count Waldemar Daninsky.  The series ran a total of 12 feature films and on anthology film where the character appeared on one of the stories there as well.  For this installment we begin in the Carpathian mountains many centuries age.  Elizabeth Bathory (Julia Saly) along with a bunch of witches are to be executed.  Also among the convicted and sentenced to death is Daninsky who is shut in an iron mask and pierced with a silver dagger and left in sort of suspended animation as he cannot be killed.  Back in modern day, a trio of witches bring Bathroy back from the dead while a couple of grave-robbers find Daninsky's place of burial and remove the dagger bringing him back to life.

 The movie takes place in a Gothic castle and the sets and scenery are beautiful.  Everything feels like you are in a castle somewhere in the Carpathian mountains.  The story quickly evolves into a werewolf vs. group of witches fight to the finish.  All of the actresses that play the witches/vampires/vampire witches(?) are gorgeous while being appropriately creepy.  Naschy is of course his usual self who can nearly carry a film like this on his own if needed but it's not needed here.  Naschy's directing skills are pretty good as well. 

The only issues I have is a little bit of the writing and I will explain.  At the beginning of the movie Daninsky is supposed to be one of Bathroy's henchmen possibly right behind her brother in the hierarchy of the witches.  If this is the case why are they immediately diving into a bloody battle right after they are revived?  My other problem is there is a scene where the girl who Daninsky is trying to start a relationship with, Erika (Silvia Aguilar), falls backwards into what is called a pit.  If she stood up inside of this "pit" from her shins up would literally be out of the pit.  It seemed a little hard to believe that she fell into this little pot hole and was very badly injured.  The story does drag a bit in the middle but the beginning and ending do more than make up for it.  Once again we had Rickster Rick from The Land of Cerpts and Honey blog (who is also doing the Countdown to Halloween Blog-A-Thon also so you might wanna go check him out over there too, tell his Cheeks sent ya) on hand to watch this one.  All three of us felt about the same for this one.  The Horror Honey and I each gave it 3 and a half Be headings out of 5 while The Horror Homie gave it 3.