Spanish writer/director/actor Paul Naschy is best known for his portrayal of Count Waldemar Daninsky, a man who inevitably is bitten by and then becomes a werewolf, doomed to a horrible fate. He portrayed that character in some 12 different films, though they are all essentially stand-alone movies. The plots are not interconnected, and for the most part, each film tells the story of how he becomes a werewolf and is eventually hunted down and killed. I’ve seen a few of them, and while nobody would ever confuse these films with great cinema, they are a lot of fun to watch and usually made with some fine craftsmanship.
Buy Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror Blu-rayFrankenstein’s Bloody Terror, also known as The Mark of the Wolfman, Hell’s Creatures, and half a dozen other names, actually has nothing whatsoever to do with Frankenstein or his bloody terror. American producer Samuel M. Sherman had promised his distributors a Frankenstein double feature, but he only had one film. He quickly screened a bunch of foreign films, liked this one, and changed the title, added a quick bit of narration at the beginning explaining the Frankensteins changed their names to Wolfstein, and called it a day.
This was actually the first of Naschy’s Hombre Lobo series (as his werewolf movies came to be known). He originally wanted Lon Chaney, Jr., to star, but when he turned it down, Naschy took the role, and the rest is history.
A couple of drunken gypsies take shelter in the old, abandoned Castle Wolfstein. They stumble upon some corpses in the basement, one of which has a silver cross stabbed into its chest. Like total amateurs, they remove the cross and awaken the werewolf within. That werewolf bites Count Waldemar Daninsky, who then becomes a werewolf himself.
Terrified of what he has become, Waldemar (and I swear every time someone says his name, it sounds like Voldemort, causing my wife and I to giggle) enlists a couple of specialists to help. They turn out to be vampires (who get no mention in the title or any of the promotional material despite actually existing in the film – go figure.)
The plot is all a bit silly (and confusing, if I’m being honest), but it does give us some werewolf-on-werewolf action and a pretty killer final battle between Waldemar and the two vampires. There is a love interest and some concern by various villages, but really it is all about the werewolf tearing into things.
The film was originally shot to be shown in 3-D, but apparently the American investors provided cheap lenses for the projectors, causing it to look bad and that idea was scrapped. Reportedly it was regularly show in 3-D in Germany, where, presumably, they provided better projectors.
Kino Lorber presents Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror with a new restoration by the 3-D Archive. It comes in three different formats: stereoscope (in which a player and monitor capable of playing it in 3-D are required), anaglyph (the more typical 3-D format in which one pair of red/green glasses is provided), and a regular, 2-D format.
I do not have a 3-D television, so I was unable to watch it in stereoscope. I tried it in anaglyph, but I’ve always found that format more annoying than interesting. The glasses don’t fit well, so I’m constantly adjusting them, and because of this, I can ever only partially see the 3-D effects. I watched it long enough to confirm that the 3-D effects work about as well as one expects them to in this sort of thing. I did appreciate that they didn’t spend a lot of time throwing things at the camera to scare the audience. They did make creative use of the depth of field, often placing characters and objects in the foreground and others in the background, creating an interesting, but not distracting 3-D picture.
I watched most of the film in the 2-D format, and it was a mixed bag. It has clearly been cleaned up and was mostly clear of debris. But you can often tell it was meant for the 3-D format. There are multiple instances where objects are a little blurry, and the colors blended together.
The direction from Enrique López Eguiluz and cinematography from Emilion Foriscot is quite good. They make great use of the castle sets and the finale is filled with evocative lighting and shadows.
Extras include the following:
- Audio Commentary by Novelist and Critic Tim Lucas
- Audio Commentary by Film Historians Troy Howarth, Troy Guinn and Rodney Barnett
- About the 3-D Restoration by Tim Lucas
- Alternate Opening Title Sequence
- Deleted Scenes
- Theatrical Trailer
- Radio Spots
- Optional English Subtitles
Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror is an interesting glimpse into the beginnings of Paul Naschy’s werewolf cinema. It doesn’t have the crazed entertainment value of some of the later films in this series, but there is plenty here to enjoy. I appreciate that Kino Lorber is presenting it in its original 3-D formats even if I was unable to fully enjoy them.
