La furia del Hombre Lobo (1972)

La furia del Hombre Lobo: Directed by José María Zabalza. With Paul Naschy, Perla Cristal, Verónica Luján, Miguel de la Riva. A man 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.

“u0026quot;La Furia del Hombre Lobou0026quot; forms a completely stand-alone storyline which doesnu0026#39;t seem to fit in at all with the previous Waldemar Daninsky movies. Some have commented that this movie is supposed to take place before the events of u0026quot;Werewolf Shadowu0026quot;, although it was released afterwards … they may be right, Iu0026#39;m not sure. Anyway, in this movie Waldemar Daninsky is bitten by a yeti-like creature in Tibet (great dialogue here — u0026quot;It was a yeti. But thatu0026#39;s impossible. Iu0026#39;m a scientist and these things donu0026#39;t exist. It was a hallucination. Thatu0026#39;s all.u0026quot;) and although marked with the sign of the pentagram, he is able to prevent the change into a werewolf until he discovers that his wife has been cheating on him. Changing into the beast one night, he kills both her and her lover before running out into a storm and being electrocuted. Itu0026#39;s not long before heu0026#39;s resurrected by a dominatrix university professor who is conducting some kind of unfathomable experiments with mind control. He is taken to the underground cellar of a castle where the subjects of these experiments live like chained animals.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eFirst of all — Jacinto Molina, Paul Naschy, whatever you want to call him, heu0026#39;s a fine actor and cared passionately about his work. No matter how flawed these movies are, you can always rely on him for a decent performance. The rest of the cast seem good enough, but itu0026#39;s hard to tell when they have a half-assed voice-over dubbed over all their lines. And that was really the main problem for me … many of the voice-over artists they used were just awful, awful, awful. Whenever I chuckled during the movie it was at the inept way that they delivered their lines (they seem to constantly refer to the hero as u0026quot;Waldemanu0026quot;). But unfortunately itu0026#39;s almost impossible to find subtitled copies of Naschy movies, although theyu0026#39;re sometimes available in the original language without subtitles.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe directing of Jose Maria Zabalza seems sort of hit-and-miss … there are some great visual ideas in some scenes, while others are badly constructed and poorly edited, particularly in the final scenes when it really counts. The reason for this, was that Zabalza was apparently drunk most of the time while on set. He allowed his fourteen year old nephew to rewrite Molinau0026#39;s dialogue, used extras without his permission, and spliced several shots from Molinau0026#39;s earlier movies. All of this pretty much ruined any chance this movie had of being one of Molinau0026#39;s best works, and itu0026#39;s no surprise that the two of them never worked together again.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBut itu0026#39;s not all bad news, as there are some good ideas here. Some aspects of the storyline make an interesting psychological drama with the werewolf as a metaphor for jealousy and rage. The u0026#39;werewolf as a yetiu0026#39; idea is one that returned in Molinau0026#39;s later work. Some pretty horrific and surreal stuff goes on down in the cellar, and thereu0026#39;s also a very memorable sequence about half way through the film where Daninsky runs from house to house through a village, slaughtering or molesting innocents as he goes — one scene is particularly intense, but itu0026#39;s actually lifted straight from Molinau0026#39;s first movie, u0026quot;La Marca del Hombre-lobou0026quot; along with a few other shots. I actually found the movie on the whole to be very entertaining, although there are some problems with the Front Row Entertainment version, such as pretty obvious cuts (although some of it may simply be due to the directoru0026#39;s lack of continuity). Gods knows what omissions there are — Iu0026#39;ll probably try to get my hands on the uncut version at some stage in the future.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis is a overall a decent piece of vintage Naschy which experienced fans might enjoy, but it could have been much better and so probably wouldnu0026#39;t make a great introduction.”