El retorno del Hombre-Lobo (1981)

... aka: Craving, The
... aka: Night of the Werewolf, The
... aka: Return of the Werewolf, The
... aka: Return of the Wolfman
... aka: Werewolf, The

Directed by:
"Jack Molina" (Paul Naschy)

1981 was a big comeback year for werewolves. An American Werewolf in London, The Howling and Wolfen were all profitable genre films that also received generally positive notices from critics. American Werewolf would even go on to win the very first Oscar ever given out for Best Make-Up. It seemed like the perfect year for a new chapter in the Waldemar Daninsky saga. The Spanish-produced series had a strong seven film run starting with FRANKENSTEIN'S BLOODY TERROR in 1968. The series stalled in 1975 with NIGHT OF THE HOWLING BEAST, but was revived once again for Night of the Werewolf; a semi-remake of the international hit THE WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN (one of the highest-grossing entries in the series). Equipped with a healthy budget and fine technical aspects, Night ended up flopping so badly that director, writer and star Paul Naschy was forced to go to Japan to secure funding for future projects, which would be sporadic through the 80s. This isn't a bad movie, but it's easy to see why it failed financially. While the aforementioned 1981 werewolf hits all offered a contemporary setting, fresh takes on lycanthropy and updated special effects, Night of the Werewolf was stuck in the past. There was simply no market for old-fashioned Gothic horror flicks by the early 80s and the old school time lapse transformation effects and traditional werewolf design just didn't cut the mustard.

In the pre-credits sequence, Elisabeth Bathory ("Jully" / Julia Saly) is convicted of witchcraft, vampirism, dealings with the devil and cannibalism and is sentenced to be buried alive, while her faithful followers are sentenced to be tortured, hanged, burned alive and / or beheaded. At the same trial, Polish nobleman Waldemar Daninsky (Naschy) is convicted of murdering "hundreds" of people and, rumored to be a werewolf, is ordered to have a "the mask of dishonor" placed over his head and a silver cross driven into his chest.

Now flashing forward to the present, college student Erika (Silvia Aguilar), who's doing some kind of research paper on Elisabeth Bathory, has been dabbling in witchcraft and managed to get herself entranced by Bathory's spirit in the process. She strangles her professor (Narciso Ibáñez Menta), steals a medallion that once belonged to Bathory from him and then decides to lure two of her oblivious friends; Karin (Azucena Hernández) and Barbara (Pilar Alcón), to Transylvania and the Carpathian Mountains and plots to use their blood to revive the countess. Meanwhile, two grave robbers stumble upon Waldemar's tomb, remove the silver cross from his chest, awaken him and are killed. The three ladies arrive in the area soon after, shrug off warnings from the locals, rent a car and then decide to go to the ruined castle where the remains of Bathory, her followers and Waldemar are said to rest. On the way there, three bandits (led by genre vet Luis Barboo) try to rob and rape them but are shot dead with a crossbow by someone lurking in the woods.

After their car breaks down at the foot of the crumbling castle, the ladies scour through cobwebs, rats and skeletons until they find the tombs they were looking for. They also discover a few things they weren't looking for, namely some fresh corpses and a mysterious man armed with a crossbow and dressed in medieval garb. Claiming his name is Janos, it's actually Waldemar Daninsky. He occupies a nearby mansion along with his faithful servant Mircaya (Beatriz Elorrieta), whose face and body are withered from surviving being burned at the stake as a witch many years earlier. Karin is injured after falling into a hole so the ladies take up his offer of bed and board until she heals. Waldemar sneaks off on full moons to kill various people in the vicinity, then learns from the astrology-obsessed Mircaya that Karin is "The Chosen One" who can finally deliver him from his curse. This requires her falling in love with him and then driving something silver back into his heart. Once recovered, Karin finds herself drawn to Waldemar, but she wonders if she can truly love the man once she sees his monstrous side.

Meanwhile, down in the tombs, Erika is busy at work trying to revive the countess. She kills Barbara, hangs her upside down over Elisabeth's tomb and then cuts her throat so the blood runs all over it. The tomb lid levitates off and there lies Elisabeth alive, perfectly preserved and ready to do evil. She drinks from both Erika and Barbara, turning them into her minions, and also resurrects a skull-faced zombie. She wants both Mircaya and Waldemar under her control and instructs Erika to go to the castle and "infect him with your stigma." The vampire pays frequent visits to town in the meantime to feast upon the populace. All ends in a slow-motion showdown between the werewolf and the vampire women with a tragic ending for all involved.

Plot-wise, this offers nothing new in either the Waldemar legacy or in the vampire or werewolf subgenres. It has its fair share of continuity problems, abrupt editing cuts and the pacing goes to hell during the last half hour as things start to drag out toward a predictable conclusion. The writing is also often poor. When Waldemar and Karin enter the vampire's crypt, they kill the zombie but then decide to "wait until tomorrow" to kill the vampires just because Karin is scared. That simply gives the bloodsuckers more time to sneak around and kill and also gives Bathory the chance to bite Karin and entrace her. Why do Waldemar and Karin, who have become lovers, start sleeping in separate bedrooms all of a sudden? Is it because he snores or because it's just an easy excuse to allow the vampires to attack them separately at night? And I don't know about you, but if I knew vampires were after me, I'd be going to bed wearing about five crucifix necklaces, a choker made of garlic bulbs and a WWJD t-shirt instead of flimsy negligee with my neck exposed and my only protection sitting on a table on the other side of the room.

Problems aside, this familiar tale at least looks great. It's nicely photographed and scored and achieves the appropriate Gothic atmosphere through authentic location shooting, very good art direction and lots of fog. There's not a whole lot of blood and what nudity there is is very brief or shot from a distance. It's a bit "classier" than most of the other films in this series and seems like an attempt at a more respectable (or perhaps more commercially viable) horror flick. Most of the cast (the female stars are insanely gorgeous by the way) were also in Human Beasts, which was also directed by Naschy and filmed the same year. Naschy used the alias "Jack Molina" in the credits.

Given just a limited theatrical release in the United States, this first popped up on home video under the title The Craving, which was distributed by Vestron. The DVD from BCI / Eclipse (released in 2007) is a very good quality print which offers English and Spanish audio tracks (with a subtitle option), trailers, alternate Spanish beginning and end credits (most of which were removed from the English-language cut) and a few deleted scenes.

★★1/2

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

... aka: Dawn of the Living Dead
... aka: George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead
... aka: Zombi
... aka: Zombie
... aka: Zombie: Dawn of the Dead
... aka: Zombies, The
... aka: Zombies: Dawn of the Dead

Directed by:
George A. Romero

Romero's follow-up to his trend-setting NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) is, quite simply, one of the finest horror films ever made. What started on a small scale in Night has exploded into a full-out epidemic of flesh-eating zombies. At a TV studio, a disorganized emergency news broadcast is underway, but the station workers are fleeing in droves. Fran (Gaylen Ross) gets word from her helicopter pilot boyfriend Stephen (David Emge) that they're going to do the same. The city is getting too dangerous and, after all, "Someone's got to survive." Meanwhile, after trying to help contain a zombie infestation in a tenement apartment, infantryman Roger (Scott H. Reiniger) - who's already been drafted to help escort Stephen and Fran out of the dangerous city - meets Peter (Ken Foree). Since there's going to be an extra seat on the copter and he could use an extra pair of hands anyway, Roger invites Peter along for the ride. The four take off that evening and fly through the night, passing a redneck posse blasting zombies and having an almost fatal run-in with the living dead while stopping to refuel the next day. Flying on a bit further, they stumble upon a large shopping mall. Though it's full of zombies, they're in desperate need of both rest and supplies. Peter and Roger go down below to get what they need, then come to the conclusion they may have stumbled onto a good thing.

Using semi trucks, they block all of the entrances, then go about locking the doors, welding them shut and killing off all the zombies currently inside. Though Roger is bitten and grows increasingly ill, the four now have a safe haven stocked with everything they could possibly need. There's food, clothing, shelter, medicine, a gun and ammunition store and even a video arcade and ice skating rink for their entertainment needs. For a short while, they're able to keep tabs on what's going on elsewhere tuning in to a pirate TV broadcast, but this connection to the outside world - a faint glimmer of hope that things might actually turn out OK - is short-lived. Roger passes away, Fran discovers she's pregnant and, after awhile, the surviving three come to the sad conclusion that life as they know it is over. Now faced with the option of fleeing into a devastated and dangerous world or rotting away in the mall, the three eke out a miserable existence until they're forced into action when a gang of gun-toting motorcyclists - who've been wily enough to survive on the road this entire time - decide to destroy their barricades and start looting, allowing a huge number of zombies to come in with them. Who will win out on capturing control of the commercial kingdom? Better yet, does it really even matter by that point?

Dawn wonderfully balances horror, action, drama and humor; from the blackest of comedy to clever sight gags to even broad slapstick, and manages to capture a grim apocalyptic feel better than films with a 100 million dollar special effects budget. Its clever use of metaphor has been duly noted over the years: You can see plenty of dead-eyed zombies mindlessly marching through the mall any time you choose. Same goes for its nihilistic worldview: If the end of life as we know it isn't even enough to make us all cooperate and get along, what is? Though undoubtedly bleak, it surprises with glimpses of warmth and humanity, such as a quiet scene where Peter shares some champagne with his fallen friend or Fran's joy in finally learning how to shoot guns or fly the helicopter. The central cast is fine playing characters who are well-intentioned yet flawed, courageous yet sometimes foolishly so, noble yet frustrating. Just like the rest of us.

Until-then unseen levels of splatter earned this a reputation as a gore-fest right away, and also established make-up man Tom Savini (who also appears in the film and did stunts) as the king of such effects. Threatened with an X-rating due to violence, Romero opted to release Dawn unrated instead. Though the X / unrated label was usually a kiss of death at the box office, Dawn is one of the rare occasions where the film became a hit irregardless. It did especially well in Europe. In addition to being financially successful, it also garnered mostly positive reviews from mainstream critics, even from those who'd shown contempt for the genre in the past. Even they seemed to realize that the movie can be enjoyed on a multitude of fronts.

I've always had a more difficult time writing reviews for films I really admire than for ones I hate or am completely indifferent about. I suppose part of that is the feeling I'm going to forget things I really should be saying but for the most part it's probably the worry that I won't be able to do the film justice in just a few short paragraphs. This is one of those cases. And it's why I'm just now sitting down to write a bit about a film that I grew up with and became an instant favorite of mine; one I've revisited many times over the years and will no doubt continue to revisit for the rest of my days. It's one of the first movies I had to own on VHS and, if you know me in real life and haven't yet seen it, rest assured you will before it's all said and done.

Seven years later Romero returned with DAY OF THE DEAD (1985). This even-bleaker tale about scientists and military men (who may very well be the last remaining humans on the planet) clashing in an underground military installation, failed to reach the critical or financial success of either Night or Dawn. Despite the cold initial reception, the film would eventually gain a strong - albeit belated - cult following. Twenty years after Day, likely thanks to the box office success of Zack Snyder's action-oriented Dawn remake and the wonderful British zom-com hit SHAUN OF THE DEAD (which directly referenced Dawn throughout), Romero returned with LAND OF THE DEAD (2005), his highest-budgeted movie to date. Two more zombie films: the polarizing, undervalued DIARY OF THE DEAD (2007) and the lesser but still worthwhile and quirky SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD (2009), followed. Though some of these are better than others, each centers around a basic idea and contains something of relevance that's worth listening to. I've enjoyed all of them.

Dario Argento received credit for the music (along with Goblin) and as script consultant. He also had the film edited down to 117 minutes for the Italian release, which features a different score than other releases. The director's approved cut (which is what played in American theaters) runs 126 minutes, the extended cut runs 138 minutes and there's even an "ultimate cut" (released in Germany) that reputedly runs 156 minutes. On a budget of 650,000 dollars, the film grossed 55 million worldwide. The four disc "Ultimate Edition" set from Anchor Bay, which includes multiple cuts of the film and tons of supplements is about the best you're going to do DVD wise.

Massively influential over the years, and not solely within the horror genre, Dawn would go on to spawn numerous clones for years after its release; the most popular of which was probably Fulci's ZOMBI 2 (released overseas as [a bogus] sequel to Dawn). It was the subject of several feature length documentaries (including 1989's DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD and 2004's THE DEAD STILL WALK) and also spawned comic books, action figures, you name it. In recent years, zombies have seen a huge resurgence in popularity, from too-numerous to list hit video games, dozen of direct-to-video zombie film releases per year, lucrative film franchises such as the RESIDENT EVIL series and the current hugely popular The Walking Dead cable TV series. And we have Romero to thank for all of it.

★★★★