| Product: |
Doctor Jekyll Versus The Werewolf (DVD) |
| Date: |
15.02.05 (111 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: A guy turns into, a werewolf *and* Mr Hyde, which is kind of cool
Disadvantages: The film is badly, made and doesn't live up to, its crazy premise
(PLEASE NOTE: I ALREADY POSTED THIS REVIEW IN THE VHS CATEGORY - DOOYOO HAVE ASKED ME TO POST IT IN THE DVD CATEGORY INSTEAD - IF YOU ALREADY READ THIS OPINION WHEN I POSTED IT A COUPLE OF WEEKS BACK, PLEASE DON'T READ/RATE IT AGAIN. STOP READING *RIGHT NOW*! AND, ER, TAKE BACK THE EXTRA MILES YOU JUST INADVERTENTLY GAVE ME. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE. IF YOU DIDN'T READ IT BEFORE, THEN READ IT NOW - YOU'LL *LOVE* IT! DOOYOO HAVE DELETED THE ORIGINAL.)
When you think of the classic horror stars, if you ever do, you likely think of people like Boris Karloff or Peter Cushing. It is highly unlikely that you think of Spaniard Paul Naschy - in fact I'd wager that most people have never even heard of him. This is a shame, kind of, as he's certainly put a lot of work into trying to be an old-style horror legend. A former professional weightlifter with little discernible acting talent, Naschy is probably best known, where he's known at all, for playing a tragic werewolf called Waldemar in a series of at least seven horror movies. His first outing was released in 1968, and since then he's made an astonishing variety of films, covering most of the classic horror characters, and I think he's still cranking them out today, aged 70.
The films tend to be pretty difficult to get hold of, I suspect because the audience for them is extremely specialised. The only one I'm aware of being released on DVD in the UK is Dr Jekyll Versus the Werewolf, from 1972. It's put out by Mondo Macabro, who are very good at uncovering these creaky, weird horror efforts from other countries. (If you have a region 1 DVD player, check out Lady Terminator - an Indonesian remake of Terminator, but with a naked woman instead of Arnie. It's, er, better than it sounds.) And although this is the only one of Naschy's films available locally, I suspect it gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect from his other werewolf movies.
It starts in London (you can tell it's London because we get footage of red buses, Big Ben and all the rest). Pretty Justine marries a rich businessman, and for their honeymoon he takes her to the remote Hungarian village where he was born (what a treat!). In spite of some Hammer-style warnings from the local innkeeper, they make an ill-advised trip to the local graveyard. The husband is murdered by bandits, and Justine only escapes a fate worse than death through the timely intervention of a very stocky man in a black polo neck. This is the local nobleman, Waldemar (Naschy), and he, it turns out, is prone to turning into a murderous werewolf whenever there's a full moon. Obviously Justine falls head over heels in love with him - what woman wouldn't? Driven from the village by an extremely small torch-wielding mob, she and Waldemar head back to London, where she hopes that her ex-boyfriend Dr Jekyll (grandson of *the* Dr Jekyll) can help him.
Jekyll's brilliant idea is to inject Waldemar the werewolf with the drug that turned his grandfather into Mr Hyde, reasoning that the two evils will cancel each other out. Now, I'm no mad scientist (would to God I were), but even I can see the flaw in that plan. But Jekyll's love for Justine has blinded him to reason, and his slutty lab assistant and sometime girlfriend Sandra has plans of her own... That's all just the set up for the film's frenetic second half, and it takes almost as long to type the plot summary as it does to watch the damn film.
So is it any good? No, of course not. Is it even funny-good? Hmm, not really to be honest. It's probably only worth seeing if you really can't live until you know what 70s Spanish werewolf movies are like (obviously I couldn't). The acting is terrible throughout, with Naschy being particularly bad (makes you wonder how on earth he managed to make so many films). Actually, I'm being unfair - he's OK when he turns into Mr Hyde. It's just when he's either Waldemar or the werewolf that he's bad. The rest of the cast are no better, and there's an all-too-brief appearance by a nurse who I think might just be the worst actress I've ever seen in anything. And that's saying a lot.
The dialogue is idiotic ('As I suspected: his blood changes its attributes and becomes that of a wolf'), although this may be unsympathetic subtitling (the film is in Spanish - I'm sure a dubbed version must have been released at some point, and I wish they'd included it on the DVD, as it would probably be a lot funnier). The direction, by Leon Klimovsky, a frequent Naschy collaborator, is fairly uninspired. The set design is bog standard Hammer-on-a-budget (although Jekyll's laboratory has an impressive array of bubbling test tubes). The special effects are terrible, with the transformation scenes being at best perfunctory (the key to the success of any werewolf movie is the transformation scenes). The werewolf makeup is also pretty shoddy, with a distinctly unscary furry face (he does slobber a lot, though, which is mildly distressing). And to top it all off there are some appalling day-for-night scenes that won't fool anyone for a minute.
Is it all bad? Well, there are a couple of nice bits. There are some good shots of Hyde wandering around 60s Soho (only a few of them, as the London street scenes were shot quickly and surreptitiously). These are accompanied by some terrific lounge-y music. And there's a great night-club scene towards the end, where dolly birds and men in smart suits jerk arrythmically to crazy music. But that's pretty much all.
The film has a 15 certificate, and there's no nudity or particularly exciting gore - quite a surprise in a 70s European exploitation film. (I think a longer version of this exists somewhere, though, so maybe there's more in that version.) This is a serious disappointment - if you've gone to the trouble of having your main character get stuck in a lift, with a nurse, on a full moon, you really need a pretty hefty gore pay-off, if only to distract the audience from the appallingly contrived plotting. The werewolf is described as 'a sadist worse than Jack the Ripper' (who wasn't a sadist, of course, but I wouldn't let that worry you in this context) - surely the least we could expect would be a couple of severed limbs and maybe an eyeball gouging. Ah, the lost opportunities of the exploitation movie, I could write a dissertation. I really could.
The picture and sound quality on the DVD are fine (actually, surprisingly good considering the film's vintage). There are a few extras: informative cast and crew biographies, and a history of Spanish horror movies (they have easy-to-read text for a change). And there's a 20-minute interview with Naschy himself as he looks back over his long career. There are plenty of exciting looking stills and posters shown during the interview (I particularly like the look of a film called The Hunchback of the Morgue), but sadly no clips. Naschy himself is a likeable enough old boy, with plenty of enthusiasm for what he's done, and it's sad that he didn't have the talent necessary to make films that were anything more than footnotes in the horror canon.
So there we are. I'm glad I finally saw a Paul Naschy film, as more or less every history of horror movies mentions him in passing. The fact that it isn't very good doesn't particularly disappoint me - I didn't really expect it to be. I'm not recommending this, that would be ludicrous, but it's nice that it's there.
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