Mark of the Wolfman (1968)

Mark of the Wolfman is where it all began for Paul Naschy and the saga of his best known character, Waldemar Daninsky, the eternally doomed werewolf.  It also marked an early international success for Spanish horror movies, achieving a widespread release (albeit over a period of several years and under multiple titles - it was called Hell's Creatures in the UK, for example).  There is something apt in the fact that, for its 1971 US release, it was retitled Frankenstein's Bloody Terror, despite having nothing to do with the famed monster maker, (the US distributor had promised exhibitors a Frankenstein double bill, with Al Adamson's Frankenstein Versus Dracula as the top half, unable to secure a second, genuine, Frankenstein picture, he simply acquired the US rights to the Naschy film and retitled it), as Mark of the Wolfman was clearly inspired by the old Universal horror series.  Indeed, one of the first horror films the young Naschy ever saw was the original Universal 'monster rally', Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, which, like Mark of the Wolfman, brings together multiple monsters.  Certainly, in terms of its plot elements, settings (lots of Gothic castles, musty tombs and dungeons) and characters, Mark of the Wolfman is a very old-fashioned film, looking backwards to the 'golden age' of  monster movies, rather than taking its cue from more recent horror trends, like Night of the Living Dead, which was released the same year.  On the other hand, it ups considerably the gore and violence quotient in comparison even to the then most recent Hammer films.

As previously noted, this was the first film in what was to become a long running series of films featuring the Waldemar Daninsky character.  It is notable that the movies quickly abandon any pretense of continuity, with the character's werewolf origins and profession varying from film-to-film: sometimes he a nobleman living in hereditary castle, other times he is an anthropologist or an explorer.  Sometimes he married, sometimes not.  Even the era he lives in varies: in the earlier films he is clearly a contemporary character, whereas later films adopt historical, often medieval, settings.  The constant is that Daninsky is continual subjected to the curse of lycanthropy, with the films chronicling his attempts to lift the curse while simultaneously trying to protect those he loves not just from his own bestial alter-ego, but also from other supernatural or evil threats.  The pattern is set here, in this first film.  Daninsky is portrayed as being a mysterious figure, clearly from a wealthy background, but fallen on hard times and forced to sell parts of inheritance in order to survive.  He has the misfortune to be bitten by a  werewolf inadvertently resurrected from his tomb at the abandoned Castle Wolfstein by a pair of gypsies.  He kills Wolfstein, but soon finds himself turning hairy and murdering the locals.  Assisted by a local girl who has fallen in love with him and her erstwhile fiance, Daninsky desperately searches for a cure by day, while chained up in the Wolfstein dungeons by night, eventually learning of a German scientist who might be able to help him.  Summoning the scientist, Daninsky and his helpers find themselves confronted by a brother and sister pair of scientists representing themselves as the original's children.  They set themselves up at the castle, but quickly reveal themselves as vampires, chaining Daninsky up and putting his helpers under their spell.  They resurrect Wolfstein, who has a fight has a fight to the death with Waldemar,  The latter, still in wolfman form, then proceeds to deal with the vampires before, himself, succumbing to a silver bullet fired by the girl who loves him.

None of which is exactly ground-breaking, but it is rather well done.  Mark of the Wolfman was clearly seen as a prestige production, being shot in colour, widescreen and 70mm (it only played in this latter format in Germany, apparently) and its production values are excellent.  Director Leon Klimovsky, in the first of a number of collaborations with Naschy, gives the film a highly polished look, handling the action scenes of Daninsky's werewolf attacks, the battle with Wolfstein and the pursuit of the vampires with aplomb, ultimately driving the whole film along at a brisk pace.  The entire production is also very atmospheric, with Klimovsky often conjuring up a dream like feel to sequences - particularly those involving the vampires and their mesmerised victims.  The first appearance of the vampires, emerging from the swirling smoke at an otherwise deserted railway station is outstanding, lingering in the memory long after the film has ended.  The performances, although, as always, hampered by variable dubbing in the English-language version, are generally adequate, with Naschy succeeding in making Daninsky a suitably enigmatic and haunted character (even before he is bitten), tortured by the curse placed upon him.  Only the male vampire really jars, with the actor playing him twirling his cloak and posturing far too melodramatically at the film's climax.

While Naschy (who also wrote the film under his real name of Jacinto Molina) and Klimovsky might have succeeded in making Mark of the Wolfman something of a minor classic, it could easily have turned out differently, as a brief look at one of the sequels will show.  1973's Fury of the Wolfman is the third in the series (or fourth if you accept that the supposedly never completed Nights of the Wolfman was ever anything more than a fantasy on Naschy's part), arguably the first proper sequel, if you discount the science fiction monster mash Assignment: Terror, in which Daninsky is really a supporting character.  It reworks much of the material from the first film - a werewolf on werewolf fight, Daninsky's capture and torture by an evil woman (also called Wolfstein and the daughter of a dead scientist), the resurrection of a character killed off earlier and a silver bullet fired by a woman who loves Waldemar - but without Klimovsky at the helm, it is something of a farrago. Discarding continuity, (this time Waldemar is an explorer back from Tibet, where he was bitten by a Yeti, thereby giving him the curse of lycanthropy, finds his wife has been cheating on him, so murders her before being himself killed), the scenario quickly becomes over-complicated and is told in a confused fashion.  There is little in the way of atmosphere or suspense and is very flatly filmed.  Even the werewolf sequences are largely botched, the exception being a sequence lifted from Mark of the Wolfman, which the director doesn't bother to match with the new footage, (Daninsky's shirt, for instance, changes colour).  Naschy maintained that the film's director, Jose Maria Zabalza (who was a last minute replacement for Enrique Eguiliz), was an alcoholic and was drunk throughout most of the filming.

To be fair, Fury of the Wolfman isn't entirely without entertainment value, coming on like a particularly demented Universal monster rally, desperately throwing in everything - multiple werewolves, walking dead, murderous hippies - in a desperate attempt to keep things moving.  It is what, when I was a child, I thought horror films should be like - a crazy blur of blood, monsters, castles and action - but very shoddily done. Whereas the first film had a mythic feel, Fury is just a mess.  Mark of the Wolfman showed that, with some care and skill, virtually the same elements could be forged into a good version of  my childhood self's ideal horror film.  It is actually to my great regret that I didn't see Mark of the Wolfman when I was in my early teens ( I had read about it, but it was the pre-video age when such films never appeared on UK TV).  I would undoubtedly have liked it even more than I do now.  Fortunately, with the next instalment after Fury, The Werewolf vs The Vampire Woman, the series got back on course with Leon Klimovsky at the helm once more.  Further adventures followed, including another encounter with the abominable snowman in The Werewolf and the Yeti (the Yeti's bite infects him, although the film is entirely self contained and separate from Fury of the Wolfman - it is also, I believe, the only entry in the series with a happy ending as he finds a cure), and a meeting with descendant of Dr Jekyll (Dr Jekyll and the Werewolf).  Various other adventures followed, several of which, including a Japanese excursion, have sadly never had English language releases.  The series is fascinating, with each film essentially self contained, thereby presenting Waldemar as a character doomed to forever repeat his cycle of lycanthropy throughout history and across Europe - it doesn't matter where or when he exists, he cannot escape his fate. 

Oh, if you are sill wondering about that US release title, it is justified by a semi-animated title sequence, in which the Frankenstein monster is shown turning into a werewolf, while an unseen narrator intones the information that after being cursed with lycanthropy, the familiy changed its name to Wolfstein.  Yeah, that explains everything...