The Loreley's Grasp (1973)

As I've oft noted here, thanks to a combination of illegal uploads to the likes of YouTube and streaming TV's insatiable appetite for content, you can be sure that even the most obscure of low budget exploitation movies will eventually become available.  So it was that I was recently able to finally catch up with Spanish seventies horror film I recalled reading about when I was a kid, but which had remained elusive for decades.  The Loreley's Grasp (1973) is of interest for a couple of reasons: it represented an attempt to create a new movie monster, drawing from Germanic mythology for a change, plus it was written and directed by Amando D. Ossorio, best known for his 'Blind Dead' series of horror films.  Looking at its production and release dates, The Loreley's Grasp would seem to represent an attempt to follow up on the success of the first 'Blind Dead' film, introducing another, all-new, monster.  As Ossorio's presence suggests, the film is Spanish made, although set in West Germany - despite various establishing shots of German locations, it is pretty obviously shot in Spain, with a mainly Spanish cast, although the two leads are Italian and German.  The plot centres on the legendary siren of the Rhine, Loreley (or Lorelei, even), who is traditionally depicted as a beautiful woman who sits on her namesake rock in the Rhine, her song luring the crews of passing boats to their doom on nearby rocks.  Here, however, she becomes a water nymph who, during the full moon, transforms into a scaly reptilian creature that rips the hearts from her victims, in order to eat them and transform back again.  What this ensures, of course, is that the film has a pretty high gore quotient, with some pretty graphic, for the early seventies, heart rippings out, (with young women as frequent victims in order to justify some bared breasts).

Like many continental horror films of the era, despite having a contemporary setting, The Loreley's Grasp frequently slips back into the genre tropes of the forties, with a cast of characters who might have wandered in from one of Universal's classic horror movies.  The Burgomeister of the small town where most of the action takes place, the blind musician, the handsome hunter brought in to kill the monster, they're all present, along with the eccentric and mysterious savant/scientist who turns out to be an expert on the beast, the plucky lady teacher and even the Loreley's ancient and loyal retainer.  Add to all these stock characters the fact that, when in human form, Loreley travels around in a horse drawn coach, (she frequently turns up at the funerals of her victims), and the film ends up having a weird, time-warped feel about it.  The plot ultimately breaks down into following the various killings carried out by Loreley, with the hunter always one step behind.  Eventually, these murders go beyond being fuelled by her need for human hearts, with the killings increasingly intended to eliminate those who seem to know too much about her.  In order to pad out the plot and add some depth to the story, the script ultimately has to mash together the legend of the Loreley with that of Siegfried and the Rheingold - which means that Loreley is revealed to be Wotan's daughter, charged with guarding the golden treasure of the Nibelungs in her grotto beneath the Rhine, where she is attended by the three Rhine Maidens and her retainer Alberic.  Also thrown into the mix is the 'sword of Siegfried', an irradiated blade prepared by the savant, which can force Loreley back into her human form and kill her.

In terms of execution, The Loreley's Grasp fails to match the bar set by Ossorio with his previous movie, the first 'Blind Dead' film.  Despite a brisk opening, with the Loreley in scaly form crashing through some windows to claim its first victim before the titles have rolled, Ossorio fails to maintain this pace, following up with far too many talky scenes of exposition before we get back to the monster's deprivations.  Moreover, the script is poorly structured, with the presence of a nearby girls' finishing school set up early on, but then not developed properly, with the Loreley seemingly taking two thirds of the film to realise that there is a copious supply of beautiful babes who like to take their clothes off close to her lair.  An opportunity largely missed.  The film's biggest weakness, though, is its monster, which is a pretty unconvincing man-in-a-rubber-suit which, following Ossorio's previous monster, the shambling, relentless blind and undead Knights Templar, who exude eeriness and menace with their decayed appearance, comes as a major disappointment.  It simply lacks the blind dead's originality, coming over as a poor relative of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  Consequently, the film lacks any real atmosphere or suspense.  On the positive side, it does have some strong gore scenes and features some familiar Euro-exploitation faces in the cast, notably Tony Kendall/Luciano Stella as the hunter, Helga Line as Loreley and Franco veteran Luis Barboo as Alberic.  Not as insane as a Jesus Franco movie nor as much fun as one of Paul Naschy's monster fests, (although, in the English dub I watched, his usual English-language voice is used by Tony Kendall), The Loreley's Grasp definitely falls into the second rank of seventies Spanish horror and, despite Ossorio's credentials, it isn't surprising that it has fallen into obscurity.

As a footnote, despite what the film would have you believe, the Loreley isn't actually an ancient Germanic myth, instead having her origins in an 1801 ballad by Clemens Brantano, which, in turn, was adapted, in 1824, by Heinrich Heine into a poem.  The poem was subsequently set to music and it is this version of Loreley, as a siren-like menace, that entered German popular culture. The version of the Siegfried myth the film entwines with Loreley is likewise the one created by Wagner for his 'Ring Cycle'.