Post by RedKing on Mar 17, 2006 11:29:17 GMT -8
I finally got around to tracking this film down. Naschy's first US made starring role and the first US made Waldemar film from 2003 also featuring Michelle Bauer as Elizabeth Bathory and directed by Fred Olen Ray and his Retromedia company.Sounded good when the announcements first came out and the initial stills also looked good. However it was soon revealed that there were going to be alot of sex scenes and Naschy was to have no dialougue and very little screentime without the wolfman makeup on. I kind of gave up on it after that plus it's been extremely hard to find-no rental places around here have it, not even the majors like Schlockbuster and Netflix doesn't stock it either! I read some reviews on various sites and many were actually positive so I checked ebay and kept watching for a copy of the disc or even the tape that was not expensive. I finally got the tape for 5 bucks last week! Now, keep in mind I went into this movie with very low expectations, but it was actually pretty good. I was expecting a softcore sex movie with Waldemar running around killing people now and then, but the "sex"scenes actually consist of lots of gratuitous nudity, fondling and rolling around, there's just several of them, i think 5 all together, but they are very short, which is good as the movie grinds to a screeching halt every time one starts!Michelle Bauer is quite good as Bathory, a somewhat different version than the actual Bathory from history. She relishes her evilness, and is actually the most likable character in the movie. Naschy does actually get to speak a few lines of english in a flashback sequence and he handles them very well. His accent is no worse than Antonio Banderas', though considering Daninsky is supposed to be Polish, well..whatever. The movie takes place in Europe but no one has an accent anyways, so Daninsky having aSpanish accent is due for the course I guess. Naschy is made up well in both his lupine form and his human form as he doesn't look as old as he really is and for his age, he's still bounding and slashing with the best of them! He even has one of the best confrontation with his lover scenes of his career in this film believe it or not! The ghost or reincarnation of his wife has also returned to Daninsky castle and after she has killed Bathory(Daninsky does not fight her),she confronts the lupine Daninsky, and Naschy shows more acting talent in this scene just with his eyes and body language than most of the rest of the cast does at all!So in all, I was pleasently surprised by this movie. It wasn't nearly as bad as i had thought and the story was different enough fropm previous daninsky and vampire woman outings to be it's own entity entirely. I'm going to make a version that cuts out the sex scenes and see if that flows even better and improves the film even more. Fred Olen Ray should probably have assembled two such cuts of the film himself-a straight horror version and "sexier" cut, kind of like some Santo movies or some Jess Franco films, or even some of Naschy's 70s movies that were shot with both nude and clothed scenes.