FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR (1968) **

Two graverobbing gypsies remove a silver cross from a corpse in the ruins of an old castle.  The body promptly comes back to life, turns into a werewolf, kills the gypsies, and begins causing havoc throughout the countryside.  Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) joins the villagers in the hunt for the beast and winds up destroying the creature himself.  During the struggle, Waldemar is bitten, and is cursed to become a werewolf when the full moon rises.  He turns to a pair of doctors to help find a cure; unaware they are vampires with their own sinister intentions. 

After watching The Beast and the Magic Sword, I decided to finally check out this first chapter in the Waldemar Daninsky Werewolf saga.  Now that I’ve seen it, it’s hard to imagine how someone could wring nearly a dozen films out of such thin material.  For the most part, it’s a slow moving and dull slog that’s curiously low on werewolf action.  The fuzzy-faced monster make-up looks pretty cool though, although it isn’t quite as polished as it would later become.  Too bad we don’t get to see much of it. 

Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror was originally titled Mark of the Wolf Man in its native Spain.  When the American distributors got a hold of it, they cut out fifteen minutes from the opening and it’s easy to see why, as it takes forever to get going.  They also added a hilariously awful animated pre-credits scene to explain how Frankenstein figures into all this.  You see, he turned into a werewolf called “Wolfstein” and, well… that’s it.  It’s purely a case of a company pre-selling a film by the title alone, and when it comes time to produce said movie, they just retitle another flick and add a cheesy prologue to make the movie match the poster.

Naschy is quite good.  His committed performance makes the movie worth watching, boring parts and all.  Director Enrique Lopez (Santo Faces Death) Eguiluz fills the film with plenty of atmosphere (especially during the final reel), but overall, it’s just too sluggishly paced to be wholly successful.

AKA:  Vampire Dracula vs. the Werewolf.  AKA:  Hell’s Creatures.  AKA:  The Mark of the Wolf Man.  AKA:  The Vampire of Dr. Dracula.  AKA:  The Werewolf’s Mark.