The
Beast and the Magic Sword was the tenth of Paul Naschy’s Waldemar Daninsky
Werewolf movies. Unlike the preceding
films, it was a Spanish and Japanese co-production. Working with a Japanese crew, Naschy was able
to make something wholly unique and dreamlike; a picture that blows the other
sequels out of the water in terms of craftsmanship. It’s proof that with the right resources, he
was a better storyteller than he’s usually given credit for. It’s by far my favorite entry in the Waldemar
saga.
It
begins with a prologue (set in the tenth century) of how the Daninsky curse got
started. An evil witch stabs his
pregnant wife in the belly with a wolf skull!
It’s a great sequence, and the terrific sets and costumes helps gives it
a grand scale.
Six
centuries later, Waldemar (Naschy), his wife (Beatriz Escudaro), and a blind
girl (Violeta Cela) flee their homeland to avoid capture by the Spanish
Inquisition. Together, they go to Japan
to find Kian (Shigeru Amachi), a holy man who may hold the secret to curing
Waldemar’s lycanthropic curse once and for all.
When Kian’s cure proves ineffective, Waldemar turns to an ostracized
sorceress (Junko Asahina) for help.
Predictably, she double crosses him and sets out to use his curse to
fuel her own treachery.
The
Beast and the Magic Sword is nearly two hours long. It probably didn’t need to be that damn long,
but you get the sense that Naschy, happy to have a large canvas to tell his Werewolf
saga (for a change), was going to put as much on screen as his imagination could
allow. There are some pacing problems to
be sure. Cool prologue aside, it takes
about a half-hour for Waldemar to get to Japan and finally turn into the
werewolf. However, when he does, it’s
well-worth it. The sequence in which he
tears through a brothel and claims dozens of victims is a thing of
blouse-ripping, neck-biting, bloodletting beauty.
I
mean this movie has it all. Spanish
Inquisition dudes in hoods, werewolves, sexy sorceresses, samurai, topless
assassins, Ninjas, disgusting nightmare sequences, and ghost samurai. The film doesn’t just play like a checklist
of cool shit either. Perhaps it was
working with a Japanese crew that gave the samurai sequences a sense of
authenticity. These scenes are very much
seeped in traditional samurai cinema with themes of honor, loyalty, and
betrayal running throughout. It’s not
just the usual werewolf shenanigans with a pinch of samurai shit thrown it
there. It’s a true melding of
genres.
Maybe
the Japanese crew were also responsible for Waldemar’s new look as Naschy
sports a much more elaborate make-up this time out. The headpiece is extremely large and gives
him almost a bear-like appearance. Sadly,
we only get one major transformation sequence (except for the obligatory
change-back scene in the finale), but it’s a pretty good one.
Just
when you think The Beast and the Magic Sword can’t get any better, the evil
sorceress sets her pet tiger loose in Waldemar’s cell and there’s a duel to the
death between them! Sure, the third act
may get a little bogged down once the Japanese medicine man goes off into the
mountains to battle an unending series of ghost samurai in exchange for the
magic sword. Even with those longwinded
scenes, I can’t help but love this flick.
I don’t know about you, but any movie that answers the age-old
question: “Who would win in a
fight? A werewolf or a tiger?” is OK in
my book.
AKA: The Werewolf and the Magic Sword.
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