Films: 1980s
(1981) El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo
Monday, August 04, 2008
El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo
Director: Paul Naschy
Release: 1981
"El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo" (roughly, "The Return of the Wolf Man" although commonly Americanized as "Night of the Werewolf") opens with Bathory's (Julia Saly) execution and the dispatch of her co-conspirators. Bathory's dungeons claimed hundreds innocent young girls from the Hungarian countryside, and so, her servants and her lover, Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy), die slowly.
Bathory promises revenge. Vronky disco guitar plays.
From this point on, Naschy's monster movie is a giddy and sex-fueled ride through muddy dialogue and an indecipherable plot.
In the early 1980s, occultist/vixen Erika (Silbia Aguilar) slays her dark-arts mentor (Narciso Ibanez Menta) to possess Bathory's amulet, which she plans to use to resurrect the countess.
Erika rounds up her tight-panted companions, Karen and Barbara (Azucena Hernandez and Pila Alcon) and drives them into the mountains. The castle's reputation is well established, and the requisite locals deliver the requisite warning at the requisite tavern. But the girls proceed; one hell-bent, two blissfully unaware they are marked as sacrifices.
The castle is not only haunted by the history of its owner. Daninsky is alive and well, also; resurrected by the blood of tomb-robbers and roaming the forest with his crossbow.
He's apparently a much nicer fellow when not directly under the employ of his mistress, as he appears from the trees to save the girls from bandits on the road. But he's also, for reasons never disclosed, a werewolf. He spends a lot of time growling and roaming, and gnawing on country folk.
Once the girls are in the castle, the situation spirals out of control. Erika sacrifices Barbara and brings back Bathory, who turns her into a vampire. Meanwhile Karen falls in love with the lurking Daninsky and they hole up in his chambers to plot against the evil ladies in the catacombs. Ultimately, Daninsky and Bathory have at it. There's jumping and growling, and a mummified knight that pleases the viewer in its padded-costume goofiness and slow motion photography. But the story is never claimed.
Suffering primarily from excruciating long periods of nothing happening, "El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo" is not so much a victim of its obviously low budget, but of its inexplicable script and pacing. Naschy is satisfied to spin out the nonexistent story in any old direction that seems to catch his fancy. At times, it seems there are scenes missing from "El Retorno," as if something important has happened and the characters are reacting, but the audience is not privy to what.
What it does do is take advantage of its marvelous castle, and some decent lighting. But there are all together too many scenes of Daninsky hopping on victims, followed by Daninsky and Karen talking about what they must do or where they must go to best Bathory.
And that's frustrating, because somewhere in the film, Naschy is flirting with some good material regarding the same kind of cultural/historical legacy Hammer Studios fully explored with "Horror of Dracula" and "Brides of Dracula" in 1958 and 1960.
The use of Bathory as a major character in "El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo" should provoke a parallel in Spanish history to Bathory's defense of Hungary against the Ottoman Turks. She became very much the head of state while her husband Ferenc Nadasy was at war. And she intervened on behalf of peasant women brutalized by the men of the 16th century. On the other hand, Bathory was a mass-murderer.
Comparing Bathory to Spain's Isabella during approximately the same time period is interesting. Both wartime queen-figures-both in conflict with Ottoman forces, in fact. Both responsible for multitudinous deaths of their own people-Isabella kick-started the Spanish Inquisition with the expulsion of Jews and Muslims. Both ultimately despised.
Isabella would win a new round of enemies in the mid-20th century, when Spain's Francisco Franco proclaimed the country's Catholic monarchs supreme, and revolutionaries opposed to the dictator held up Isabella as an example of religious and political excess.
So, the notion of occultist witches resurrecting the queen of the vampire/sorceresses in "El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo" is ripe for inflection and interpretation. But it is a fruit unpicked.
Bathory could be Naschy's giant warning sign lifted in an early-1980s Spain wracked by an all too-familiar attempt at military coup. Not another Franco, not another bloodsucking monster like this one-this Bathory-Naschy could be cautioning. But he's probably not. If he is doing so, he fails miserably.
"El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo" is a mess, and a mess adrift. It's barely even fun, given its scatter. A gratuitous romp to no real purpose.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
