BA_Harrison Newlyweds Imre (José Marco) and Justine (Shirley Corrigan) travel to the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania for their honeymoon, where Imre intends to visit the graves of his murdered parents (the man sure knows how to show his new wife a good time). Ignoring warnings from a superstitious local who tells them that the cemetery is a place of evil, the couple are attacked by a gang of local villains that try to break into their car. Imre is stabbed to death, and Justine narrowly avoids being raped when Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) leaps to her assistance (crushing one guy's face with a rock in the process).Waldemar carries Justine to his castle, which is also home to a leprous man who has zero bearing on the plot, and an old lady whom the locals believe is a witch, and who tells Justine of Waldemar's 'illness': whenever the full moon rises, he turns into a werewolf!!! After Waldemar, in hairy form, kills several more villagers, a rabble of pitchfork wielding locals hack off the old woman's head, stick it on a pole, and proceed to storm the castle. Waldemar and Justine sneak out the back door and flee to London, where they enlist the help of Dr. Jekyll (Jack Taylor), whose infamous grandfather's personality-altering serum might be able to release Daninsky from his curse.The sixth film in Paul Naschy's Waldemar Daninsky series, Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf is just as silly as the title suggests, offering up all manner of Euro-monster-mash madness. Naschy not only sports one of his more impressive looking werewolf make-ups, but also looks sufficiently slimy as Mr. Hyde, whose personality he adopts when injected by Jekyll's serum. The daft plot also includes a treacherous assistant for Jekyll in the form of Sandra (Mirta Miller), sees Hyde enjoying enjoying London's swinging nightlife (which allows for some particularly hilarious gyrating from a podium dancer), and provides several excuses for some cheesy gore.N.B.: There are three edits of this film doing the rounds. My middling rating of 5/10 is for the heavily edited Spanish version that came as part of my Mill Creek Pure Terror box-set, and which is notably bereft of any gratuitous nudity (what's a Euro-horror without some boobs to go with the blood?). The US edit, however, does feature some nudity in the last half hour, while the fullest cut—the German version—delivers even more bare flesh, with Justine's breasts getting an airing during her attack, and Waldemar's werewolf tearing open his victims' clothes before tearing out their throats, all of which undoubtedly adds to the fun.

Scarecrow-88 A wealthy businessman and his young, beautiful, trophy wife, who live in England, head into "the old country", where his ancestors once resided in the Carpathian mountains, to visit the past, will meet *unspeakable horrors*. While visiting the cemetery where his parents were buried, Emery encounters ruthless thieves attempting to steal from him, resulting in his stabbing death, Justine tries to flee but is swarmed by the brutes before she is rescued by a mysterious man dressed in black (Paul Naschy). Awakening in her savior's black castle, what will happen to her? If you like dark foreboding ancient castles made out of stone then you are in luck as this movie has a doozy. A good man cursed with lycanthropy, an old "witch" (she is described this way by the café owner prone to "foretell old wivestales"), a hunch-backed leper (yep, a movie like this has to have a hunch-backed freak to assist the scientist), and the old man who spreads spook tales to those who enter his café in the village—the Naschy homages are numerous in "Dr. Jekyll and the Werewolf". Other thieves decide they will head to the black castle to see what goodies might be worth stealing only to encounter Naschy's El Hombre Lobo in the cemetery (they get what they deserve, really—it is a full moon and the howl of the lychanthrope is loud and ominous). The village café owner calls them "demons", followers of the devil, his ravings quite amusing, falling in line with those from past Gothic horror films warning foreigners and the unbelievers of evils that await the unlearned. The film even produces the restless village folk stirred up the vengeful outsider, new to the area, who lost two brothers to the werewolf, with pitchforks and torches in hand, as a group heading to the black castle to rid themselves of the monster lurking in their midst. This results in an underwhelming confrontation between instigator and Waldemar (in human form, no less), before the film's second half transports the plot to London where we meet Dr. Henry Jekyll (the ancestor of the notorious Jekyll who successfully created a serum which created the completely evil side of his personality, Hyde), who operates an asylum, his nurse the conniving Sandra.Sandra is a rather preposterous villainess, who wants Jekyll to recreate Hyde and use this power for their own personal gain and advantage—this motivation is clearly just an excuse for Naschy to portray Hyde, and run around, albeit too briefly, contemporary London. Jekyll believes his new serum, an altered form correcting the error of his shunned late grandfather, can pit, so to speak, Hyde against the dormant lycanthrope inside, where the evil plaguing Waldemar will be vanquished once and for all, but Sandra cannot stomach the idea of the scientist she bent over backwards for using his creation for good. Sandra is also a jealous bitch upset that Henry still loves Justine and has conducted his experiments just for her benefit.The problem with the version I watched was that it is the badly cut 73 minute public domain version (which my rating is for); it clearly looks as if it went under the knife of a mad surgeon. I hope to someday see the 96 minute version and better tell what was left out the butchered cut of the film. I really liked the ending which seems to be a homage to "House of Frankenstein" where Lon Chaney Jr. and Elena Verdugo suffer an unfortunate fate out of love thanks to the full moon and the inability to control the beast within—it is heartbreaking, yet romantic, two hands held as the camera backs away showing the tragic result of the werewolf's control over man to the point that he cannot keep from killing the one he loves. With Shirley Corrigan as Justine, Jack Taylor as a wooden Henry Jekyll, and Mirta Miller as the corrupt Sandra.

The_Void Paul Naschy is probably most famous for this set of films, but personally I tend to find them disappointing. As the title suggests, this time Naschy's favourite "Homo Lobo" character is mixed in with Robert Louis Stephenson's classic characters Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde...the result is rather confusing since Paul Naschy himself plays both characters. I would have to say that this is one of the worst films in Naschy's series (although I have to admit that I haven't seen them all) and the reason for that is really down to the plot. It seems like they couldn't be bothered to do anything really interesting with it, and what we end up with is the two characters in a movie together with a couple of innocents in the middle - it doesn't make for very exciting viewing. Add to that the fact that none of the cast members (including Naschy himself) could really be bothered either. The acting is bad even for a low budget Spanish horror movie and the pace of the film is also very slow and boring, which ensures that the film is in no way an exciting viewing. There's not even anything resembling a decent horror atmosphere to make up for it. The film fails to create any interest at all for most of the duration and by the time it got to the end, I wasn't really bothered what might happen. Overall, this is not a film worth seeing and I don't recommend it.

FieCrier This is the first Waldemar Daninsky movie I've seen, even though it is (the box says) the fifth in a series (perhaps IMDb's years for the titles are off?). I bought it primarily because I've liked all the other Mondo Macabro DVDs I've bought.It's also the first Paul Naschy movie I've seen, or at least the first one I've seen while knowing him to be a big Spanish horror star.A couple return to the husband's homeland so he can visit his parents' graves. Unfortunately, the graveyard they're in was abandoned during World War II, and is neglected, rumored to be haunted, and a place where murderous bandits can be found. It's also located near the Black Castle, where a monster lives. The monster is Daninsky, who turns into a wolf-man when the moon is full. As a wolf-man, he kills people or bites chunks of flesh out of them. As Daninsky, well, he kills people too, but he has more of a choice as to who he attacks: he only goes after bad guys.Daninsky gets taken to see Dr. Jekyll, the grandson of the infamous one, in England. Dr. Jekyll has a plan to cure Daninsky's lycanthropy, but I confess I did not understand it. It involved turning Daninsky into Mr. Hyde, and then somehow having the Mr. Hyde and Werewolf in Daninsky battle it out. That isn't what seems to happen, so perhaps I'm way off. I thought it peculiar that Daninsky turns into Mr. Hyde - Mr. Hyde had been the evil part of Dr. Jekyll. Daninsky's evil side might have been similar, but identical, and they give him the same name...?It is fairly entertaining, and I'm curious to see some other Daninsky werewolf movies now (this wasn't one of Nachy's more favorite ones), and perhaps some more of Nachy's other horror movies. The DVD is good, has some nice extras including an interview with Nachy and a text covering the short history of Spanish horror movies, and the DVD will be staying in my collection.It seems he's played the Waldemar Daninsky werewolf character in about thirteen movies, of which perhaps only four are readily available (through out of print videotapes and cheap poor quality DVDs), and the original is not one of them! It would seem a box set is needed, though I have not heard rumors of one.