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Category: Ángel Menéndez

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Plot: disabled morgue worker will stop at nothing to resurrect his lost love.

The Spanish Lon Chaney, Paul Naschy, is rightly associated with horror and the macabre as that was his genre of choice. Through out his long career he played most, if not all, of the Universal Classic Monsters. His most famous and enduring is, of course, El Hombre Lobo (the Wolf Man) but he also played Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Mummy. At earliest this happened in the second El Hombre Lobo episode Assignment Terror (1969). While that was unarguably his bread and butter Naschy frequently utilized the conventions and trappings of the genre as vehicles for other, more ambitious ideas. El jorobado de la Morgue (or The Hunchback Of the Morgue) was one such vehicles and probably the earliest one at that. It put a macabre spin on a beloved fairytale and did so much with so very little. In other words, never underestimate the little guy. For one reason or another The Hunchback Of the Morgue is often mistakingly overlooked in favor of his popular El Hombre Lobo series.

Besides his El Hombre Lobo Naschy played an array of different roles, either historical or fictional, Paul Naschy had a penchant for recognizing which trend or was worth capitalizing upon. Whether it was history, superstition, religion, or a certain cinematic innovation catching his eye Naschy always had a screenplay ready to be filmed. As such he assembled a respectable host of worthwhile secondary features and lesser known memorable characters. These include, among others, his Gilles de Rais (1404-1440) inspired nobleman/alchemist Alaric de Marnac from Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973) and Panic Beats (1983) as well as the similarly inspired Barón Gilles de Lancré from The Devil's Possessed (1974), and the The Mummy (1932) inspired The Mummy's Revenge (1973). During the giallo boom he contributed The Killer Is One of Thirteen (1973) and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974). Then there are The Exorcist (1973) ripoff Exorcism (1974), the Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956) imitation The Jungle Goddess (1974), the Witchfinder General (1968) and Mark Of the Devil (1970) knockoff Inquisition (1977), the Biblical parable The Traveller (1979) (or his liberal reworking of the Old Testament theodicy scripture of the Book of Job) and his own deranged take on Andrzej Żuławski's The Devil (1972), or the late peplum The Cantabrians (1980) that chronicled the Cantabrian Wars. As things tends to go, these secondary features didn’t always generate the same kind of interest or debate.

In the banner year for erotic gothic horror that was 1973 Count Dracula’s Great Love was his response not to the psychotronic-pop art excesses of Jesús Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos (1971) but the Karnstein trilogy from Britain’s house of Hammer. He envisioned it as a bodice-ripping, bosom baring period horror and a celebration of the (preferably disrobed) female form with a selection of the hottest starlets of the day. However, nothing is ever simple and production was anything but smooth sailing. French New Wave star Haydée Politoff (briefly a muse for Éric Rohmer) suffered a head injury when she was involved in an accident on a winding mountain road and crew sustained injuries when sets collapsed on them. To make matters worse Ingrid Garbo and Mirta Miller fell seriously ill when a chemical compound used for the special effects turned out to be toxic and had an adverse effect on both. Faced with no other option but to temporarily halt principal photography so that Politoff could properly recover Paul Naschy proposed to producer Francisco Lara Polop and director Javier Aguirre that they retain director of photography Raúl Pérez Cubero and special effects man Pablo Pérez and the cast and crew they had in place and film The Hunchback Of the Morgue instead. It only required minimal location shooting in Feldkirch in Vorarlberg, Austria for some exteriors and the rest could be filmed back at home in Madrid. The ruins of Monasterio de Santa Maria la Real de Valdeiglesias - or the monastery that had featured prominently in Amando de Ossorio’s Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) - was a key location. With the main cast and crew at the ready, all Naschy had to do was invite some marketable guest stars. As fate would have it, by the time cameras stopped rolling Politoff, Garbo, and Miller all were recuperated and filming on Count Dracula’s Great Love could resume. In the end, everything worked out.

In Feldkirch, Austria on the border with Switzerland and Liechtenstein med students Udo (Fernando Sotuela), Hans Burgher (Kino Pueyo, as Joaquin Rodriguez 'Kinito') and his friend (Antonio Mayans) are engaged in a drinking contest and the boys are enjoying the beer as much as their female company Eva (Sofía Casares, as Sofia Casares) and her friend (Iris André, as Iris Andre). Everything seems well until one of the waitresses (Susana Latour, as Susana Latur) scares herself half to death when she lays eyes upon an ominous stranger. Drunkenly Udo staggers outside dropping a photograph. Kindhearted Wolfgang Gotho (Jacinto Molina Álvarez, as Paul Naschy) tries to help the drunken student but is scolded for his charity. You see, Gotho was born a hunchback and his deformity has him ostracized, scorned, and shunned by pretty much all townspeople. When Udo collapses from acute alcohol poisoning his body is brought to the morgue of the municipal hospital. Gotho takes great pleasure in dismantling the boy’s body for the way he treated him when he was alive. Saturated in dejection the only ray of light in his lovelorn miserable existence is Ilse (María Elena Arpón, as Maria Elena Arpon – not using her international market alias, Helen Harp) who stays at the hospital. Alleviating his suffering is Ilse’s genuine kindness and attention. However, their romance is irrevocably doomed as Ilse is stricken with tubercolosis and terminally ill. One day on the streets he’s ridiculed and pelted with rocks by children because of his birth defect. When medical intern Elke (Rosanna Yanni, as Rossana Yanny) sees this she takes Gotho to her home and tends to his wounds. In awe of such humanity in gratitude he lowly kisses her feet.

Wolfgang enjoys nothing more than bringing Ilse a bouquet of flowers every day and pushing her around on the hospital grounds in her wheelchair. One afternoon their relaxing stroll is interrupted when the four med students from the pub insult and accost her. He takes to defending her honor but the opposition poses too great. Dr. Frederick Tauchner (Víctor Barrera, as Vic Winner) and dean of the hospital Dr. Maria Meyer (Maria Perschy, as Maria Pershy) are friendly to his plight and chastise the students. They help Gotho and as soon as he’s able he rushes to see Ilse again. Unfortunately the assault aggravated her already dire condition and she dies before he can get to her. Dismayed at the passing of his only friend Gotho is enraged when the doctors see her as a vessel for organ harvest. When two morgue workers (José Luis Chinchilla and Ingrid Rabel) try to steal Ilse’s golden necklace he kills them both with a hatchet in a fit of blind rage. He absconds with her body and takes it to his catacomb lair. Dr. Orla (Alberto Dalbés, as Alberto Dalbes) has lost his tenure, funding, and reputation as he was ousted from the medical community over ethical violations and the dubious nature of his research. When he learns of Gotho’s homicidal proclivities he promises to revive his beloved Ilse if he brings him the bodies he requires. Meanwhile, Elke the ginger intern has taken something of a shine to the generous and virtuous hunchback. As the bodies start to mount the commissioner (Ángel Menéndez, as Angel Menendez) dispatches two police inspectors (Manuel de Blas and Antonio Pica) to investigate the sudden spate of violent homicides in the area. Is Dr. Orla really trying to help Gotho or is he just exploiting his desperation for his own selfish interests?

While this might not look like much upon closer inspection Naschy’s script (that he co-wrote with Javier Aguirre, and Alberto S. Insúa) reveals quite some hidden depth. It places the iconic character of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in the plot of Robert Wise’s The Body Snatcher (1945) (produced by Val Lewton and based upon the 1884 Robert Louis Stevenson short story of the same name) that starred both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The Stevenson story was inspired by the 1828 Burke and Hare murders in 19th-century Edinburgh, Scotland and there are faint echoes of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein. Much less prevalent, but present all the same, are light shades of the classic fairytale Beauty and the Beast. At heart The Hunchback Of the Morgue is a romance, albeit it a very morbid one. Whereas Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973) was filled to the brim with beautiful girls in period costumes and a dizzying amount of heaving bosoms The Hunchback Of the Morgue is a contemporary gothic romance with splashes of blood and gore. The opening scene at the alm could have come from a German sex comedy (Tiroler or otherwise) if the deeply-cut dirndls and large pints of beer are anything to go by. The scenes at the hospital feel more like a women in prison flick than anything else. They’re never exactly as sleazy as the Brazilian examples of the genre but it’s the idea that counts. For one reason or another Naschy had something of a predilection towards playing tragic heroes in doomed romances around this time. Dracula (and his human alter ego Dr. Wendell Marlow), Wolfgang Gotho, and Waldemar Daninsky are all but slight variations of the same character that Naschy played in all these things. Italy got to cannibalism with Man From Deep River (1972) and Spain got there a year later with Amando de Ossorio’s jungle safari adventure Night of the Sorcerers (1973). In a break from convention Spain got to necrophilia earlier with this as Riccardo Freda’s The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) (with Barbara Steele) was a gothic horror and Joe D’Amato would only delve into the subject with Beyond the Darkness (1979) some six years later.

And once again Naschy was able to assemble a cast of domestic monuments, some of the hottest starlets of the day, and notable supporting actors. First there’s Ángel Menéndez from The Loreleys Grasp (1974), Rosanna Yanni from The Mark Of the Wolfman (1968) (that also starred Menéndez), Malenka, the Vampire’s Niece (1969), and the soccer comedy Las Ibéricas F.C. (1971). Then there are María Elena Arpón from Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) and Maria Perschy from the third (and last) Blind Dead episode The Ghost Galleon (1974), Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974), Exorcism (1975), and The People Who Own the Dark (1976). Also present are Alberto Dalbés and Víctor Barrera from Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973), Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973), and Vengeance of the Zombies (1973) as well as José Luis Chinchilla from The Devil's Possessed (1974), The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975), and Return Of the Wolfman (1980). In a supporting role there’s Antonio Mayans from Nightmare City (1980) and Vampyres (2015) as well as a whole lot of Jesús Franco and Eurociné bilge including, but not limited to, Night of the Assassins (1974), Oasis Of the Zombies (1982), and Golden Temple Amazons (1986). Finally there are reliable second-stringers Manuel de Blas from Assignment Terror (1969) and The Vampires Night Orgy (1973). De Blas continues to act to this day and he even was in the recent (and much delayed) Uncharted (2022) movie! Then there are Susana Latour from A Bell From Hell (1973) (with Christina von Blanc and Maribel Martín) and Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973) as well as professional warm body Ingrid Rabel from The Dracula Saga (1973). Compared to other Naschy productions, before and after, this one isn’t as star-studded. Argentine import Rosanna Yanni is worth seeing in anything and María Elena Arpón is one of the unsung stars of Spanish exploitation (along with notable almost-stars as Carmen Yazalde, Cristina Suriani, and Montserrat Prous). For Arpón this was probably her biggest starring role this side of Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972). Screen monuments Maria Perschy and Ángel Menéndez both had seen better days.

No Naschy feature is complete without its share of behind-the-scenes anecdotes and The Hunchback Of the Morgue has at least two. For starters, real rats were used in the catacomb lair when María Elena Arpón is laying upon the medical slab and Naschy is fully engulfed by a ravenous wave. Second, and perhaps more disturbingly, as in Thriller – A Cruel Picture (1973) (with Christina Lindberg) a real corpse was used for the beheading scene. That is until Naschy became sickened during the throat slitting on the first take and it had to be replaced with a dummy head afterwards. The Hunchback Of the Morgue did well on the festival circuit and won several awards. Paul Naschy won a Georges Méliès Award for Best Actor on the Festival international de Paris du film fantastique et de science-fiction (International Festival of Fantastic and Science-Fiction Cinema of Paris) at the Théatre Le Palace in Paris. It also collected a grand total of 5 awards (including one for best script) distributed between this and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974) at the International Fantasy and Horror Film Festival Antwerp (a precursor to the present-day International Film Festival Antwerpen – IFFA) in 1976. Not bad for a Spanish fantaterror that remains underestimated to this day.

Published on Leave a comment on The Mark Of the Wolfman (1968)

Plot: Polish nobleman is bitten by wolf during hunting expedition.

Jacinto Molina Álvarez was born in 1934, and thirty-four years later he was a champion weightlifter, former architect student, graphic designer, failed pulp western novelist, and occassional film extra. Álvarez came from a line of men with artistic inclinations. His father, Enrique, was a renowned fur and leather craftsman and Emilio, his grandfather, was an acclaimed sculptor of religious iconography. Álvarez wrote the screenplay in a month with inspiration coming from a feature he saw at a matinee when he was 11. He hoped for it to go in production, but in 1962 Spain chances were slim as the country had no horror cinema culture worthy of the name. The once almost respectable Jesús Franco had made a few attempts, but a fantastique and straight up horror were unheard of. A take on the classic Universal Monsters, or an escapist fantasy, was what Álvarez’ werewolf was envisioned as instead of some profound rumination on mortality or the human condition. The Mark Of the Wolfman - the first chapter in the epic, multi-decade spanning saga of cursed Polish nobleman Waldemar Daninsky - became a box office succes, making Paul Naschy a household name in his native Spain - and launched a lucrative franchise spawning no less than a whopping 11 sequels over multiple decades.

The road from conception to execution for The Mark Of the Wolfman was beset by troubles from all sides. The story was originally meant to be set in Spain, but the oppressive regime from Generalissimo Francisco Franco would ensure it would never find proper funding. Salvaging Álvarez’ fantastique from looming obscurity was West German production company Hi-Fi Stereo 70. The company initially approached faded icon Lon Chaney, Jr. to play the cursed nobleman, but advanced age and throat cancer forced him to politely decline. In view of the situation Álvarez would play the character himself. To accomodate the changes the nationality of the lead character was changed from Spanish to Polish. Hi-Fi Stereo 70 urged Álvarez to adopt a non-Spanish alias as an actor. Thus was born Paul Naschy; a portmanteau of then-current pope Paul the Sixth and Hungarian weightlifter Imre Nagy.

The alias allowed Alvarez to write screenplays under his own name and act under his international alias Paul Naschy. One of the directors offered the project was Amando de Ossorio who passed on it, believing that horror would never take off in Spain. Upon the box office success of The Mark Of the Wolfman de Ossorio would start his own horror productions with with gothic horror potboiler Fangs Of the Living Dead (1969), The Loreley’s Grasp (1974), The Night of the Sorcerers (1974) and the memorable Tombs Of the Blind Dead (1972), the Knight Templar zombie movie birthing the (mostly consistent) Blind Dead franchise. In 2001 Naschy was given Spain’s Gold Medal Award for Fine Arts by King Juan Carlos I.

Realizing Naschy’s werewolf screenplays were directors Enrique López Eguiluz, Carlos Aured, Javier Aguirre, Miguel Iglesias, and former Argentinian dentist León Klimovsky. Klimovsky would direct Naschy in The Werewolf and the Vampire Woman (1971). In the Enrique López Eguiluz directed The Mark Of the Wolfman, the first Waldemar Daninsky epic, Nashy attracted some of the most recognizable talent of the day, including Julián Ugarte, Ángel Menéndez, Carlos Casaravilla, Dyanik Zurakowska, and Rosanna Yanni. Argentine actress Rosanna Yanni would cross paths with Carlos Casaravilla and Julián Ugarte in Fangs Of the Living Dead (1969), with Naschy in The Hunchback Of the Rue Morgue (1973) and Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973). Yanni would be one of many continental belles to partake in the sports comedy Las Ibéricas F.C. (1971) as well as Terence Young’s breasts-and-games peplum spectacular The Amazons (1973). Antonio Jiménez Escribano was in Necrophagus (1971). Ángel Menéndez would play men of science in The Devil Came From Akasava (1971), an Eurocrime romp from Jess Franco, and in Amando de Ossorio’s The Loreley’s Grasp (1974). Dyanik Zurakowska and Aurora de Alba would co-star with Naschy again in the León Klimovsky directed Vengeance Of the Zombies (1973). The Mark Of the Wolfman was one of the last acting parts for Manuel Manzaneque, who would bid the acting profession farewell and become a respected wine maker in Spain.

In The Mark Of the Wolfman Polish aristocrat Waldemar Daninsky (Jacinto Molina Álvarez, as Paul Naschy) finds himself attending a period-costumed masked ball at the estate of Count Sigmund von Aarenberg (José Nieto, as Jose Nieto) in Germany in honor of his daughter Janice (Dyanik Zurakowska, as Dianik Zurakowska) 18th birthday. Von Aarenberg wants her to marry her respectable friend Rudolph Weissmann (Manuel Manzaneque), son of judge Aarno Weismann (Carlos Casaravilla) whom he is friends with. After the prerequisite dance Janice is attracted to the diminutive Daninsky instead. Meanwhile a gypsy couple Gyogyo (Gualberto Galbán, as Gualberto Galban) and Nascha (Rosanna Yanni, as Rossana Yanni), whose horse-drawn caravan was driven off the road earlier by Weissmann, break and enter into the delapidated castle Wolfstein. Gorging on wine found in one of the cupboards the two drunken troublemakers, or the fairer half of them at least, desecrates one of the tombs by removing a silver cross.

Unbeknownst they have released long-dormant lycanthrope Imre Wolfstein from captivity and into the peaceful countryside nearby. As Wolfstein claims several victims among the populace a hunting party is mounted, led by forestkeeper Otto (Ángel Menéndez, as Angel Menendez). It is under these circumstances Daninsky and Weissmann make their acquaintance, with Daninsky killing the wolfman with a silver dagger – but not without sustaining serious injury himself during the altercation. In search of a cure he meets experts in the occult Dr. Janos Mikhelov (Julián Ugarte, as Julian Ugarte) and his beautiful assistant Wandessa (Aurora de Alba). As Daninsky comes to grips with his wolven affliction, Rudolph becomes enchanted with silky seductress Wandessa and Janice is instantly spellbound by the very metrosexual Janos Mikhelov. As these things tend to go Mikhelov and Wandessa have their own plans for Daninsky...

There's a sense of pathos to Daninsky that far outweighs Naschy's tendency to overcompensate in dramatic gesticulating and overcompensating for his lack of height. Dyanik Zurakowska, Rosanna Yanni, and Aurora de Alba steam up every scene they are in. Yanni, a former model in Italy and before that a chorus girl in her native Argentina, wields her most formidable weapon, which is her deep cleavage and heaving bosom. Zurakowska provides the necessary youthful exuberance and her attraction to the vertically-challenged Daninsky is as inexplicable as anything else. Neither Yanni nor Zurakowska were ever particularly shy about baring their bust if that was required. Aurora de Alba was the original Wandessa, and she would torture Daninksy again in The Werewolf and the Vampire Woman (1971), at which point Patty Shepard had taken on the role and again in The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975) where Silvia Solar inherited the part. Location shooting at the El Cercón Monastery in Madrid, later used in de Ossorio’s Tombs Of the Blind Dead (1972), lush usage of Mario Bava-esque colors (blue and red feature prominently), as well as shadowy, cobwebbed interiors, and earthen Spanish locations add tremendously to the production value. The Mark Of the Wolfman has all elements of a good Mediterranean European gothic horror venture.

As expected from a screenplay written in a month there's more than a few interesting creative choices made. First, the pitting of Waldemar Daninsky (who in a Hollywood script would be the bad guy) against a pair of well-preserved vampires. Julián Ugarte’s metrosexual Janos Mikhelov was several decades ahead of its time. It's an especially daring move on Naschy's part making Mikhelov a metrosexual as homosexuality was illegal in Spain in the 1970s. That Naschy wrote a few scenes of his character frolicking with Dyanik Zurakowska, and Aurora de Alba is everything you'd expect of a novice screenwriter, and who could honestly blame him? Rosanna Yanni and Dyanik Zurakowska were some of the most desirable actresses of the day and that both became stars in their own right speaks volumes. The inclusion of Rosanna Yanni is purely to raise the temperature even further and, as always, Yanni doesn’t disappoint. Well, Rosanna seldom disappoints.

Compared to any of the later installments The Mark Of the Wolfman is conservative and restrained, which doesn’t mean it doesn’t go completely off the rails. A lycanthrope nobleman is beset by a pair of vampires while a young maiden and the fairer half of the vampire couple lust after him, one of them quite literally? Rosanna Yanni’s very low-cut dress inspires poetry and the dusty, cavernous locales give a delightfully old fashioned (as, say, something of a decade earlier) look that adds immensely to the authenticity. Barrel-chested Paul Naschy was never much of an actor but he displays the hunger you’d expect of a young actor starring/writing in his own vanity project. Daninsky would cross time zones and continents, face off against a variety of supernatural enemies to varying levels of success, and always have one (or more) buxom belles inexplicably drawn to his hairy masculine chest. The Mark Of the Wolfman has the distinction of being the first to introduce Waldemar Daninsky to the world and catapulting Paul Naschy to international cult superstardom. For all the criticisms that could be leveled at Jacinto Molina Álvarez as an actor, writer, producer, and director Iberian horror would have been a lot duller if it weren't for his presence...