The sixteenth century: Together with infamous Elisabeth Barthory (Julia
Saly) - the real life countess who bathed in virgins' blood - Waldemar
Daninsky (Paul Naschy), the wolfman and her loyal servant, is executed.
Now: Graverobbers (Ricardo Palacios, Rafael Hernández) find Daninsky's
grave, remove a silver dagger from his heart - and bring him back to life
... and it's not long before he turns into a werewolf and kills them ...
Meanwhile, three female students - Erika (Silvia Aguilar), Barbara
(Pilar Alcón) and Karen (Azucena Hernández) - head off to the Carpathian
mountains to find the grave of Elisabeth Bathory - but when they are
almost at their destination, they are attacked by a group of thugs who
want to rob them blind and rape them. The girls are only just saved by a
mysterious stranger with a crossbow who turns out to be Waldemar Daninsky
- in his human form of course. Daninsky proves to be the perfect
gentleman, even after so many centuries of being dead, and offers them
abode in his castle, but at the same time tries to dissuade them from
looking for the Bathory-grave. Soon enough, Daninsky and Karen fall in
love ...
What nobody knows though is that Erika actually plans to not only find
the grave but actually resurrect Elisabeth Bathory,a nd eventually she
does so draining Barbara of all her blood in the process (this is actually
why she brought Barbara along). The centuries have turned Elisabeth
Bathory into a full-fledged vampire and it is not long before she is
roaming the countryside, with only Waldemar Daninsky the werewolf - her
erstwhile servant who now wants to atone for his sins - standing in her
way.
The finale has Daninsky - in hsi werewolf form - and Bathory clash
after she has taken Karen captive, and eventually the werewolf stakes the
vampire ... but then he attacks Karen who can't but kill her with the
silver dagger he has given her for self defense, but not before he
mortally wounded her as well. And as in every old-fashioned horrorflick,
the ending has everything going up in flames ...
By and large, Night of the Werewolf is a remake of Werewolf
vs Vampire Women from 1971, and taking this into account, it looks
terribly dated, even for 1980, and old-fashioned and over-convoluted
gothic much in the tradition of the later films of the classic Universal
horror cycle - which Paul Naschy cites as one of his key
influences anyway. As a result, Night of the Werewolf is not one of
the better films of the Hombre Lobo series, it's highly
derivative as well as a bit heavy handed, but somehow it still has the old
Euro-shocker flavour and charm that make this kind of film so irresistible
to some of us - me included, naturally.
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