When I started this column 14 years ago, I was admittedly a little cavalier when it came to how I went about it. True, most months I stuck to one film, but sometimes I wrote about three or four at once, grouping them thematically — like the time I wrote about the ’80s werewolf comedy boom. (Incidentally, if you’d like to read more detailed thoughts about Teen Wolf, which just marked its 40th anniversary, check out my Crooked Marquee article about it.) Similarly, when I first covered Spanish horror star Paul Naschy and his signature werewolf character, Polish count Waldemar Daninsky, I split up his filmography into The Best and The Rest, saving his more obscure titles for when I could get my paws on them.
Now, thanks to the efforts of boutique labels like Mondo Macabro, Scream Factory, and Vinegar Syndrome, Naschy’s films are getting higher profiles all the time — and released in deluxe editions the likes of which were unheard of when I first encountered them. As I’ve been dutifully acquiring them as they come out, it only makes sense for to double back and go into them in more depth. And first up is 1968’s Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror, which comes to us by way of Kino Lorber’s Kino Cult line.
Originally released as La Marca del Hombre Lobo (“Mark of the Wolf Man”) in Spain and given its nonsensical English title when imported by Sam Sherman’s Independent-International in 1971, Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror opens with two different narrators — one sinister, the other bombastic — who explain how it’s not a Frankenstein picture at all. (“Now, the most frightening Frankenstein story of all,” says the second, “as the ancient werewolf curse brands the family of monster makers as Wolfstein. Wolfstein, the inhuman clan of blood-hungry wolf monsters.”) In between, the titles boast that the film is in 70mm and 3-D, which is true in the sense that it was shot in those formats, but on its initial run it was presented “flat” and almost exclusively at drive-ins, which weren’t equipped to run 70mm prints.
Genre expert Tim Lucas lays out how Independent-International’s subsequent 3-D release was a botch job from the start in a supplement included on the Kino Cult Blu-ray. (He also contributes one of two new critical commentaries.) The upshot is the materials used to make it were already several generations removed from the camera negative, and their deterioration over the past five decades and change is such that the mastering job carried out by the 3-D Film Archive has those flaws baked in. (Sadly, while the 65mm negative is known to exist, it’s located at a film lab in Spain, and its owner won’t let it be scanned, so this is as good as we’re going to get for the foreseeable future.)
As for the film itself, while it served as a good jumping-off point for Naschy (who is surely in the Guinness Book of World Records for most times playing a werewolf in a feature film), he would improve upon the formula in later entries in the series. Most of the elements are already present, though: Waldemar, the reluctant werewolf who seeks an end to his torment. The use of other supernatural beings as antagonists. (In this case, they’re a pair of vampires who purport to have a cure for lycanthropy.) A love interest who throws themselves into Waldemar’s arms and must be the one to kill him so he can be put to rest. True, this is the only one that features gratuitous 3-D shots, but now it’s possible to see them the way they were intended.