Victoria Silverwolf
Vegetarian Werewolf
Horror Rises from the Tomb (El espanto surge de la tumba, 1973)
Spanish scream king Paul Naschy (Jacinto Molina Alvarez) plays three roles during the first five minutes of this Eurogothic shocker. The brief prologue, set in medieval France, shows Naschy as a sorcerer being beheaded, and Naschy as the guy's brother, who denounced him to the authorities. There's another fellow there, in charge of the execution. Bad-Naschy's fellow practitioner of Satanism, blood-drinking, flesh-eating, and so forth gets killed also. In predictable fashion, she's one of the film's many beautiful young women. The two devil-worshippers cast the usual curses on the descendants of their executors.
Cut to Paris in the 1970's. Naschy now plays the descendant of the sorcerer's brother, and his artist friend is the descendant of the other guy at the execution. (Same actor, naturally.) They and their lady friends wind up contacting bad-Naschy at a séance, leading them to head out to new-Naschy's ancestral estate, way out in the snowy wilderness. In an odd plot twist, some crooks attack them, causing their car to crash, but they're rescued by some other guys, not too reputable themselves, who immediately hang the criminals in a sort of backwoods French frontier justice. It all leads up to digging for a supposed treasure, finding a chest with bad-Naschy's head, the head turning folks into his slaves and killing other folks, the head getting back together with the body, the executed woman returning to do her own evil deeds, and a very handy ancestral amulet that wards off bad-Naschy. (It doesn't work on women, we're told, so she has to get a silver needle shoved into her heart.)
The version I watched is the one censored for American TV, so it's missing the original's gore and nudity, although we do get a fair amount of blood and a fair number of women in microskirts or skimpy nightgowns. (One of the possessed women wears a completely transparent nightgown over completely opaque black underwear, which looks more silly than sexy.) The whole thing is a mish-mosh of Gothic tropes, with a remarkably high body count; I believe only one character is still alive at the end. Worth a look for those into this sort of thing.
Spanish scream king Paul Naschy (Jacinto Molina Alvarez) plays three roles during the first five minutes of this Eurogothic shocker. The brief prologue, set in medieval France, shows Naschy as a sorcerer being beheaded, and Naschy as the guy's brother, who denounced him to the authorities. There's another fellow there, in charge of the execution. Bad-Naschy's fellow practitioner of Satanism, blood-drinking, flesh-eating, and so forth gets killed also. In predictable fashion, she's one of the film's many beautiful young women. The two devil-worshippers cast the usual curses on the descendants of their executors.
Cut to Paris in the 1970's. Naschy now plays the descendant of the sorcerer's brother, and his artist friend is the descendant of the other guy at the execution. (Same actor, naturally.) They and their lady friends wind up contacting bad-Naschy at a séance, leading them to head out to new-Naschy's ancestral estate, way out in the snowy wilderness. In an odd plot twist, some crooks attack them, causing their car to crash, but they're rescued by some other guys, not too reputable themselves, who immediately hang the criminals in a sort of backwoods French frontier justice. It all leads up to digging for a supposed treasure, finding a chest with bad-Naschy's head, the head turning folks into his slaves and killing other folks, the head getting back together with the body, the executed woman returning to do her own evil deeds, and a very handy ancestral amulet that wards off bad-Naschy. (It doesn't work on women, we're told, so she has to get a silver needle shoved into her heart.)
The version I watched is the one censored for American TV, so it's missing the original's gore and nudity, although we do get a fair amount of blood and a fair number of women in microskirts or skimpy nightgowns. (One of the possessed women wears a completely transparent nightgown over completely opaque black underwear, which looks more silly than sexy.) The whole thing is a mish-mosh of Gothic tropes, with a remarkably high body count; I believe only one character is still alive at the end. Worth a look for those into this sort of thing.
