aka Doctor Jekyll and the Werewolf; Dr. Jekyll vs. the Wolfman
(Doctor Jekyll y el Hombre Lobo)
Spain. 1972.
Crew
Director – Leon Klimovsky, Screenplay – Jacinto Molina, Producer – Arturo Gonzalez, Photography – Francisco Fraille, Music – Anton Garcia Abril, Special Effects – Antonio Molina, Makeup – Miguel Sese. Production Company – Jose Frade Producciones Cinematograficas, S.A..
Cast
Paul Naschy (Waldemar Daninsky), Shirley Corrigan (Justine), Jack Taylor (Dr Henry Jekyll), Mirta Miller (Sandra), Jose Marco (Imre Kostaz), Luis Induni (Ostvos), Barta Barry (Giorgio), Elsa Zabala (Usvika Bathory)
Plot
Imre Kostaz and his girlfriend Justine travel to the remote village of Baliavista in Hungary to visit the graves of his family. There they are attacked by local hoodlums and Imre is killed. Waldemar Daninsky, who lives in the nearby Black Castle, appears and saves Justine. He cares for her through her recovery and they find love together. As the locals return, Justine learns Waldemar’s secret – that he is a werewolf. She returns to London with Waldemar to visit Henry Jekyll, the ancestor of the famous doctor who invented a serum to bring out the evil side of human nature, in the hope he can provide a cure for Waldemar’s condition. Henry believes that by dosing Waldemar with the serum and then its antidote, he will drive the wolf out of him. However, after being turned into Mr Hyde, Waldemar escapes from the laboratory and rampages through London.
Spanish actor Paul Naschy (1934-2009) gained fame as a horror icon during the 1970s. Naschy first appeared in Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (1968). He had originally written the script under his given name Jacinto Molina and was persuaded to take the lead role of the wolfman Waldemar Daninsky where he adopted the pseudonym Paul Naschy to help sell the film to English-language audiences. The wolfman became Naschy’s signature role and he went onto play Daninsky in nine other films (see below for the other Waldemar Daninsky films), as well as play a host of other horror roles.
Dr Jekyll and the Wolfman was Naschy’s fifth outing as Waldemar Daninsky. By this point, he and regular director Leon Klimovsky had started to get what they had been trying to do with the films right. Naschy slots into the role with a handsome charisma and plays the romantic side with a fair conviction. The plot does have problems but the second half starts to work well and you can see that they are getting it right.
However, the first half of Dr Jekyll and the Wolfman feels like a timewaster. There is a long preamble about Imre (Jose Marco) and girlfriend Shirley Corrigan travelling to Hungary to visit his family grave (where Hungary seems to morph into Transylvania at one point). This feels tedious as they are characters we have no investment in. Dr Jekyll (Jack Taylor) is introduced in the opening scene only for the film to promptly sideline him. Similarly, it is eighteen minutes before Naschy’s Waldemar enters the scene. And when it does introduce Waldemar, most of the early scenes consist of him romancing Shirley Corrigan. What we really want is not some drama about people that we have no engagement in on a pilgrimage but for the film to do what its title promise – pit Daninsky and Dr Jekyll against one another, but it makes the criminal mistaking of sidelining its two title characters.
Paul Naschy transforms into Mr Hyde
The other disappointment is the ‘Dr Jekyll vs the Wolfman’ aspect. Paul Naschy had a great love for the Famous Monsters and got to play most of them throughout his career (more of them than any other actor in fact). The title sets up the promise of a showdown between Waldemar and Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde. On the other hand, the film cheats at providing such a showdown. We do get a Dr Jekyll but he is no more than the grandson of his predecessor but he never turns into Hyde. Jekyll administers the serum to Waldemar in the belief it will cure him whereupon it then becomes Waldemar who turns into Mr Hyde.
You suspect the reason for this is because Naschy wanted to add a further feather to his cap in playing another Famous Monster, Mr Hyde. However, to do so, he has to distort the entire pitch of the ‘vs’ aspect of the story. That said, Naschy looks quite evil and malevolent when playing Hyde. The latter scenes have him rampaging out into the streets of contemporary London do a fair job of making these aspects come to life.
Leon Klimovsky (1906-96) was a prolific Spanish director who turned out 76 films between the 1940s and 70s. Up until the late 1960s, most of Klimovsky’s work was a series of crime thrillers, dramas, Westerns and musicals. Klimovsky made various efforts in the Euro horror cycle of the day with Edge of Fear (1964), Vengeance of the Zombies (1972), The Saga of the Draculas (1973), The Vampire’s Night Orgy (1973), The Devil’s Possessed (1974), I Hate My Body (1974), A Dragonfly for Each Corpse (1975), The Strange Love of the Vampires (1975) and Trauma (1978). Klimovsky is best remembered for his films with Paul Naschy, in particular The Werewolf and the Vampire Woman (1971) and Dr Jekyll and the Wolfman, plus the nuclear war film The People Who Own the Dark (1977).
