(1972)
Dir - Javier Aguirre
Overall: MEH
Another lovable yet remarkably flawed Paul Naschy ode to the Gothic horror of both Universal and Hammer, Count Dracula's Great Love, (El gran amor del conde Drácula, Dracula's Great Love, Cemetery Girls and Dracula's Virgin Lovers), sees the man in the title role crossing off yet another classic monster movie villain from his list. The editing is bizarrely unfocused, (often scenes appear to change locations before a character has even finished delivering their lines), and the dubbing could not be worse with most of Nashy's vampiric dialog reading more like a narration as his mouth literally remains closed while he is "speaking". None of this helps the "buh?" story from becoming anything close to coherent and most of the outcome is simply laughable because of it. That said, Naschy is still admirable on screen even if it makes hardly a lick of sense that he uses an alter ego in Dr. Wendell Marlow for most of the movie, bones multiple women, inexplicably falls in love with one within mere moments of knowing her, (a love which goes both ways), and daftly portrays himself as being both a romantically tragic figure and a fiend who willingly tortures women while leaving his discarded vampire wenches to burn in the sunlight. Visually, it is one of Naschy's strongest works though since the undead are portrayed rather creepy and the dark, fog-laden cinematography is pitch-perfect.
(1975)
Dir - León Klimovsky
Overall: MEH
Another Spanish giallo offering that is every bit deliberately Italian in style as humanly possible, A Dragonfly for Each Corpse, (The Vigilante Challenges the Police, Redkiller), sees Paul Naschy playing a police detective and the film's straight hero which in and of itself is unique. The budget is typically small, the English dubbing typically abysmal, and Naschy and Ricardo Muñoz Suay's screenplay is typically all over the place though the red herrings are toned down more than usual. The over the top details are readily available though, such as the killer's twisted passion to clean up the streets and target those he sees as unworthy to live, which are namely lowlifes, adulterers, homosexuals, sex workers, and drug addicts. If this sounds a bit Seven-ish, the similarities don not stop there as there is also a package delivered with a severed head in it. The scattered fascist symbolism gives it a mild, political layer and honestly the movie needs all the help it can get to keep one interested. It is not very well structured as we watch Naschy and his department try and piece everything together, there are too many characters to keep track of, and the inevitable killer reveal is anything but interesting.
(1974)
Dir - Carlos Aured
Overall: MEH
The seventh Waldemar Daninsky entry if you count the supposed second one Las Noches del Hombre Lobo which was never released or seen by anybody was El Retorno de Walpurgis, (The Return of Walpurgis, later put out in America as late as 1976 under the title Curse of the Devil). As usual, all of the events of the previous Daninsky installments are ignored and the character is once again given another origin, be it a similar enough one to several others in the series. On that note, the movie hardly brings anything new to Paul Naschy's beloved franchise in any respects. It has another opening of a witch's curse, (which is actually the best part of the film, full of wonderful, blasphemous dialog and a bunch of Satan's servants getting brutally hung off a bridge), then the Daninsky line being of course cursed with Waldemar himself meeting his end at the hand of yet another beautiful woman he barely knows who falls madly in love with him. The phrase "seen one you've seen em all" fairly applies to Naschy's werewolf movies and Walpurgis is not bad, but it is quite formulaic and makes one question its mere existence in the first place beyond just being for fans who like to keep seeing the Spanish wolfman terrorize a village in all his bloody mayhem.
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