(2003)
Dir - Fred Olen Ray
Overall: WOOF
Shot during the same week as Countess Dracula's Orgy of Blood and released the following year, Tomb of the Werewolf, (The Unliving), is the final entry in Paul Nashcy's Count Waldemar Daninsky series. The fact that the Spanish horror icon got to play his most famous character one last time while pushing seventy years old is a wonderful thing in spirit, yet unfortunately the resulting film is a piece of absolute shit. Writer/director/schlock peddler Fred Olen Ray is basically only tolerable when he is delivering his own brand of exploitative, tongue-in-cheek comedy so his attempt at atmospheric Gothic horror with worse production values and acting than most pornography is just headscratchingly embarrassing. Speaking of porn, this is of the softcore variety with an exclusive cast made up of mimbos and naked women, save both Hollywood Chainsaw Hooker's Jay Richardson who mostly just smirks and Naschy who only speaks a couple lines of phonetic English. On the positive side, the makeup is actually pretty decent and Naschy still has an impressive ferociousness when under the wolfman garb. Elsewhere though, it is a typical "shot on digital video" crapfest that fairly belongs on anyone's "bad movie night" list.
(2004)
Dir - Brian Yuzna
Overall: MEH
Following up Beyond Re-Animator with another low budget Spanish production, Brian Yuzna hits a creative wall with the painfully not good Rottweiler. The concept of a cybernetic K9 hunting down an escaped prisoner is nothing to take seriously of course, but the tone here goes for riveting, B-movie action that fails to jive with incredibly lousy dialog, unfocused plotting, shit dubbing, and an underwritten story loaded with unintentional humor and schlocky cliches. Yuzna's attempts at visual and conceptual edginess are pretty far removed from his earlier, wackier work as well. Poor little Ivana Baquero for instance sees a stark naked guy, her mom having sex with him, her dog mutilated, and her then mom viciously murdered right in front of her all within a handful of minutes. As opposed to the absurd yuckfest Society which was actually intelligently crafted, or even the unwatchably terrible yet gleefully over the top Faust: Love of the Damned, this is just an unremarkable, not even minimally interesting dud. Paul Naschy plays a mysterious bad guy for a couple of seconds though so at least he made some money.
(2005)
Dir - Ivan Cardoso
Overall: MEH
Nearing the end of his performing career, Paul Naschy got to check one last iconic horror character off from his list of many, this time playing none other than Dr. Moreau in A Werewolf in the Amazon, (Um Lobisomem na Amazônia), a barely sequel to H.G.Welles' source material. It would be unfair to expect anything that profoundly examines "man playing god" themes within the bottom-barrel, purposely goofy presentation here from Brazilian filmmaker Ivan Cardoso. A comedy/horror hybrid that even randomly detours into musical terrain for a single scene, there are topless Amazon women, sex scenes that fade to black as soon as they begin, about four sets to shoot on, day for night scenes via obvious digital manipulation, no animal makeup for any of Moreau's monstrous creations, and every single dialog dump is littered with nothing but exposition. In many ways this fits right at home with much of Naschy's low-budget work, though it is a plus that the sleaze factor is played exclusively for campy chuckles this time. The tone is quite appropriate for the moronic material and Naschy actually seems to be enjoying himself as the one-note villain, giving his scant few werewolf appearances a sufficient jolt to go out on. A better movie overall certainly would have been preferable to hang his lycanthropian hat on once and for all, but this is harmless silliness that is at least watchable for fans that are hip to its existence.
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