The Werewolf vs. Vampire Woman (1971) This is another in Spanish monster superstar Paul Naschy's oeuvre of Waldemar
Daninsky flicks. I first encountered Waldemar (Wally to his pals) in the
abominable Dracula vs. Frankenstein abortion. For those fortunate souls that have never stumbled across Paul and
his convincingly amateurish movie universe, a little background is in order
(in that sense I'm already giving you more than any of his movies). Waldemar
was bitten by something or other when he was in Tibet (didn't they steal this
from Universal's Werewolf Of London movie?) and ever since he turns into a werewolf whenever the moon is full.
Inexplicably, this was turned into about nine movies, of which this one is
probably somewhere in the middle (there's no way I was going to look up the
order of these movies - besides I don't think that anything that happens in one
affects the next one or was affected by the previous one). More inexplicably,
they all star this guy who uses the alias, Paul Naschy. His real name is
Jacindo Molina and sometimes he uses multiple names for his different duties on
the same film! Paul has no personality that I could detect and his only
distinguishing characteristic is that he looks vaguely like John Belushi in Neighbors (but only if you squint real hard). The movie has a little prologue prior to rolling the opening credits where
these two doctor types are mucking around with Waldemar's body. One of them is
talking up the whole, "he's a werewolf" angle, while the other guy is
inevitably your doubting Thomas (most of these monster flicks couldn't survive
without the doubting Thomas screwing things up). Since he doubts that this guy
really is a werewolf (he must have been out of the country when the previous
six movies played) he says he'll prove it by removing the silver bullets. In
fact, he's going to do that in spite of Waldemar's pentagram mark on his beefy
chest which everyone knows is the mark of the werewolf, or Satan or the Aryan
Nation or something. The bullets are extracted and the next thing you know, a
real hairy Spanish dude is eating them. I guess the doubting Thomas was wrong.
Go figure.  The credits roll against a montage of the werewolf fighting the vampire woman.
Nothing like giving the main event away in the opening five minutes. Once the
interminable credits are done (How many times do they have to tell me that Paul
Naschy is single-handedly responsible for this mess?) we get to meet a couple
of swinging chicks by the name of Genevieve and Elvira. Elvira is doing some
kind of college course work that involves her having to defile the tomb of a
Hungarian Countess who happens to be a vampire (I tried to get in into the
class, but it fills up fast). Her friend Genevieve says she wouldn't mind going
along for the ride, because it has been way too long since she did any tomb
raiding. As the friend who has no business going on this trip, you're already
putting her death certificate into the IBM Selectric and sizing her up for a
set of fangs. Elvira has a boyfriend named Marcelle, who is a cop or secret
agent or something (whatever he is, it involves him leaving the south of France
for most of the movie to go on a secret mission in Turkey unrelated to either
Hungarian vampires or Spanish werewolves).
The two gals go driving off into the countryside and then their car runs out of
gas and they end up stopped at the old abandoned monastery or local bed and
breakfast or whatever and who should they run into but Count Waldemar.
Waldemar is a homely guy prone to dressing in this really ugly leather jacket
that must've have been all the rage back in '71. I bought one of those once
when I was flunking out of college at one of those trendy used clothing stores
and fifteen minutes after I had it, everyone else had hopped on the bandwagon
and was sporting these ugly things trying to be Shaft or something. Waldemar says he's alone in this big old house and he wouldn't mind it if a
couple of college girls unpacked their see-through nightgowns and spent the
night. They all sit down to eat and later the girls retire to their room where
Genevieve thinks he's lying about himself. What was the big tip off you ask?
Didn't you notice the way the table was set? That is definitely the work of a
woman. Someone ought to put her on the trail of D.B. Cooper, because that's a
pretty sweet deduction on Nancy Drew's part. Of course the other explanation
is that this is an ugly guy who wears a leather coat and lives by himself.  Later, after a little posing in those see-through nightgowns that everyone has
to pack when they go off to dig up an ancient tomb, they go to bed and then
someone enters their room! It's a woman! So Genevieve was right! I feel so
stupid. This woman proceeds to grope one of the girls and Waldemar turns up
and says not to sweat it, because it's just his crazy sister Elizabeth. When
their father died in an accident it drove her around the bend and now she
suffers from a condition known as lesbianism. In the morning, instead of
hauling arse out of there, they decide to give things another chance (heck,
they packed spare nightgowns, can't let those go to waste, right?) and decide
to head out to the old ruins where the tomb must be (Waldemar read some kind of
treasure map and figured out its location).
If nothing else, this movie gets you out into the great outdoors. Whereas Dracula vs. Frankenstein spent a bunch of time in pubs, secret labs, and dingy dungeons, this one at
least keeps you from going into a coma by taking you out to ancient ruins,
dusty tombs, and long drives in the woods. For reasons that I still don't
fathom, once they locate the tomb, Elvira wusses out and says that she doesn't
want to be around when they open the tomb (um, no course credit for you!). She
leaves and wanders around the ruins while her pals are busy raising a Hungarian
vampire from the dead. Waldemar and Genevieve crack open the coffin (which apparently says "Property
of Hungarian Vampire") and inside we see this rotted old skank with this big
silver cross embedded in her chest. Genevieve thinks it would make a nice
keepsake of her trip to the country and yanks it out, cutting herself in the
process. Waldemar and her decide to leave and eventually meet up with Elvira.
Elvira may have been chased by a monster around this time, or maybe that was on
a later excursion to the ruins, I don't recall, but they all go back to the
house to spend another night with Waldemar and his frisky sister. I forget a lot of what happens in the middle part of the movie, mainly because
this Naschy guy is so underwhelming up on screen. He doesn't command your
attention in any way and he acts about as well as you would expect an amateur
to. Plus, the whole bit with the resurrected vampire is so trite you can't
help but not care. You're just wondering when you're going to see Naschy bust
out his awful werewolf gimmick which involves him running around as fast as his
portly body can carry him, jumping about, and emitting these ridiculously
dubbed animal growls, snarls, and yelps.  Finally the full moon shows up and so does this werewolf that someone decided
(named Paul, no doubt) was worthy of building an entire film series around.
He's about as impressive as the female vampire. This female vampire shows up
and she's kind of purplish-green with these fangs and she turns Genevieve into
a vampire and there's some lesbian overtones, but this vampire doesn't say
much, doesn't seem to have much of an agenda and just hangs out harassing these
people (later she tries to sacrifice Elvira to bring Satan back, but that seems
like ill- conceived drama - why not just sacrifice Genevieve when no one is
around?)
The movie seems to take forever to end and once we finally get to the titular
battle that we have girded ourselves for these last eighty minutes the payoff
is unbelievably bad. Werewolf and Vampire Woman's fight consisted of them
rolling around the dirt floor of the ruins like they were a couple of second
graders having a playground squabble. The fight didn't last long, I don't see
how anyone could have possibly gotten hurt, and you were left wanting more.
Since Waldemar is the star of these things, he got the win and ripped her
throat out when it was all said and done, but the fight itself was just lame.
This was also (not counting the opening credits) the only time these two hooked
up. At least Toho knows in their Godzilla movies, that Big G needs to have
about two or three matches per movie to keep things on track. As cruddy as all this was, I was surprised that it wasn't more cruddy. After
the carnage that was Dracula vs. Frankenstein, I was prepared for the absolute worst. Well, I didn't get it. Oh, I got
bad, don't get me wrong, but it was just standard bad. The story was boring
without a hint of originality (dopes resurrect a vampire, the guy who is
werewolf is tormented by it and just wants it to end, secret agent returns from
Turkey to try and save the day, that sort of stuff), the characters were
handicapped by the lack of anything resembling a good script (this all starts
because of a college class? Genevieve just tags along, then she wants to open
up the tomb? Waldemar wears a leather jacket instead of a Nehru one?) and by
the lack of anything resembling talent. The movie is technically speaking a cut above the level of a Dracula vs. Frankenstein and actually attempts to inject a little style into the proceedings with some
slow motion and eerie music during a couple of sequences. These are sort of
able to evoke a dream-like feeling for those scenes and are moderately
effective, but that's about the only positive thing that I can say about this
one. Well, that and the fact that it wasn't Dracula vs. Frankenstein.
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