The Fury of the Wolfman

La Furia del Hombre Lobo (The Fury of the Wolfman), aka Wolfman Never Sleeps, is a 1970 Spanish horror film that is the fourth in a long series about the werewolf Count Waldemar Daninsky, played by Paul Naschy. It was not theatrically released in Europe until 1975, due to problems involved in finding a distributor, although it was shown edited on TV in the US in 1974. The Swedish edit called Wolfman Never Sleeps is the more complete version and contains several extra sex scenes that were edited out of all of the other versions.

La Furia del Hombre Lobo
Directed byJosé María Zabalza
Produced byMaxper Producciones Cinematograficas
Written byJacinto Molina
StarringPaul Naschy
Perla Cristal
Verónica Luján
Music byÁngel Arteaga
CinematographyLeopoldo Villaseñor
Edited byLuis Álvarez
Sebastián Herranz
Distributed byAVCO Embassy Pictures (USA, late night TV)
Release date
  • 7 February 1972 (1972-02-07)
Running time
90 minutes
CountrySpain
LanguageSpanish

This was the first film to involve a Yeti as the catalyst that transforms Waldemar into a werewolf (the "Yeti origin" appearing again later in La Maldicion de la Bestia in 1975). Naschy followed this film up with a sequel called La Noche de Walpurgis (1970), which became the highest-grossing film in the entire series.

Plot

College professor Waldemar Daninsky travels to Tibet and is bitten by a yeti, which causes him to become a werewolf. He is accidentally killed while trying to escape after murdering his cheating wife and her lover, but he is later revived by a female scientist, Dr. Ilona Ellmann, who uses him in her mind control experiments. Daninsky later discovers her underground asylum populated by the bizarre subjects of her failed experiments. The crazed scientist revives Waldemar's murdered ex-wife, who also becomes a werewolf from being fatally bitten by Daninsky, and forces the two werewolves to fight. Waldemar kills his wife yet again, and is in turn shot to death by the doctor's assistant, a woman who loves him enough to end his torment.

The plot of this film differed from the earlier entries in the series in that 1) Daninsky is a college professor in this film, 2) the lycanthropy is caused by a Yeti's bite, and 3) Daninsky is married in this film. Naschy's friend Enrique Eguiluz started out to direct this film, but only managed to film Naschy's nightmare sequence near the beginning of the film. He left the project early and was replaced by Zabalza, whom Naschy said was an alcoholic and a very uncouth person. Due to the laziness of director Zabalza, this film wound up including a lot of stock footage from La Marca del Hombre Lobo (1968) to pad out its running time and a few carelessly mismatched werewolf scenes played by a stunt double he hired.

Cast
  • Paul Naschy as Waldemar Daninsky/Wolfman
  • Perla Cristal as Dr. Ilona Ellman/Eva Wolfstein
  • Verónica Luján as Karin
  • Miguel de la Riva as Det. Wilhelm Kaufmann
  • José Marco as Merrill
  • Mark Stevens as Bill
  • Francisco Amorós as Helmut Wolfstein
  • Javier de Rivera as Detective
  • Ramón Lillo as Frederick
  • Fabián Conde as Man at Castle
  • Pilar Zorrilla as Erika Daninsky

Reception

One review states, "Add to the total fiasco of the script & the additionial (sic) confusion caused by bad translation, worse dub, & a multitude of edits of two versions (one version having a lot of nudity), & it's surprising any sense can be made of it at all."[1]

References
  1. "FURY OF THE WOLFMAN aka, THE WOLFMAN NEVER SLEEPS (LA FURIO DEL HOMBRE LOBO) 1970". Wild Realm. Retrieved 6 September 2020.


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