Tuesday, June 1, 2021

'Dr. Jekyll Vs. The Werewolf' (1972) – Leon Klimovsky.

While it is fair to say that Dr. Jekyll Vs. The Werewolf' isn't the most successful collaboration between writer Naschy & film-maker Klimovsky its central premise, while spectacularly lurid, is a good one, and the venerable Naschy applies his singular vigour to the dual roles of his iconic Waldemar Daninski and by portraying an especially feral-looking, golden-eyed Hyde! 

Both the script's lack of invention and the bizarre anachronistic quality to 'Dr. Jekyll Vs. The werewolf' hinder it from being a Gothic schlock classic. While wealthy hard-headed Hungarian businessman Imrie Kosta(Jose Marco)and his bombshell wife Justine (Shirley Corrigan) visit his parents final remains in an especially spooky, dilapidated cemetery situated no less spookily very close to the greatly feared Castle home to anguished, romantically-inlined Lycanthrope, the tight roll-neck sporting Waldemar Daninsky, and in the grisly gnashing of his brawny bicuspids the action returns to swinging London where urbane Dr. Jekyll (Jack Taylor) heir to his infamous ancestors malevolent serum stoically attempts to cure the beleaguered Waldemar but inadvertently encouraging a diabolical metaphysical battle of primordial wills between Daninski's relentless Lycanthropic tendencies and the indomitable will of the preternaturally evil Mr. Hyde!

While Naschy once again delivers another hair-raisingly haunted performance as the diabolically-inclined Daninsky, it is his howlingly hideous transfiguration into the hateful Hyde that engenders the greatest frisson of fear in Klimovsky's uneven monster mash up, but for all its absurdity it remains a fitfully fun movie with another credible, blissfully boisterous werewolf workout for the hirsute Naschy and once again ace composer Antón García Abril creates a marvellously moody score. 








 

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