ridiculous rating
Disturbing yet enthralling
Best movie of this year hands down!
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
View MoreWaldemar (Paul Naschy), the renowned adventurer, joins an expedition to find the Yeti in the Himalayas. While hiking the mountains, he is captured by two cannibalistic demon nymphets guarding a remote Buddhist temple and becomes their sex slave.This film ignores the events from the earlier films "The Fury of the Wolfman" (1970) and "Curse of the Devil" (1972), and provided an all-new origin for Waldemar's lycanthropy, having the curse transmitted by the bites of not one, but two, vampire women! The mix of supernatural creatures is certainly a good deal of fun.The film was banned in the UK by the BBFC under the Video Recordings Act of 1984 and was featured on the "Video Nasties" list. It has allegedly never been released in the UK. But for us lucky Americans, the film is now available on Blu-ray from Scream! Factory. It is fairly bare bones, with no commentary or other features, but we do get to choose between English and Spanish, which is nice.
View MoreJust when you thought you couldn't see a wackier film than Assignment Terror, along comes this little gem. Having taken two years off from portraying Waldemar Daninsky (last been seen in 1973's slick snooze-fest El Retorno de Warpugis / The Curse of the Devil), Naschy is back – wilder and woollier than ever. The plot is one of those day-dream plots of Naschy's, utilizing almost every possible archetype and genre cliché possible, combining them in a way that seems ludicrous but ultimately pays off through sheer audacity. La Maldicion is devoid of the romanticism and lyricism of some of the previous Waldemar outings, this time being all about sleaze, exploitation, garish lighting, outrageously ridiculous costumes, and budget- constrained effects. The plot concerns are nothing to take lightly, as Waldemar must battle not only his long-time nemesis Wandessa (yes, the bitch is back again), but also a murderous Mongol chief, a pair of cannibalistic sorceresses, and a rampaging yeti. Shot by the more-than-capable Tomàs Pladevall, La Maldicion could be, arguably, the last, great gasp of campy Spanish horror. If true camp is accidental, achieved only through failure or lack of intent, then La Maldicion is camp in the truest sense of the word. Once again Naschy attempts to make his ultimate adult monster movie—and fails. Full of nudity, sex, graphic violence, and unpredictable plot twists, La Malaicion features Naschy's favorite gimmick – to put heretofore uncombined classic heroes and villains all in one script. The werewolf, the vampire, the adventurer, the witch, the monk, the Hun, and the yeti all conspire to make this one lively film, as preposterous as it is full of plot holes. Of course! Its very preposterousness proves Naschy's magic – no one else has ever made the ludicrous so watchable.
View MoreHere's a wacky adventure-horror film with splats of gore, a few sexy ladies and two famous monsters. Made in the 70's, The Werewolf And The Yeti was banned in Britain during the Video Nasty madness of the 80's for reasons even harder to fathom than usual, and stayed banned.The yeti attacks some folks in Tibet before the credits have rolled, immediately establishing the pace for the film: fast! Within minutes the good guys have thrown together a major expedition and are trekking through the Tibetan mountains in an attempt to find out what weird stuff is going on up there. The answer is complicated. The superstitious sherpas won't stop raving about demons in this land, but the real problem is the shrine-guarding vampire women who like a bit of male-straddling on the one hand and snarling like hyenas as they fight over bloody entrails on the other. The hero does manage to escape from this delicate web of sex and violence, but not before he's been afflicted with the curse of werewolfism! As if life isn't complicated enough, the yeti's still at large and evil raiders are starting to attack folks indiscriminately all over the mountains. This all makes for the sensation of as much action as it sounds like it would. Somehow the film achieves a consistently tense feel, more by the portentous way that everyone talks about the situations they're in than by the actual portrayal of those situations. This isn't to downplay the considerable amount of action that there is, including gunfights, swashbuckling, dungeon torture and monster combat. But I do regard this likable film as a triumph of what's good about exploitation - getting maximum cinematic effect out of modest resources. Technically it's good too. I don't know if some mountain stuff was shot day for night, but the intense blue scenes in the snow are atmospheric, as is the oft-scary score. Note however that the use of 'Scotland The Brave' on the soundtrack over establishing shots of England is of a different kind of scary, as is a lot of the dubbed dialogue.Macroscopic logic isn't The Werewolf And The Yeti's strong point, but few films throw together as many elements as this one does and still achieve something basically coherent, fun and with good exploitation bang for your buck. Seeing this film made me wish they still made stuff like this today.
View MoreThis fabulously flipped-out fright feature is the eighth and most outrageous in Paul Naschy's ongoing Waldermar Daninsky werewolf horror series. The picture begins on a solid note with a rousing pre-credits yeti attack sequence. Naschy, as sullen and brooding as ever, joins an expedition in Tibet to search for the legendary reclusive beastman. Naschy gets lost during a storm, stumbles across a cave were two beauteous libidinous cannibalistic bisexual sorceress babes resides, has sex with the chicks, and snuffs them both out (but only after one honey gives him a bite that plants a werewolf curse on poor long-suffering Paul). Pretty soon Naschy's getting all hairy and homicidal whenever the moon becomes full, killing expedition members and brutish highway bandits alike with grisly abandon. Naschy meets a wise, friendly monk who promises to remove the curse if Paul does a little favor for him first: Naschy has to dispose of a wicked warlord and the warlord's especially nasty hench wench, who's a malicious bitch who gets her warped jollies out of skinning lovely young lasses alive! Just when you think the movie can't get any loonier, the abominable snowman makes a belated appearance in the action-packed last reel. The yeti abducts Naschy's lady love. Paul in furry werewolf guise and his equally hirsute foe then engage in a ferocious claw-to-claw, thingo-a-thingo, fists-and-fur-a-flyin' physical confrontation in the simply stupendous grand finale. Director Miguel Iglesias Bonns treats all the silly supernatural shenanigans with gut-busting seriousness. Naschy's convoluted, insanely overplotted script doesn't make a lick of sense, thus adding substantially to the overall campy fun. However, the lack of narrative coherence is more than made up for by the generous sprinkling of lurid sex and gratuitous nudity, copious gory bloodshed, wall-to-wall mondo freako action, lovably crummy transformation f/x, handsome scope cinematography, and a quick cameo by the ubiquitous Victor Israel, the Mr. Cellophane of Spanish horror cinema, as a scruffy mountain trail guide. A total rib-bruising riot.
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