La Noche de Walpurgis, or the ridiculous sounding The Werewolf Vs. Vampire Woman or the better sounding but still irrelevant Werewolf Shadow as it's known amongst English speaking audiences, starts at a local mortuary where Dr. Hartwig (Julio Pena) & his assistant Muller (Bernabe Barta Barri) are carrying out a postmortem on Waldemar Daninsky (Jacinto Molina under his usual pseudonym Paul Naschy) a suspected Werewolf who has been shot with silver bullets. After removing the bullets Daninsky comes back to life as a werewolf, attacks Hartwig & Muller then kills a local girl. Meanwhile a student named Elvira (Gaby Fuchs) is writing an essay on black-magic, witchcraft & in particular a Countess Wandessa d'Arville da Nadasdy (Patty Shepard) whom was said to be a Vampire & Satan worshipper 100's of years ago. Together with her friend Genevieve (Barbara Capell) & a document which reveals where Wandessa's tomb is located Elvira travels to a remote part of North France & bumps into Waldemar who offers the two women a place to stay. It's not long before things take a turn for the worse as Waldmar's mentally disturbed sister Elizabeth (Yelena Samarina) warns them to leave the area, they discover blood stained walls & manacles in the shed, Waldemar somehow isn't as he appears & when Wandessa's tomb is opened she is resurrected form the dead to terrorise the local area once again with various bodies turning up having been drained of blood...
This Spanish German co-production was directed by Leon Klimovsky & isn't as bad as I was anticipating, it's far from a masterpiece but I thought it was a fairly decent way to pass an hour & a half. The version I saw was the Anchor Bay DVD with the extra few minutes of dialogue that was obviously never dubbed into English & therefore is presented in Spanish with subtitles, this extra footage adds nothing & in fact I'd prefer to have not had this put back in as it slows the pace of the film down & is frankly boring. Anyway, the script by star Molina as James Molin (how many pseudonym's does this guy have?) & Hans Munkel has plenty of the elements that most rabid Euro horror fans will be looking for like Vampires, Werewolves, blood, superstitious locals, pretty girls, idiotic dialogue & nudity. Hey, what more do you want? A decent coherent story perhaps? The character's are dull & don't act in the way a normal human being would in the situations they find themselves in, I didn't buy the relationship between Daninsky & Elvira for a second & it just seemed so fake & contrived. The various themes & ideas in La Noche de Walpurgis come & go without much regard for continuity, the Werewolf & Vampires appear sporadically throughout often being completely forgotten about for long period's. Having said that that the film moves a long at a nice pace & never really becomes boring (expect at the end but that's the extra footage for you) with a decent amount of monster action although the climatic fight at the end is nothing more than two people rolling around on the floor. Director Klimovsky manges to create some great scenes & atmosphere with the Vampires moving in slow motion & for some reason he has them jump off something whenever they appear, I also liked Wandessa's outfit with her black veil. On the down side the constant day-for-night shots become irritating & undo some of his good work. I loved the locations used, the Church ruins & local architecture is fantastic & gives La Noche de Walpurgis a really nice look that the film itself doesn't deserve. Technically the film is solid with nice production values, cinematography, music & special effects. There are some gore scenes here, a woman is bitten on the neck with lots of her blood running over her naked breasts, a couple of stakes through the heart, some Vampirism & neck biting, a decapitation & a melting Vampire. The acting is obviously lessened by the bad English dub but it probably wasn't any good anyway, leading ladies Fuchs & Capell are both very attractive if you know what I mean... I quite liked La Noche de Walpurgis, it's far from the best Euro horror I've ever seen but it's far from the worst. It's simple, silly & slightly uneven story entertains to an extent but it isn't going to stay with you for that long afterwards. If your a Euro horror or Naschy fan than it's definitely worth a watch, for those who aren't would be advised that there are better alternatives out there.
This Spanish German co-production was directed by Leon Klimovsky & isn't as bad as I was anticipating, it's far from a masterpiece but I thought it was a fairly decent way to pass an hour & a half. The version I saw was the Anchor Bay DVD with the extra few minutes of dialogue that was obviously never dubbed into English & therefore is presented in Spanish with subtitles, this extra footage adds nothing & in fact I'd prefer to have not had this put back in as it slows the pace of the film down & is frankly boring. Anyway, the script by star Molina as James Molin (how many pseudonym's does this guy have?) & Hans Munkel has plenty of the elements that most rabid Euro horror fans will be looking for like Vampires, Werewolves, blood, superstitious locals, pretty girls, idiotic dialogue & nudity. Hey, what more do you want? A decent coherent story perhaps? The character's are dull & don't act in the way a normal human being would in the situations they find themselves in, I didn't buy the relationship between Daninsky & Elvira for a second & it just seemed so fake & contrived. The various themes & ideas in La Noche de Walpurgis come & go without much regard for continuity, the Werewolf & Vampires appear sporadically throughout often being completely forgotten about for long period's. Having said that that the film moves a long at a nice pace & never really becomes boring (expect at the end but that's the extra footage for you) with a decent amount of monster action although the climatic fight at the end is nothing more than two people rolling around on the floor. Director Klimovsky manges to create some great scenes & atmosphere with the Vampires moving in slow motion & for some reason he has them jump off something whenever they appear, I also liked Wandessa's outfit with her black veil. On the down side the constant day-for-night shots become irritating & undo some of his good work. I loved the locations used, the Church ruins & local architecture is fantastic & gives La Noche de Walpurgis a really nice look that the film itself doesn't deserve. Technically the film is solid with nice production values, cinematography, music & special effects. There are some gore scenes here, a woman is bitten on the neck with lots of her blood running over her naked breasts, a couple of stakes through the heart, some Vampirism & neck biting, a decapitation & a melting Vampire. The acting is obviously lessened by the bad English dub but it probably wasn't any good anyway, leading ladies Fuchs & Capell are both very attractive if you know what I mean... I quite liked La Noche de Walpurgis, it's far from the best Euro horror I've ever seen but it's far from the worst. It's simple, silly & slightly uneven story entertains to an extent but it isn't going to stay with you for that long afterwards. If your a Euro horror or Naschy fan than it's definitely worth a watch, for those who aren't would be advised that there are better alternatives out there.