The Werewolf and the Magic Sword (1983)

Count Waldemar Daninsky is back in action, in another dimension of his life. Yeah, another backstory, another ending, another in-between. Just the way we want it. The only really bad thing with The Werewolf and the Magic Sword is that they can’t have a motor trouble on a forest road and getting attacked by gangster, until Paul Naschy comes and saves them. Like in all of his other movies.

Bascially Paul Naschy did movies about himself, by himself and around his own persona. Very few actors can handle this egomaniacal trip (look at Tom Cruise), but Naschy has such a cool charisma, nice beard and wide chest that he can do this completely without shame. This is about him fucking maidens, if you cut away the horror parts.

In this part of the saga Daninsky and some Hungarian chick travels to Japan to find a cure for his werewolfness. But like Europe, Japan is one of those parts of the worlds where the full moon appears several times a week and this means Daninsky gets a lot of yellow flesh to eat and lots of virgin-blood to suck (I’m sure those samurais were virgins to!). They meet up and be-friends Kian (Shigeru Amachi) who soon feels guilty over not stopping Daninsky’s slaughter of the proud Japanese people. The only salvation is an evil witch… but first some maidens to make love to!

Here we have a Daninsky-movie with, it seem, higher budget and longer shooting schedule. It’s a more even movie than some of the other flicks he made during the same period, but my main complain is that it’s slightly too long. There are one or two scenes to much of him trying to get someone in bed or just walking around whining about his werewolf-illness. The werewolf action is nice, with the normal amounts of blood and with a couple of very entertaining sequences when Naschy burst into a room (or camp), just throwing people in every direction and spitting blood. Pure poetry.

Naschy is one of those actors that live on his charisma and big ego, because in his case it never was a problem with a big ego. It just made everything he did even better, more colorful and spectacular. The Werewolf and the Magic Sword is not his best movie, but it’s a good-looking production with nice production values and Naschy having a ball in the Japanese setting.

As usual, it’s recommended to everyone with a great taste in movies – and awesome Spanish macho-actors.