La Noche de Walpurgis
La Noche de Walpurgis Walpurgis Night, released in the United States as The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman and in the UK as Werewolf Shadow is a 1970 Spanish horror movie starring Paul Naschy, the fifth in a series about the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. This film was directed by Len Klimovsky and written by Naschy and Hans Munkel, and is generally regarded to have kickstarted the Spanish horror film boom of the Seventies, due to its awesome box office success upon its release. Patty Shepard was so convincing as the vampiric Countess, it was thought at the time that she might replace actress Barbara Steele as Europes reigning horror queen. Klimovsky filmed many of the scenes in slow motion, to add to the otherworldliness of the film. Naschy followed up this film with a sequel entitled Dr. Jekyll and the Wolf Man. Note There is a scene in this film that obviously inspired Spanish director Amando de Ossorio to write Tombs of the Blind Dead, which was made just a few months later in 1971. A skeletal zombie in a monks garments assaults Naschy in a cemetery in one scene, bearing a strong resemblance to de Ossorios Templar Knights in his Blind Dead films.
Daninskys lycanthropy is not given a specific origin in this film the events of the film are assumed to have followed from the ending of Fury of the Wolf Man 1970, which involved a yetis bite as the cause of Daninskys curse. How Daninsky went from being a college professor in Fury to being a castleowning count in Walpurgis is never addressed. It is explained that Waldemar was raised in this castle from infancy by an old woman who cared for him after his real parents died. The local townspeople consider her a witch, and rumors abound about a werewolf living in the castle. Apparently after Waldemar escaped from the morgue in the beginning of the film, he returned to his castle amp his stepmother. This backstory totally contradicts Waldemars being a college professor in the previous film, and this is why most Naschy fans dont even try to relate the Hombre Lobo films to each other storywise.The film was released theatrically in its native Spain as La Noche de Walpurgis in May 1971, and was released theatrically in the United States as The Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman by the Universal Entertainment Corporation in 1972. ........
Source: Wikipedia
