"Extra work sucks. Get out quick."
- Tim Roth
La Noche del Walpurgis (1972)
“Things happen that have never been seen by human beings…The blood flows like vintage wine…See it with someone you hate.” Nobody writes blurbs like these anymore. Alas, copywriters are cleverer now, hipper and more sophisticated, and the tags they invent are short, succinct, sometimes ironic, and allusive of pop culture. Witness the tagline for the current Matrix Reloaded: “Free Your Mind”. Now, certainly it references the plot and theme of the movie, or at least the first Matrix, and it also alludes to some of the philosophical conceits of the series, but when I first saw the tagline I was compelled to complete it: “Free Your Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow,” from the title of the classic 1971 Funkadelic album. My reaction to this begs the question: was this an intended effect? After all, millions are spent test marketing these sorts of things, and no doubt it occurred to some marketing whiz kid that some slice (however thin) of the movie going demographic would be prone to catch this reference(and probably not specifically the Funkadelic reference, as more peopleare familiar with the slogan as they are to the album of the same name). We are vain consumers, and we are confident that we are immune to advertising’s tricks and gimmicks, but are we really? Like the characters in the Matrix movies, are we living in a constructed reality where we are spoon-fed culture and allusion? We can congratulateourselves by feeling that we are above the fray. We feel smarter by recognizing the Buzzcocks or Clash song behind the car commercial, but then feel the ironic remorse of having a small piece of our youth used to push product; then flattered by realizing that we are their hip, smart, and affluent target demographic (despite the fact that many of us cannot possibly afford to own a brand new Jaguar); then feeling cool enough to know how we’re being solicited. But the particular buttons are still being pushed. Our buttons are being pushed; our coolness is being usurped; and then we come to the excruciating realization that we may be dealing with people smarter and craftier than ourselves.
Things weren’t as complex in 1972 when the Spanish film La Noche de Walpurgis was released in the grindhouses and drive-ins of America as The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman. A big hit in Europe, cementing Paul Naschy’s position as Spain’s preeminent horror film star, it came to America with all the fanfare and bluster of a dusty, ratty, moth-eaten circus. I saw it as a young teenager one gummy-eyed late night in the ‘70’s on San Antonio’s KENS-TV’s Project Terror program (“Where the scientific and the mystifying merge…”). Project Terror’s programming consisted mainly of European horror at the time, and although some were heavily edited, one could see a glimpse of a bare breast once in a while and some cool but cheap gross-out gore. Ah, adolescence! I don’t remember either actively liking or disliking it, but I do remember thinking that the werewolf makeup looked cheap and that the vampire woman (played by Patty Shepard) looked pretty hot, so much that I rooted for her in the climactic battle with the good guy wolfman Waldemar Daninsky played by Paul Naschy. A silly diversion, nothing more, nothing less. I hadn’t thought about the movie since I saw it over 25 years ago. I’ve seen some other Naschy horror titles on video since then House of Psychotic Women is one that immediately comes to mind), and they’re certainly fun to watch if you don’t mind the fast, cheap, and out of control nature of the movies, but they contain none of the cruel poetry and transgressive power of the best of ‘70’s Euro-horror (de Ossorio’s Blind Dead series, Rollin’s vampire films, Argento’s Suspiria, even a couple of Franco’s films). Naschy’s work is a throwback to the Universal horrors of the ‘30’s and ‘40’s, albeit with nudity and gore, but unfortunately adds nothing new to the mix.
But
the poster got me thinking about the movie again, if only for its outlandish
taglines, which has a raucous poetry all its own. The movie industry as
we know it was founded by former circus and carnival men who saw the potential
of making money hand over fist by projecting moving pictures on a screen
for a roomful of paying customers. They also knew the value of the barker
and huckster, and how they were essential for getting bodies (or conning
the rubes) into the show. As Hollywood became more of a factory town,
and movies the most significant new art form in the twentieth century,
the carnival roots began to recede back into the background. The new business
model for the manufacturer of dreams that Hollywood became eschewed the
old patter and snake oil roots of the old tycoons. Careful and premeditated
scientific
advertising and marketing became the rule. Test screenings and surveys
were all important in the pushing of a Hollywood movie. Indeed, the high
cost of production demanded a more consistent model than gut feelings
and choice taglines. The last vestiges of the old hucksterism survived
in the marketing of cheap exploitation and genre films like The
Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman. One can imagine some old cigar
chewing carny hammering out the copy, or perhaps a clever young stoner
with aspirations to write for Creem
or Crawdaddy,
head swimming with cough syrup. Either way, there was nothing careful
or subtle about the poster or its taglines (well, maybe the “blood
flows like vintage wine” was intended to lend a certain amount of
class). In any case, adding “versus” to a movie title automatically
relegates it to a drive-in or kiddie matinee second feature (Navy
vs. The
Night Monsters; Samson
vs. The Vampire Women;
Kramer vs. Kramer), so the distributors evidently had no high
hopes for this Spanish import. The film went through the rounds on the
drive-in and grindhouse circuit, ended up on late-night television, had
its script novelized in paperback
(which is quite rare, selling for up to $100), released on VHS as
Blood Moon in the early ‘80’s (in an oversized
box, which is a collectable in its own right) and was confined to the
dustier corners of your local video store’s horror section where
it remained unwatched except when pale and gloomy horror fans came around,
looking for the rarest of the rare, a film they read about in passing
on Video Watchdog
or Psychotronic.
And the copy was crappy looking, old and full of tape glitches, and the
clerks didn’t give a shit because all they cared about was whether
the copies of Dances with Wolves were being returned in time,
because it was a new release, a big renter, and it won Best Picture, right?
Such
was the plight of the horror movie fan in the late ‘eighties and
early ‘nineties. Then came the internet, and then the DVD, and then
an embarrassment of riches. Now, those faded scratchy European, Asian,
or South American films and third and fourth generation copies we scoured
mom and pop video shops and mail order catalogs for are now available
in pristine, remastered, and uncut versions on DVD, complete with commentaries,
featurettes, trailers, and other goodies. The uneasy irony now is that
these films, once considered irredeemable trash by mainstream critics
and audiences and sequestered to the sweaty drive-ins and sticky downtown
fleapits, are now presented in more attractive and complete editions than
their contemporary Oscar winners. The fans of these once disreputable
movies communicate on web message
boards and are much more vocal about a discrepancy in the aspect ratio
of Flavia
the Heretic
than your average fan of The
Sting would be. Call it the triumph of the filmgeek, or the ascendancy
of paracinema,
where the art, exploitation, and genre film all provide a refreshing and
intelligent alternative to the stultifying mainstream Hollywood school
of moviemaking. One can call this as indicative of the cultural relativism
that many conservatives decry, but in actuality it is a rebellion against
the pabulum spoon-fed us by the major studios, a reaction, and an often
bitter one, to the marketing and the hype and manufactured brouhaha that
Hollywood so carefully and surgically applies. It’s not as if we
feel we are above being sold to, but sell us a movie, not a concept, not
a catchphrase we can repeat to our buddies at work. You can be brazen
and crude, if you like. In fact we would prefer it.
Within
the past syear, Anchor
Bay Entertainment released La
Noche de Walpurgis (aka Werewolf
vs. The Vampire Woman, Blood Moon) as Werewolf’s
Shadow, the most complete version of the movie yet, complete with
material from the pressbook, a theatrical trailer, and a 15 minute interview
with the film’s star, Paul Naschy. The DVD shows a full face of
the growling werewolf and in the foreground a woman about to be beheaded
by a medieval executioner. The copy promoting the disc at the Anchor Bay
website reads thusly:
“A man cursed for eternity with the mark of the werewolf rescues two young women researching the legend of a vampire queen, and together they unleash a ferocious rampage of bloodlust, lycanthropy and lesbianism.”
Bloodlust, lycanthropy, and lesbianism. It’s reassuring to know that the carny instinct has not died.
More Info
For Paul Naschy information, you can't go wrong with The Mark of Naschy.
For "(i)nquisition tortures, gruesome bloodletting of naked beauties, whippings, lesbian vampires lapping up each other's gushing blood, throat slashings, lustful ravashings(sp), flesh and more flesh--all in one incredible 106 minute tape taken from the best available sources!!!" go no further than Paul Naschy: The Forbidden Scenes, where you can pick up the video in question.
Here's
a page devoted to the Leon Klimovsky, the director of La Noche de Walpurgis,
Bloodsuckers and
Breasts: The Vampire Films of Leon Klimovsky.
There is an actual Walpurgis Night (Noche de Walpurgis), which is a night not unlike Halloween, indeed it is situated directly opposite from Halloween on the calendar. It occurs on April 30, the day before May Day, the final triumph of spring over winter. On Walpurgis Night, children perform pranks and dress up like spirits and witches. What this has to do with a werewolf combating a vampire woman beats me, but then I haven't seen the movie in over 25 years.
All text © by Sean Spillane, 2003