One of the funny things about the Daninsky movies being largely unconnected was the necessity of showing the origin of Daninsky's lycanthropy in every movie, and of course, needing to make it something different each time. It's a bit like Jason Voorhees being reanimated in a more ridiculous way with each Friday the 13th movie.
In Curse of the Devil, this origin (the "curse" of the title) is at least actually shown; I never got over the ridiculousness of Fury of the Wolfman's explanation: Daninsky was bitten by a yeti in an arctic expedition of which he was the sole survivor... and yet none of this was shown, and only warrants a passing mention in the film's dialogue.
I still found it kind of weak however that the curse is here transferred not through the bite of an actual living creature, but that of a skull someone holds over the sleeping Daninsky, pressing its jaws together to make it "bite" his flesh.
That awkward origin aside, this is a fairly enjoyable Daninsky tale, in which an ancestor of the original Daninsky, opponent of Countess Bathory, is cursed by a group of gypsies after accidentally killing one of their lycanthropes. He falls in love, but there is an escaped killer on his property, and with the curse on him, who's to know whether the mounting body count is the work of the killer or el hombre lobo?
The movie has the usual Naschy violence, nudity, and beast that can only be tamed through one thing: love. It's a worthy addition to the Daninsky canon; not one of the best, but far from one of the worst.
In Curse of the Devil, this origin (the "curse" of the title) is at least actually shown; I never got over the ridiculousness of Fury of the Wolfman's explanation: Daninsky was bitten by a yeti in an arctic expedition of which he was the sole survivor... and yet none of this was shown, and only warrants a passing mention in the film's dialogue.
I still found it kind of weak however that the curse is here transferred not through the bite of an actual living creature, but that of a skull someone holds over the sleeping Daninsky, pressing its jaws together to make it "bite" his flesh.
That awkward origin aside, this is a fairly enjoyable Daninsky tale, in which an ancestor of the original Daninsky, opponent of Countess Bathory, is cursed by a group of gypsies after accidentally killing one of their lycanthropes. He falls in love, but there is an escaped killer on his property, and with the curse on him, who's to know whether the mounting body count is the work of the killer or el hombre lobo?
The movie has the usual Naschy violence, nudity, and beast that can only be tamed through one thing: love. It's a worthy addition to the Daninsky canon; not one of the best, but far from one of the worst.