THE WEREWOLF AND THE YETI, an astonishingly
bad Hispanic horror
THE WEREWOLF AND THE YETI
aka Night of the Howling Beast (US), La Maledicion
de la Bestia (Sp.); Profilmes, Spain, 1975; 95 min
Jacinto Molina (aka Paul Naschy) reprises his favourite
role of Waldemar Daninsky the werewolf for the eighth time, and embarks
on an expedition to the mountains of Tibet to take on a fashionable seventies
monster, the Yeti.
Opening with a somewhat confusing
London sequence accompanied by ‘Scotland the Brave’ on the soundtrack,
the bulk of the film details Waldemar’s dalliances with two equally incongrous
glamorous cave women who turn out to be cannibals. They eat his guide,
and one of them bites him turning him once again into a werewolf. A number
of perfunctory action scenes follow and when the Yeti finally turns in
an appearance in the final reel, the effect is rather anti-climactic.
The Waldemar werewolf series was begun
with Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (1967), and this entry follows
on from Curse of the Devil (1973). Director Bonns’s career continued
its decline after this film with him taking on various low-budget softcore
projects. Molina returned to his most famous role in 1980, taking the directorial
reins himself in The Return of the Wolfman.
Dir. Miguel Iglesias Bonns; Scr. Jacinto Molina; Star. Paul Naschy (Jacinto Molina); With Castillo Escalona, Luis Iuduni, Grace Mills, Silvia Solar, Gil Vidal
UK Vid. VPD, QRT 84 min (unrated), Beta, VHS &
V2000
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