Let’s say you’re a werewolf. You’ve been shot with silver bullets and pronounced dead — standard procedure, really. What you don’t expect is for two well-meaning but clearly drunk morticians to go rooting around in your chest cavity and, in a stunning act of professional malpractice, remove the only thing keeping you dead. Thus begins La Noche de Walpurgis, a.k.a. The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman, a film that answers the eternal horror question: what if Lon Chaney Jr. and a fog machine had a love child with a Eurotrash disco?
This is the cinematic equivalent of a novelty Halloween decoration come to life and given 90 minutes of screen time — all for the low price of your sanity.
Plot: Dead Men Tell No Tales, But Apparently They Grow Castles
Our hairy antihero, Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy, the Spanish Lon Chaney Jr. with a gym membership), wakes up on the slab after being autopsied by two backwoods MDs moonlighting as necromancers. They pluck out the bullets like olives from a martini and bam! — he’s back to his old trick of transforming into a wolf and mauling people who don’t have enough sense to avoid guys with sideburns and hypnagogic stares.
Meanwhile, two college students named Elvira and Genevieve are searching for the tomb of Countess Wandessa Dárvula de Nadasdy, which sounds less like a vampire name and more like the alias your ex uses on Tinder. In a turn of events that absolutely nobody could predict except literally everyone, Elvira bleeds on the vampire’s corpse while casually digging up her grave — the 1970s Euro-horror equivalent of “oops, I texted my ex.”
The countess wakes up, fangs gleaming, eyebrows sharp enough to slice deli meat, and promptly begins turning women into vampiric fashion victims in gauzy negligees. Meanwhile, Daninsky sulks around his mansion, tormented by his curse and facial hair regimen, until he finally does what the title promises: fights the vampire woman.
But only after an hour of wandering through forests, hallways, and assorted existential fog.
Acting: If You Can Call It That
Paul Naschy, bless his undead heart, gives us his brooding best as Daninsky, Spain’s most tortured werewolf and least convincing aristocrat. He looks like a man who spends most of his time working out complicated feelings about his mother while shirtless in a crypt. His werewolf transformation scenes involve snarling at full moons and looking like a German shepherd that fell into a bowl of oatmeal.
Gaby Fuchs as Elvira tries to hold the film together with the gravitas of a woman who realizes halfway through that her co-star is just growling at air. Patty Shepard, as the vampire countess, does her best to inject some menace — but despite the cheekbones of a Bond villain and a wardrobe of black lace and eyeliner, she mostly looks like she’s posing for an album cover called Goth Prom ’72.
Genevieve, the friend, exists solely to get turned into a vampire and pad out the runtime. The rest of the cast mumbles their lines like they were overdubbed by interns on lunch break, and it’s anyone’s guess if the inspector character is hunting vampires, werewolves, or just trying to find a better script.
Style: A Fever Dream Shot Through Cheesecloth
Director León Klimovsky, who clearly believed horror should be seen through as much fog and soft focus as possible, bathes every frame in a haze that makes the entire film look like a tampon commercial from hell. Characters emerge from smoke like badly rendered video game NPCs. The camera lingers lovingly on crypts, candelabras, and the same three trees over and over, as if we won’t notice the recycling.
The music swings wildly between baroque organ and what sounds like a haunted jazz club. At one point I swear the score was just someone breathing into a harmonica while sobbing. And the pacing? Let’s just say it’s leisurely. Most of the film is Daninsky walking slowly, turning slowly, transforming slowly, and finally dying slowly. It’s the Death in Venice of werewolf films — except less sexy and more murdery.
The Fight: “Versus” Is Doing a Lot of Work Here
With a title like The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman, you expect a showdown — teeth, claws, maybe a dramatic bite-to-the-death. Instead, the climactic fight scene feels like watching two cosplayers in fursuits slap each other with pool noodles while a fog machine goes rogue. The editing is so erratic it’s unclear whether Daninsky is winning, losing, or attempting to seduce his opponent through interpretive dance.
And yet somehow, despite all the absurdity, the fight is the most coherent moment in the film. There’s something truly inspiring about a werewolf body-slamming a vampire countess onto a stone slab with the conviction of a man who knows this is the only scene people will remember.
Continuity? Logic? Who Needs ‘Em?
If you’ve seen the previous Daninsky films — and I pity you if you have — you’ll know they have all the narrative consistency of a pulp novel written during an exorcism. In Fury of the Wolf Man, Daninsky was bitten by a Yeti, which was never a good idea. Here, he’s a nobleman with a castle, a tortured past, and exactly zero explanation for anything. How he got here, why he owns a vampire’s graveyard, and who’s been cleaning the mansion while he was dead are questions this film has no interest in answering.
And don’t even ask about the rules of vampirism. Apparently, you can become a vampire just by being near someone who’s having a bad undead day. Also, vampire women in this universe love nothing more than slow-motion jogs through the woods, which is less terrifying than it is slightly erotic cardio.
Final Thoughts: The Real Curse Was Watching This Movie
La Noche de Walpurgis is considered a milestone in Spanish horror, and if that’s true, then the road it paved was made of Styrofoam tombstones and questionable acting decisions. It launched Paul Naschy’s career into orbit — though where it landed is anyone’s guess.
This movie is like a haunted house built by hungover carpenters: rickety, illogical, and liable to fall on your head. It’s a werewolf film where the werewolf is bored, the vampire is underemployed, and the audience is held hostage by velvet capes and smoke machines. It tries to be gothic, tragic, and erotic, but mostly it’s just confused.
★☆☆☆☆
One star. Because even werewolves deserve better representation.
Recommended only if you’re allergic to plot but addicted to fog.
