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The Terrorphile: Waldemar Daninsky's Black Mirror (fanvid)

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Date
12-03-2010
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Paul Naschy Blogathon

Those crazy fellas over at Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies have been throwing the Paul Naschy Blogathon all week long, finishing, well... today. Actually, in about a half-hour by my clock. However, that's just enough time to get my entry in, which I've been working on all week. It's a tribute to Paul Naschy's most enduring creation, the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. In nine films released between 1968 and 1983, Daninsky dealt with the tragedy of lycanthropy, often while searching for someone who would love him enough to kill him. The video follows the general line of his story, backed by Arcade Fire's "Black Mirror."

Some notes on the vid:

  • I made this sucker in three and half days, from Tuesday evening up until 11:30PM on Friday. I had a false start on Monday with Pat Benatar's Invincible; ultimately, a lycanthrope-power ballad didn't really fit the footage I was working with.
  • Here's the complete list of Daninsky films featured in the vid: Mark of the Wolfman (1968, aka Frankenstein's Bloody Terror), Assignment: Terror (1970), Werewolf Shadow (1971, aka The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Women), Fury of the Wolfman (1972), Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf (1972), Curse of the Devil (1973), Night of the Howling Beast (1975, aka The Werewolf and the Yeti), Night of the Werewolf (1981, aka The Craving), and The Beast and the Magic Sword (1983).
  • Yes, I left out Lycantropus: The Moonlight Murders (1996) and Tomb of the Werewolf (2004), because Naschy's advanced age in those films would make the footage hard to match.
  • Even the best version of Assignment: Terror that I could locate was still really awful-looking, so only one shot from that film appears in the vid.
  • Conversely, I relied most heavily on clips from Werewolf Shadow, Curse of the Devil, and Night of the Werewolf because those are the films for which I had the best source.
  • Admittedly, I'd only seen a third of the films that went into this vid and that hasn't actually changed, since I basically fast-forwarded through each flick looking for the most interesting clips. I think my lack of familiarity with several of the films helped me to make the vid as quickly as I did, as I was able to focus on the essentials of the Daninsky story, without getting too distracted by the myriad subplots with vampires and mad science.
  • With one brief exception, I don't have any footage of Daninsky himself from Night of the Werewolf or The Beast and the Magic Sword, simply because the beard didn't work with the character's seven previous clean-shaven appearances.
  • The one thing I took away from this whole experience is that Naschy really played nine different werewolves in the nine films. His lycanthropic characterization changes for each film. For instance, he's at his most savage in Mark of the Wolfman, but his Fury of the Wolfman beast is actually somewhat contemplative and restrained. This gets a little weird when Fury reuses footage from Mark.

Great work once again, Nate.

Great work once again, Nate. I was hoping you'd be able to contribute to the blogathon, and this piece is really spectacular considering the amount of time you had to work on it. Keep these catchy-as-hell videos coming!