This film starts off hilariously bad. First, there is some little prologue about vampire curses and the Frankenstein family becoming were-wolves--now they are the 'Wolfsteins'! Then, as the film opens, you see a ball--at which point, two men do A LOT of exposition--in other words, through their conversation (which sounds totally fake), they explain all the back story. It's really dumb and a terrible way of film making--and boded very poorly for the rest of the film. Soon, satanism was tossed into the mix. About the only things NOT in the first 3-5 minutes of the film were mummies or zombies and I held on---waiting to see if they, too, would be in the movie! Well, soon two old ladies begin talking--again, it was all exposition. They talked and talked about Count Waldemar Daninsky--telling all about him, his family, etc.. Couldn't SOMEONE in the film have a normal conversation that was NOT telling the audience the back story of various characters?!?! Sloppy....very, very sloppy.
A bit later, a gypsy and his very buxom girlfriend are stranded in the rain. The Count advises them to take cover in a nearby castle--Wolfstein castle! Once there, they begin looking the old and seemingly abandoned home. They take to opening up family tombs and robbing the dead. However, one corpse looks pretty fresh and when they remove the silver cross-like dagger, he comes to life as a wolf-man and kills them. It was a neat scene--at least until the end, when the lady spasmodically writhes like a go-go dancer who is magnetized to the wall!! Pretty dumb.
After these two get torn to pieces, the villagers and the Count go looking for the wolves that supposedly did this grisly deed. The Count is bitten during the hunt...and he's cursed to be a were-guy. Soon we see Count Waldemar turning into a were-wolf--in one of the worst transformation scenes I've seen. "The Were-wolf of London" and "The Wolf-man" did this much better--several decades earlier. His friends try to help him through this, but they seem powerless to do anything.
A bit later, Dr. Janos Mikhelov and his wife arrive. They claim to be able to perhaps cure Waldemar! In the meantime, they chain him up so he can't hurt anyone--a prudent thing that they never seem to get around to doing in other films. BUT, unfortunately, it's not because they are saints. On the contrary, they are satanists who wish to use their unearthly powers to turn Waldemar into a servant of Satan! If this doesn't sound dumb enough, later you learn that the Mikhelovs are, in fact, vampire satanists!!!! And, in a never-ending need to feed and make more vampires, they decide to make the moves on Waldemar's friends. In the end, Waldemar takes on the satanist-vampires and it's, of course, a fight to the death (or at least, death for the undead).
Overall, the story is bizarre and suffers from the kitchen sink approach--they toss everything into the plot and hope it all works. It isn't a terribly inspired approach and the dialog bogs the film down horribly. However, the film does have creepy music and a nice creepy look to it, so for the less demanding horror fan out there, there is probably enough to merit seeing it. All others, though, should stick to the better monster films from Universal and Hammer--they are light-years ahead of this one.
A bit later, a gypsy and his very buxom girlfriend are stranded in the rain. The Count advises them to take cover in a nearby castle--Wolfstein castle! Once there, they begin looking the old and seemingly abandoned home. They take to opening up family tombs and robbing the dead. However, one corpse looks pretty fresh and when they remove the silver cross-like dagger, he comes to life as a wolf-man and kills them. It was a neat scene--at least until the end, when the lady spasmodically writhes like a go-go dancer who is magnetized to the wall!! Pretty dumb.
After these two get torn to pieces, the villagers and the Count go looking for the wolves that supposedly did this grisly deed. The Count is bitten during the hunt...and he's cursed to be a were-guy. Soon we see Count Waldemar turning into a were-wolf--in one of the worst transformation scenes I've seen. "The Were-wolf of London" and "The Wolf-man" did this much better--several decades earlier. His friends try to help him through this, but they seem powerless to do anything.
A bit later, Dr. Janos Mikhelov and his wife arrive. They claim to be able to perhaps cure Waldemar! In the meantime, they chain him up so he can't hurt anyone--a prudent thing that they never seem to get around to doing in other films. BUT, unfortunately, it's not because they are saints. On the contrary, they are satanists who wish to use their unearthly powers to turn Waldemar into a servant of Satan! If this doesn't sound dumb enough, later you learn that the Mikhelovs are, in fact, vampire satanists!!!! And, in a never-ending need to feed and make more vampires, they decide to make the moves on Waldemar's friends. In the end, Waldemar takes on the satanist-vampires and it's, of course, a fight to the death (or at least, death for the undead).
Overall, the story is bizarre and suffers from the kitchen sink approach--they toss everything into the plot and hope it all works. It isn't a terribly inspired approach and the dialog bogs the film down horribly. However, the film does have creepy music and a nice creepy look to it, so for the less demanding horror fan out there, there is probably enough to merit seeing it. All others, though, should stick to the better monster films from Universal and Hammer--they are light-years ahead of this one.