Well, with America's illustrious film industry cranking out one crappy direct-to-video flick after another and an entire generation of so-called moviemakers riding on the coattails of their predecessors churning out a slew of theatrical remakes and reboots of truly classic (and often original) horror films, I figured this was as good of a time as any to revisit the works of the great Paul Naschy.
Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the works (let alone the name) of Paul Naschy, allow me to bore you for a few moments with a little history: Paul Naschy (born Jacinto Molina) has been referred to as the Spanish Lon Chaney and has earned quite the reputation with EuroHorror lovers as a horror movie auteur: having written, produced, directed and starred in dozens of horror movies from the '70s. Vampire, mummy, hunchback, Republican — he's done it all! But perhaps his most famous (or infamous, if you prefer) portrayal would be the recurring character of Waldemar Daninsky, the tortured protagonist of numerous werewolf features (a role that helped to earn him a Gold Medal Award for Fine Arts from King Juan Carlos I in 2001).
So anyway, BCI, under their kick-ass Deimos label, has unleashed five of the EuroHorror Maestro’s non-werewolf movies (which are also available individually) packaged together in a box-set sporting the rather generic title, The Paul Naschy Collection, and consist of:
Exorcism (1975) - Despite his claims that he had the idea several years before William Friedkin struck paydirt with his international blockbuster, The Exorcist, Naschy’s Exorcismo is altogether entirely too similar to its American counterpart to be considered anything but original (although I do prefer this one over Mario Bava’s Lisa And The Devil).
A bearded Naschy plays Father Dunning, the poor soul who is called in to remove the inner-demon from a young lady (Grace Mills) that has (somehow or another) been possessed by the spirit of her dead (and abusive) father. If you’ve seen Max Von Sydow do it, then you can pretty much guess how Paul Naschy will do it (although Max downright owns everyone’s ass — sorry, Paul, but it is true, you know). Spanish horror queens Maria Perschy and María Kosty co-star. Definitely better than Exorcist II: The Heretic or Exorcist: The Beginning, but not enough to earn it more than a 1 and 1/2 star rating.
Blue Eyes Of The Broken Doll (1973) - Departing from his then-usual gothic horror route, Naschy opted to try his hand at making a Spanish Giallo film. Originally released in the States as House Of The Psychotic Women, Blue Eyes Of The Broken Doll is an entertaining and somewhat bloody whodunit wherein an ex-con gets wrapped up with a trio of weird sisters in a remote French village.
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