Reviews: Night of the Werewolf (1981) Movie Review
Genres: Horror, Werewolves
Subgenres: Werewolves, Cursed, Mutants
This in-depth review of Night of the Werewolf (1981) explores its story, characters, and scares in detail, offering insights for every horror fan.
Night of the Werewolf (1981) is a Spanish horror movie whose original Spanish title is: El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo (1981). Director and writer Paul Naschy (Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973), The Mummy’s Revenge (1973), Night of the Werewolf (1981), Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (1968)) also stars in the movie as Waldemar Daninsky/Werewolf. Paul Naschy excels greatly in achieving an entertaining werewolf film although it does not bring anything new to the genre. Night of the Werewolf contains female nudity, medallion, the occult, grave robbers, satanism, monster, supernatural power, werewolves, witchcraft, curses, and adult content. The movie was entertaining but did not contain any twists and suspense that you could not see from a mile away coming. The movie appears to be a cliche/remake or something of that sort of Paul Naschy film title: La Noche de Walpurgis (1971) - also known as Werewolf Shadow (1971).
Night of the Werewolf revolves around vampires fighting werewolves, starts by introducing us to the past around the middle ages showing us the execution of a satanist witch and her enslaved werewolf. The werewolf Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) is happy to be executed because it means that he will be free from the satanist witch, Bathory’s control. The music was extremely lively until we see three females venturing out to resurrect evil. The movie was intense as grave robbers dug up Waldemar’s preserved corpse during a full moon in the night and did the unimaginable. They brought him back to life by pulling out the silver crucifix/cross from his chest. The movie proceeds with extraordinary occurrences as we see vampiric Bathory fighting with Waldemar.
I was not too pleased to see the director creating a negative atmosphere around most of the female casts in this film. The movie is worth seeing at least once at your convenience because it might be a cliche but it has enough of its own material to stand out from the rest in its genre. The make-up was superb, awesome music with popping bass, excellent special effects and great cinematography. Overall the movie was enjoyable in many ways.
Similar films like Night of the Werewolf can be found in werewolf movies sub-genre(s), check them out for more movies like Night of the Werewolf.
Sources Used to Shape This Review
Insights in this review are drawn from director interviews, fan commentary, production notes, and long-form breakdowns across genre-specific platforms. Content is written uniquely and reviewed for accuracy.
- Night of the Werewolf Rating Scores
- Our Score: 6/10
- Overall Score: 5.87/10
- IMDB: 5.8/10
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