Curse of the Devil

A TRUE MASTER OF MACABRE CINEMA
I've always enjoyed Pual Naschy's work. He's especially good as a werewolf and has been playing that character since 1968 in close to a dozen films. I was eager to see this movie and then I read the reviews on here. One person said this movie had "mindless nudity, sex, cheesy werewolf make up etc." and then I was REALLY eager to see it! I got my grubby little hands on it and popped it in the DVD player and settled back and hit play and WOW! This is a fun movie and a great DVD! The picture quality is superb and there are tons of great extras. The promised "mindless nudity, sex, cheesy werewolf make up etc." are indeed all there too! Naschy gives another wonderful performance and the picture quality of this DVD is far superior to all the poor prints we've been forced to endure in the past. Naschy has established himself as a master of macabre cinema and the high quality presentation of this DVD is a great tribute to the man and a true treat for his fans.

With these kinds of films, you take what you can get.
Once you get past the obvious setbacks of the film: an unconvincing lead, very bad make-up, horribly choreographed violence, and a pretty [weak]ending--there is some enjoyment to be had from Curse of the Devil. To begin with, the story is actually pretty involving and the plot has some tricky forks in it at times. The idea is very good: an arrogant hero pays for that arrogance through a satanic curse, which seemingly is unbeatable. Unfortunately, you have to make the mother of all suspensions of belief to deal with the actual werewolf. Naschy just wasn't suited (bad pun!) for the job. When you do have close-ups of the creature, there just isn't any menace conveyed-merely a frozen make-up expression. When he attacks, it is almost comedic as, for most of the film, he quickly runs on screen and then off before the viewer has a chance to even register what has happened. The opening sequence, if you're able to not laugh at what must be one of the lamest swordfight scenes ever...

classic werewolf films for you
the werewolf series of films that paul naschy did form 1968-2003
is alot of fun and there are 12 of them. this is one of the better ones and it's a mexican and spahish produced film with the lead female parts done by mexican actresses. And that's a good thing. The acting is fine but the transfer is choppy on this bci version. It's like there are frames missing from the print. I also have the werewolf shadow dvd from this company and it's not choppy or at least not so noticable. I don't know what happened by it is a defect that bci should do something about. I hope that someone gets out the rest of the series as well because this is vintage werewolf mania that is directly related in makeup style to the classic wolfman movies from universal. I think Naschy did a great job this time around with his tormented lead character that only a woman who loves him can save him from the curse. The title refers to the curse that is put upon his family line and not that the werewolf is a...

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