StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Thehibikiew Not even bad in a good way

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

BloodTheTelepathicDog Like many Euro-horrors, this film can be bought under a variety of different names. I picked this little gem up via Amazon.com for a couple bucks, under the title The Craving, and was not letdown.The film opens with Paul Naschy getting staked in the heart with a silver cross while his cohort, Elizabeth Bathory (Julia Saly) is sent to death for witchcraft and murder. Fast-forward several centuries and we get three college girls trying to locate Bathroy's tomb while some grave robbers find Naschy's tomb and remove the silver cross in his heart. Of course, once the cross is removed, Naschy is able to terrorize the countryside as a werewolf again.Paul takes up residence in a castle and offers lodging to the college girls while they search for the tomb. The ringleader of the girls, the ravishing Silvia Aguilar, has desires of her own: bringing Elizabeth Bathory back to life. Paul, who is a decent guy when not a werewolf, tries to thwart Silvia's plans while he falls for her friend Azucena Hernandez. But when Silvia resurrects Miss Bathory, all the fun begins.STORY: $$$$ (We've see his premise before: lovely college girls searching for ruins and falling into evil and the manly clutches of Paul Naschy, but this doesn't detract from the entertainment value. Paul Naschy, who also directed this feature, spices up the genre with more baddies. We get werewolves, vampires and undead Goliaths here).VIOLENCE: $$$ (While in full werewolf get-up, Paul gets to devour some poor folks. The vampire babes make a few attacks but they aren't as gory as the scenes with Naschy in face makeup).ACTING: $$$$ (Paul Naschy is first rate here. He also shows a good hand for direction, creating some creepy images. His ladies are quite good as well. Julia Saly is terrific as Elizabeth Bathory and Azucena Hernandez is wonderful as the good girl that Naschy must keep safe from all the supernatural bumps in the night. Silvia Aguilar is the best of the lot as the twisted twist determined to bring evil back from the grave. Her menacing looks are cold and sensual at the same time, making her a perfect actress for this role of desirable vixen).NUDITY: $$ (Paul kills a topless broad who was about to get naughty with her man in an abandoned castle. Also, Silvia Aguilar shows her amazing breasts when she washes them in a basin before heading off to bed).

bfan83 A young woman, who is a practicing Satanist sets out to unearth the tomb of Countess Bathory by sacrificing young, virginal women. Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy) also used to be Countess Bathory's loyal servant when they were executed several hundred years earlier for their gruesome crimes. Waldemar is now on a mission to destroy Countess Bathory in order to prevent her from making him her slave, once again.THE CRAVING, when it was released in the states was horribly butchered because of its violent content. Unfortunately, this was its biggest detriment. It barely made any sense, and was quite difficult to keep track of what was going on.However, I must say the climatic battle between Daninsky and Bathory was quite exciting and hilarious to watch.Any Paul Naschy fan should check out. Fortunately, it was re-released under its uncut form via BCI/Deimos a year or two back. Just please avoid the censored version. It's way too confusing,

slayrrr666 "Night of the Werewolf" is one of the more entertaining entries in the series.**SPOILERS**Working on a project, university students Erika, (Silvia Aguilar) Karen, (Azucena Hernandez) and Barbara, (Pilar Alcon) head into the Hungarian mountains, looking for a special grave-site. Told of a special route to get to the castle where it's held, they luck upon it and decide to explore the area. Inside, they come across Waldemar Daninsky, (Paul Naschy) who nearly startles them but offers whatever hospitality in the castle they have. Realizing that he's a werewolf, their feelings are suddenly put to the test when the others discover that one of them has raised Countess Elizabeth Bathory, (Julia Saly) who Waldemar was a servant for, from the grave to take over the world. Using love as a prime force, they try to put a stop to it before they wind up enslaved in their clutches.The Good News: This here is a rather pleasing Gothic affair. The fact that this one takes place mostly inside a grand castle, filled with all the touch-marks of old-school Gothic gloriousness, is a great site and one of the film's biggest pluses. The ruining castle set looks fantastic, complete with the crumbling stone walls, a graveyard on-site, the catacombs entrance and supports over the cob-webbed filled ruins that are fully realized and quite believable. From there, the film gets even more Gothic with the insides. This one has plenty to go on, with the interior rooms, candle-lit locations and the other really big sets in here make this a real sight for the eyes, which allows the film a lot of really impressive scenery. The impressiveness extends over into other areas of the film, especially the individualistic scenes in here. The shot of the two vampires bursting through a door before two victims bathed in an eerie white back-glow is simply impressive, as is another shot of a victim being covered from head-to-toe in blood for a ceremonial black mass sacrifice ritual and a shot of the vampire and werewolf fighting on a precipice that nearly falls over several times. This one here has a generous helping of impressive scenes that get a lot better as it goes on. The film's best period is definitely in the end, where it engages in one long, lengthy well-paced fight between the main villains. The action is well-choreographed, making it look great and has plenty of spots that are just fantastic. The hurl onto the casket is especially note-worthy, there's plenty of grappling and a whole host more to enjoy about this particular sequence. That's so long and fun is part of the fun, and altogether this one of the highlights of the film and one of the main reasons to see this one by itself. The werewolf make-up doesn't seem that bad, looking like it actually covers the face a lot better than previous incarnations and getting rid of the ridiculous fangs that were too big to go back to a more traditional-style look that goes into the chest as well. The last big positive is the big body count. It's not huge, but it's got a lot more considering the small cast, and there's a couple of brutal ones as well. Nothing like the others, but still good enough. As it is, though, this is a great Gothic masterpiece.The Bad News: There isn't a lot wrong with this one. The fact that it isn't as out-and-out gory and sleazy as the past incarnations, despite offering up plenty of opportunities to do so, is something that might cause irritation. During the course of the film, there's barely anything from these two elements which will come as a pretty big surprise. The amount of kills on display would've had some sort of blood in the proceedings, and being as graphic as the kills are, a little more at the least would've been fine, considering how the others were before it. Despite the high amount of scenes that required nude participants, that there's only a couple mild points here and there for only a few smatterings placed into several inconspicuous scenes that have a couple of little moments in them. This one misses out on opportunities to bump up the film, and is something to be missed out on. The only other problem is that, by dwelling so pertinently on the Gothic flavors, this one feels a little slow-paced, especially at the middle segments. The romance angle eats up some of it, especially with the longer time nearly making it unbearable. These here are the film's big flaws.The Final Verdict: A Gothic masterpiece at a time when it wasn't fashionable, this one is a marvelously fun and enjoyable experience without a whole lot wrong. Highly recommended for Naschy fans, as well as those who enjoy the more Gothic sensibilities of films, while those who aren't foreign fanatics won't find much with this one.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Nudity, Language and a mild sex scene

Noel (Teknofobe70) Ah, the first Daninsky movie of the eighties ... here I refer to Midnight Video's version entitled "Night of the Werewolf", which is pretty good quality but has annoying non-removable subtitles.When a movie opens with a bunch of satanists being sentenced to gruesome deaths including buried alive, tortured, hanged, beheaded, and so forth ... you know you must be in for good, clean B-movie horror. The chief witch in question of course swears a terrible revenge (haven't we already been here in Molina's "Curse of the Devil"?), and among the condemned is the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky himself, sporting a rather stylish beard. He gets off comparatively lightly, being made to wear an iron mask and having a silver dagger driven through his heart. Centuries later, an evil witch finds a medallion in order to resurrect the ancient chief witch, and as fate would have it a couple of grave-robbers remove the dagger of Daninsky's heart at exactly the same moment. Time for a "Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman" rematch ...Jacinto Molina opted to direct this one himself, as well as the two other Daninsky movies made in the eighties. This means he has more control over the project than ever before, and contrary to what some say, I think he's actually a very good director. Probably the best ever to direct a Daninsky movie, anyway, and obviously he can capture his own artistic vision like nobody else could. This is probably why it feels more conventional and competent than most movies in the series. The sets are great, the special effects are good for it's time and the whole movie has a fantastic atmosphere to it. There is more gratuitous nudity and gore than in most Daninsky movies, and I'm surprised it hasn't been a bigger hit with fans of the genre. There are certainly enough werewolves, witches, vampires, zombies and horrible sacrifices to keep them entertained! Maybe I'm going overboard with the praise, but if you've seen the earlier Daninsky movies, you'll know that in most ways this is pretty damn good comparatively. The dubbing is actually pretty good (although dubbing is always a crime, of course), and they've tried to make the dialogue as hip as possible. Man, I just love the eighties mentality. The soundtrack is also very cool. Okay, okay, so the storyline is pretty much the same predictable stuff all over again. And once again it has no real consistency with the previous movies. But that's why we love it! Obviously it's not an easy movie to watch, it's arguably slow and there's some particularly dark stuff going on even for a Daninsky movie. Daninsky himself is something of an anti-hero, saving maidens in distress but also allowing his wolf side to run around slaughtering innocents. The vampires are very creepy and unearthly, as Molina has always been good at knowing how to portray them."El Retorno del Hombre-Lobo", "The Craving", "Night of the Werewolf" ... call it what you like, this is my favourite Daninsky movie yet. It's "The Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman" as it should have been, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.