Tuesday, November 30, 2010

"Everlasting Naschy" -- a video tribute by Don Cunningham

The Duke and I are once again pleased to present a piece of work by another passionate Naschy fan. This one comes to us from Don Cunningham. Here's what Don has to say about the creation of the piece:

This video comes from a “trip” I took from September 2006 – September 2007 with the US Army to Iraq. Life seemed to have other plans for me other than following Naschy’s footsteps by making movies like I had wanted to. The best thing about going to war had to be the support of my friends, mostly from the Latarnia forums. A few sent me care packages of Euro horror and Naschy titles I had yet to see. I had already watched Count Dracula’s Great Love, but didn’t mind upgrading my cut vhs to the nudity filled dvd-r from Sinister (BCI had yet to release their superior Naschy DVDs!).

I worked as a Casualty Liaison in Iraq, meaning I wrote casualty reports. Times were busy, but there was also downtime. When there was downtime I would watch my Naschy discs. At one point I had an idea while listening to music and having a movie on mute, “Why not rework the movie to a song?” I’m not the only one who has thought that, but went for it. I used different genres of music when creating the videos. The following features Howard Jones’ “Everlasting Love.” Enjoy a little bit of the 80’s, Paul Naschy and Mirta Miller.

Don Cunningham

Thanks Don, for both you service and your creativity! And now, enjoy Don's video, "Everlasting Naschy":

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Posted by The Vicar of VHS at 11:00 PM 0 comments

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NASCHY BLOGATHON LINKS for Tuesday, November 30, part 3!

It's been a busy day on the blogathon, and as the moon rises over the moors, it's time to check out the latest installment of links for today!

Via the Naschy-centered Tumblr blog, Fuck Yeah Paul Naschy!
  • On this anniversary of Paul Naschy's passing, Naschy scholar Mirek Lipinski (Fantaterror, Mark of Naschy) shares a heartfelt personal essay about his experiences with the man behind the monsters: "Querido Paul."

As always, let me know if I've left anyone out, and be sure to email me at vicarofvhs@gmail.com as soon as your Naschy posts go up!

Sleepily,
The Vicar

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Posted by The Vicar of VHS at 10:42 PM 0 comments

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Malediction of the Yeti

(another sonnet by The Vicar of VHS, inspired by Night of the Howling Beast)

Believe me: I've seen human beings enough
to differentiate. They're pretty strange:
those tiny feet, the hair that grows in tufts
on bare pink skin, as if they had the mange;

And man, the stink they make! There's nothing reeks
like them to my refined, simian nose.
It festers in my sinuses for weeks!
So take my word: this isn't one of those.

This leaps off boulders like a flying squirrel,
with claws and temper like a wolverine!
Then kills ten men, but doesn't kill the girl?
No Yeti acts like that! What can it mean?

Worse yet, the howling keeps me up at night.
Much more of this, there's gonna be a fight.


--S. Standridge, "The Vicar of VHS"


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Posted by The Vicar of VHS at 9:22 PM 1 comments

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NASCHY BLOGATHON LINKS for Tuesday, November 30, part 2!

The reviews and tributes to Paul Naschy's legacy continue to pour in on this, the one-year anniversary of his death. An overwhelming response from the blogosphere, and it's just the second day! Let's get to those lunchtime links:

Trailer for Naschy's last film, EMPUSA--via Elena at Un Fan de Paul Naschy!

I'll be back later tonight with more links! As always, please let me know if I've left anyone out, either here or via email: vicarofvhs@gmail.com.

The Vicar

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Posted by The Vicar of VHS at 12:48 PM 3 comments

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Remembering Naschy - The Duke Looks Back

Greetings friends!  It is I, the Duke of DVD, once more bringing you the good word.  Today, I wish to draw your attention to the date.  Yes, indeed, it is November 30th, 2010, and that means a full year has gone by since Jacinto Molina, aka Paul Naschy, aka the Lon Chaney of Spain passed through the veil into the spaces beyond time, where his spirit, free of its earthly shackles, will roam forever more.  If you will bear with me, dearest readers, I will talk about the man who inspired both the Vicar and I to continually slave away, talking endlessly about the movies we love.


Made of Awesome

As most readers know via our Manifesto, the Vicar and I cherish movies that try their hardest, even though in the general public’s eye they seem to fail.  Paul is considered a success in Spain, sure, but he never grew to any wide public acclaim with the rest of the world.  This is a vast shame, and so we must take it upon our shoulders, this heavy burden, to spread the word far and wide, a very simple message:  Paul Naschy’s movies kick large amounts of ass!  Not only does his flair and charisma as an actor waft off the screen in huge waves of awesome, but his skills as a writer and director are equally impressive.

Nothing whitens like Milk-Bone
For me personally, it is the complete exuberance with which he attacks his roles.  Be it a hunchback working in a morgue, or a stately man-of-arms, sitting astride a destrier, his emotive qualities are unmatched.  In no other way is this the case than with the reoccurring role that Paul is most known for:  Waldemar Daninsky.  Each a self-contained Wolfman story, they always seem to bring out the best in Paul.

Obviously, putting together any sort of ranking or Top 10 list of my favorite Naschy movies would be a herculean effort that I would probably fail at, given how I love them all. Instead, I'll list a few of my favorites, and my reasons why:

El Caminante - To me, Paul's crown jewel, his opus. The obvious fun he's having during the movie is written all over his face. Paul considers this movie his personal favorite, and I can see why.

The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Women - My first exposure to Naschy, and friends it is a beaut! Monster movie magic is what you have here, from stunning make-up to leap attacks. I love everything about this movie, and will never stop re-watching it.

The Hunchback of the Morgue - How can you possibly have a "favorite Naschy movies" list without including this one? It has hunchback sex, a hunchback fighting rats, and Paul showing off some stellar acting chops.

So, one year after his death, we at Mad Mad Mad Mad Movie Reviews salute him once again, raising a glass of 50-year-old port into the air with one hand, whilst we pour out a 40oz on the curbside down the street from the Vicar’s marble monstrosity of a house with the other.

Paul Naschy    Sept. 6, 1934 - Nov. 30, 2009



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Posted by The Duke of DVD at 10:30 AM 0 comments

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A Tribute to Paul Naschy, by Shane M. Dallman

The Duke and I are pleased to present this guest post by Shane M. Dallman, originally published as a note on the author's FB account on the occasion of Paul Naschy's passing.

I NEVER CALLED HIM “PAUL”

Paul Naschy (Jacinto Molina Alvarez, 1934-2009) provided me with countless hours of entertainment well long before I first set pen to paper in the name of genre journalism. His body of work became the inspiration for my first published articles (as writer/historian Shane M. Dallmann) and would later go on to become a cornerstone of my efforts in the field of entertainment (as horror host “Remo D.”). In other words, Paul Naschy has always been a huge part of who I am and what I do in the field of the fantastic. That doesn’t make me special. But it sure as hell makes HIM special. I trust you’ll forgive me for not delving into biography/filmography at this time. All I want to do now is to tell you my personal story as it relates to the one and only Paul Naschy.

As a young “creature feature” fan in the early 1970s, I was scarcely alone in staying up on weekends to watch the various monstrous adventures of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and, of course, Lon Chaney, Jr. Almost everyone at school watched the same movies as I did—these classics belonged to everybody, just as they should. But just a few short years later, our UHF channels started supplying significantly ‘stronger’ material (and not only during the late hours). A different breed of ‘creature feature’ slowly insinuated itself into the mix, and it wasn’t long before I found myself routinely confronted with movies that WEREN’T talked about at school the next day… that seemed to belong only to those viewers who made a point of seeking them out. And one face, one name stood out amongst these latter-day arrivals… one man who made it clear that he wished to represent the classic monsters much as predecessors along the lines of Chaney himself had done. I passed on the opportunity to watch THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING with the rest of my family in order to take in the bizarre concoction known (however misleadingly) as FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR as it unspooled on a tiny black-and-white television in my room (little did I know how much werewolf Waldemar Daninsky would come to mean to me, especially as his energetic antics in a wacky monster mash known as ASSIGNMENT TERROR seemed to have little or nothing to do with this previous adventure). My mother’s admonition to avoid a nasty little item known as THE MUMMY’S REVENGE (of which she had inadvertently caught a “slice” on her own), naturally, caused me to seek it out all the more eagerly. And cut for TV or not, HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB was the one she really would have kept me away from, had she but known—even I thought it went too far at the time! These movies ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous (even then, I realized that THE FURY OF THE WOLFMAN made almost no sense at all), but I never doubted the sincerity or the dedication of the man who brought them to life… Paul Naschy.

At that young age, I had no idea that actor Paul Naschy was also involved in each and every one of these productions as screenwriter Jacinto Molina—it took Michael Weldon’s PSYCHOTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM to clue me in. That publication, in fact, was one of my most treasured acquisitions—during the 1980s, as I discovered such fresh television items as HOUSE OF DOOM (HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN) and HORROR OF THE WEREWOLF (NIGHT OF THE HOWLING BEAST, another disconnected Waldemar Daninsky thriller), it was an invaluable reference guide which enhanced my constant obsession with cataloguing fantastic films. If you know me at all, you know that my interest in the field is all-encompassing… but Paul Naschy always had a special wing in my hand-scrawled archives, because even then, “everybody” knew the classics (Universal, Hammer, AIP), but it seemed like only Michael Weldon and I knew and valued the contributions of this Spanish horror powerhouse. Still—no Internet, not even a home computer—I had my memory and pages and pages of handwritten notes for some undefined “project”—or for posterity.

Now we come to 1990. Through the home video boom and meticulous TV taping, I could now account for no less than thirty Paul Naschy films available in the United States. FANGORIA Magazine had become the primary source for horror information both classic and current, and detailed articles on the careers and available works of such filmmakers as Mario Bava and Dario Argento were appearing to great acclaim—especially important was an expose by Tim Lucas on just how Argento’s films were being presented to us on video. And it finally hit me. I had thirty movies spanning over twenty years, and I had all the notes I needed to back them up. I went through the list of genre giants repeatedly and reached the same conclusion every time… Paul Naschy was the only figure in the field (with a comparable body of work, of course) who had not yet been given his due with national exposure in this of all magazines. There was a story to be told—there was an article to be written, and it was obviously up to me to write it.

So I did.

The publication of the two-part article “The Mark of Naschy” in FANGORIA #103-104 remains one of my proudest achievements (much later, I was delighted to see the title appropriated for Mirek Lipinski’s official Naschy website: Mirek, of course, went on to become one of—if not the—most valuable contributors to Naschy’s lasting legacy). I went on to chronicle Naschy’s work (both historic and current) in such publications as DEEP RED and BLOOD TIMES, my original article was translated and reprinted in the Spanish edition of FANGORIA, and the experience opened doors for me which allow me to continue to this day as a regular contributor to VIDEO WATCHDOG (courtesy of none other than the aforementioned Tim Lucas) and SCREEM Magazine: while I write about many other films and filmmakers, the work of Paul Naschy remains a constant in my output.

Only one thing was still missing. I had hoped to bring the work of Paul Naschy to a wider and more appreciative audience—but as the man was still living and working, I wanted to know that he knew what I was trying to do for him. I had heard from my various publishers that Naschy was, indeed, aware of my writing, but (with instant communication to Spain still out of my reach), I still needed to somehow know this first hand… and I was devastated when the false rumor of Naschy’s death reached me just around that time. The relief I felt when I learned that this report was a cruel hoax was palpable… but I still hadn’t achieved my goal of hearing from the man himself.

1997. Tony Timpone calls me to let me know that Paul Naschy will be one of the guests of honor at the New York Fango convention in January of 1998. Perhaps I’d like to attend—and would I be interested in providing a video compilation as a means of introducing him? I’m happily married and have a four-year-old daughter now. I can’t afford to fly my family from California to New York with me. But thankfully, they understand, and I’m allowed to make the trip solo. It’s a dream come true (and I trust you’ll understand my shift to the present tense). By pure chance, I meet Paul Naschy and his family in the hotel hours before the convention even begins (I make Naschy’s acquaintance by showing him my custom-made “Waldemar Lives” T-shirt, in fact!) The entire entourage joins me for breakfast and plenty of awe-struck (on my part, of course) conversation… Naschy signs the original galleys of my Fango article and even provides me with a personally autographed copy of his brand-new autobiography (in Spanish, of course). The honor is overwhelming—but I’m still able to ask him the question foremost on my mind… what can I do for him in exchange for what his career has done for me? His answer: “Keep writing.” During the course of this convention, I also meet Mirek Lipinski, whose “Mark of Naschy” website (now www.naschy.com) is now up and running.

But the best was still yet to come. 2000. Naschy returns to America, this time to the Fanex convention in Virginia. And this time, I get to bring my seven-year-old daughter Rebecca with me. My infant son Cameron stays home with his mother, my wife Lisa—but now I have the Internet, and Naschy himself just happened to be the first to send greetings to my new son! Thanks to this newfangled invention, I was able to plan ahead more effectively, and I’m granted the privilege of taking Naschy, his wife Elvira, his son Sergio (I never did get to meet his other son Bruno), Mirek Lipinski, translator/historian Mike Hodges and more to lunch at an Italian restaurant! With Sergio helpfully translating our conversation, we have a terrific get-together… we’re treated to Naschy filching pieces of calamari off Elvira’s plate while he waits for his own meal—and when the music coming from an overhead speaker starts skipping harshly, I point to the speaker and intone “Juan Carlos Calderon” for a good laugh (if you’ve seen VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES, you’ll get the joke).

As momentous as that was, however, a moment preceding that was even more special. The English translation of Naschy’s autobiography was available at this convention, and as Naschy had already signed the Spanish rendition for me, I thought it would be nice to have him sign this one to Rebecca—which, of course, he did. But where my autograph read “Paul Naschy,” his signature to Rebecca simply read “Paul.” And we were quietly told shortly afterwards that a first-name-only signature such as this was reserved only for the most special occasions… and people. (Rebecca responded with an autograph of her own the next morning—a hand-written card inspired by the movie I treated to her the night before… reading “I loved FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR.” I have no doubt that this card is resting on a very special shelf somewhere in Madrid.) Also at this convention, I had the privilege of introducing Naschy and his family to fellow historian/prolific DVD supplement artist Bruce Holecheck, with whom I collaborated very recently on a “Naschy 101” overview on Troma’s DVD release of THE HANGING WOMAN.

Though I never saw Paul Naschy again, the magic did, indeed, continue. 2002 saw my initial “TV horror host” bow on REMO D.’S MANOR OF MAYHEM, and we debuted with a screening of my old favorite ASSIGNMENT TERROR. The films of Paul Naschy have largely defined the look and feel of my show, and we were honored by a personalized Halloween greeting from the man himself, which I happily relayed to my viewers. By this time, family responsibilities kept me from travelling even as far as Los Angeles for Naschy’s further convention appearances, but we hoped to take advantage of his proximity and invite him to appear in our independent horror feature THE WOODEN GATE. It was not to be (Jim Van Bebber ultimately made the character of “Paulo” his own), but Naschy personally communicated his regrets. And while most of our communications were helpfully translated by the stalwart Sergio, it was Paul Naschy himself who sent a message of strength and encouragement to our WOODEN GATE castmate Jonelle Snead in the face of her terminal cancer.

Which, sadly, brings us to this day. Please consider this my eulogy, but by no means will these be my final respects. Sharing the work of Paul Naschy has always been a major motivating force in my own work—and it always will be, both in print and on the MANOR.

And yes, he’ll always be “Sr. Naschy” to me. I’ve been privileged to enjoy first-name familiarity with Elvira and my good friend Sergio, but pure respect and recognition of tradition (though no rules were ever actually spelled out for me) saw to it that I was never so bold as to address my inspiration by his first name—nor would I ever have presumed to ask for such permission. I never called him “Paul.” And I won’t start now.

But Rebecca can call him “Paul.” And that’s more than enough for me.

Rest in peace, my friend. My sincere condolences and respects to Elvira, Sergio, Bruno, their families, and friends and fans of Paul Naschy the world over.

Shane M. Dallmann
December 1, 2009


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Posted by The Vicar of VHS at 8:30 AM 2 comments

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NASCHY BLOGATHON LINKS for Tuesday, November 30, part 1!

It's been one year now since we lost Jacinto Molina, who passed away too soon at age 75 of pancreatic cancer. We are saddened that he's no longer with us, and at the same time thankful that he left us such a joyful legacy in his films. Muchas gracias, Señor Naschy. Your memory, and your joy, live on.

"Paul Naschy" Action Monster Print by Krekel of www.krekprints.com.
Check out Krekel and Ami's "uke-abilly, garage-pop rock n' roll" at http://www.themadteaparty.com

There was a lot of Naschy activity overnight, so let's get right to it this morning!

  • Pierre's also featuring some images collected from all the blogathon posts at his Monster Crazy tumblr, so check it out! (And once again, thanks to Pierre for designing the awesome blogathon banners and badges!)
  • And here at Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies, we've had a Vicar-ious sonnet in honor of Paul, "Jacinto Meets the Wolf Man," and this morning posted a consideration of one of Paul Naschy's own favorite entries in his filmography, The Frenchman's Garden. And there's much more to come!
As always, please let me know if I've left anyone out, and keep checking back for link updates and more new Naschy-related posts!


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    Posted by The Vicar of VHS at 6:51 AM 1 comments

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