Frankenstein's Bloody Terror is a 1968 Spanish werewolf film starring Paul Naschy.
While taking refuge in a mysterious castle, a gypsy couple winds up awakening a werewolf while robbing the crypts. Joining a hunt to stop what is thought to be just murderous wolves, Count Waldemar Daninsky encounters the werewolf and is bitten before managing to kill it with a silver cross. Now, Waldemar is cursed with lycanthropy. Desperately seeking a cure, he contacts Dr. Janos Mikhelov, a German occultist. However, Janos has secrets of his own, and plans for Waldemar...
The film had eleven 'sequels', some with tenuous continuity to those before but all became self-contained starting with the sixth film, featuring a werewolf named Waldemar Daninsky:
- The Nights of the Wolf Man (1968, currently lost and may not have actually existed)
- The Monsters of Terror/Assignment Terror (1969)
- The Fury of the Wolf Man (1970)
- Walpurgis Night/The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman (1970)
- Dr. Jekyll and the Wolf Man/Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf (1971)
- The Return of Walpurgis/Curse of the Devil (1973)
- The Curse of the Beast/Night of the Howling Beast (1975)
- The Return of the Wolf Man/The Craving (1980)
- The Beast and the Magic Sword (1983)
- Licantropo/Lycathropus: The Moonlight Murders (1996)
- Tomb of the Werewolf (2004)
This film was distributed in Canada by Columbia Pictures and has received a DVD release by Shriek Show.
This film contains examples of:
- Barefoot Captives: Waldemar's girlfriend, Janice, is barefoot and in her nightgown when the vampire Janos Mikhelov attempts to spirit her away at the climax, though due to sloppy editing, she can be briefly spotted wearing sandals in one scene.
- Big Bad Ensemble: Imre Wolfstein, the werewolf who turned Waldemar in the first place, and Dr. Janos Mikhelov, a vampire occultist taking advantage of the horrors to study lycanthropy, are operating completely independently and equally earn Waldemar's ire.
- Downer Ending: Waldemar is rescued and destroys the vampires holding him captive, but he is killed in his werewolf form by his girlfriend (strangely, while he is just standing around doing nothing menacing).
- Famous Ancestor: The American version adds opening narration that claims that the Wolfsteins are related to Victor Frankenstein, in a hasty attempt to justify the title.
- Fur Against Fang: The film climaxes in a fight between werewolf Waldemar and vampire Mikhelov.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: As we never learn of Imre Wolfstein's human personality, his entire characterization is a ravenous werewolf who attacks everything he sees.
- Gory Deadly Overkill Title of Fatal Death
- The Hero Dies: Waldemar is shot in the heart by his girlfriend after he saves her from the vampires.
- Hot Gypsy Woman: Nascha, oh so much.
- Let's You and Him Fight: The climax of the film has Mikhelov forcing Waldemar to fight Wolfstein.
- My Grandson, Myself: Mikhelov pretends to be his own son to disguise his vampirism.
- Non-Indicative Name: The film has nothing to do with Frankenstein, instead being a werewolf movie. Originally called The Mark of the Wolf Man, the American distributors bought it and changed the name because movie theaters were promised a Frankenstein double feature and they couldn't get another Frankenstein movie to pair with Dracula vs. Frankenstein.
- Our Vampires Are Different: These have the ability to seduce people with a look, keeping them in a trance until they're let free or their master is destroyed. When they're killed, their flesh dissolves into mist until only bones are left.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: These turn others any time they draw blood, have a black star on their bodies as a sign of their curse, and can only be killed by silver piercing their heart, sent there by somebody who loves them. Otherwise, they're put into stasis until the silver is removed.
- The Power of Love: Werewolves can only be killed if somebody who loves them drives silver into their heart.
- Predecessor Villain: A couple centuries before all the werewolf business, a group of monks did Satanic rites near the village where the film is set. A plague killed them all, and their only effect on the plot is that their occult library remains in the old monastery, thus giving Waldemar something to look for a cure in.
- Prefers Going Barefoot: Nascha, the blonde gypsy girl, goes barefoot, even in muddy puddles, dusty castle ruins, and moldering crypts.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Imre Wolfstein was stabbed in the heart with a silver cross, which put him in stasis, and locked in a coffin. Him being freed sets off the film's plot.
- The Sociopath: Dr. Janos Mikhelov and his wife Vanessa, two vampires who see other people's supernatural curses as opportunities to experiment on them, not caring how much pain their victims go through. They show no real care for each other beyond a shared fascination for science, and think nothing of dominating the minds of bystanders to keep their plans going.
- Too Dumb to Live: Gyogyo and Nascha the gypsies. They open a centuries-old crypt, find a perfectly-preserved man lying inside with a silver cross sticking out of him. What do they do? Pull the cross out to steal it. They are violently murdered moments later by the resurrected werewolf.
