This exotic slice of Euro Horror came from the stables of Leon Klimovsky and Paul Naschy who teamed up to continue the long running saga of Waldemar Daninsky – the Polish werewolf who is rather more pitiful than horrifying. The film opens at a party thrown by Imre and his lovely blonde wife Justine who are just about to shoot off to the Transylvanian countryside and to visit Imre’s ancestral village. Though it is Imre who is pining for the village, strangely Justine is fascinated by the mysteries that the region contains and off they go in a rather beat up old Mercedes for their romantic adventure cum holiday. As they arrive at a snowbound, desolate place Imre begins to slow down, totally lost and then the car gives in.

Later Imre is attacked and fatally stabbed by a gang of thieves who were trying to break into his car. The pack of thieves then turn on Justine who is just about to be ravaged when Waldemar shows up and dishes out some pretty severe treatment of his own such as crushing a mans skull under a rock and squeezing one to death with his brute strengh. The surviving thieves flee the scene, exclaiming in horror “its him, its him!”. The luscious Justine is carried off by the gallant Waldemar back to The Dark Castle, where he resides like a recluse with only an old hag by the name of Ulvika for company. The villagers despise the Castle and its inhabitants for spreading death and evil from within.

The surviving thieves return to the castle to avenge the death of their clan member only to be confronted by a monster far worse than they could ever have imagined – Waldemar transformed into a hideous, salivating hairy werewolf due to the compelling forces of the full moon. The werewolf kills one of his attackers, chewing parts of his neck as an appetiser while one of them is impaled on some spikes and the third manages to get away. Justine learns from the old woman that Waldemar is a “very sick” man arousing her sympathy – as it is he has saved her life on more than one occasion already – she feels herself falling for Waldemar’s brooding charm even though Imre’s corpse has barely turned cold. Then one full moon twilight she watches Waldemar transform from handsome young man to slobbering hairy beast she knows the secret of his “illness”.

Justine senses serious danger from the villagers and insists that both Waldemar and her leave for London where she will take him to her good friend Dr. Jeckyll who is a medical genius who is bound to be able to offer some advice as to how poor Waldemar can rid himself of his werewolf curse and lead a normal life. Justine arranges a meeting with Dr. Jeckyll who happens to be the grandson of the infamous Dr. Jeckyll (and Mr. Hyde). The Dr. comes up with a brilliant scheme for reversing Waldemars curse and a meeting is arranged at the surgery. However, Waldemar’s lift gets stuck for hours on end and as it is a full moon, he transforms into his alter ego and chows down on the young woman who was unfortunate enough to get stuck inside with him. Still, later the Dr. Jeckyll and Waldemar do meet and the Dr. starts putting his ingenious plan into motion. The plan involves using a serum that his grandfather used to drink to turn himself into Mr. Hyde and to inject that serum into Waldemar on the night of a full moon so that the Evil in Waldemar could be killed by the Evil created by Mr. Hyde serum and then when the serum would wear off, all that would be left would be the non werewolf Waldemar – or so the theory goes!

All is progressing encouragingly and Waldemar is mutated into Mr. Hyde with the use of the serum. On the next full moon, Dr. Jeckyll hopes to carry out the experiment to its conclusion and cure Waldemar of his curse once and for all. However unexpected problems arise when the Dr.’s long time companion cum mistress cum confidante cum procurer of “bodies” Sandra starts to feel extremely jealous of the Dr.’s keen interest in Justine. She warns the Dr. not to test her and turn her “love and devotion” to him to blind hatred by rejecting her for Justine, “Deepest love can easily turn into deepest hatred” she warns ominously.

This film was the sixth in the line of films featuring Paul Naschy as Waldemar Daninsky – the sympathetic, heroic werewolf who would do anything to rid himself of his affliction but can’t. There were over a dozen such films, most of them if not all also written by Naschy, the suave and charismatic werewolf. Naschy himself turns in a typically noble performance with his wooden acting giving the character a certain vulnerability and pathos. This one is a most enjoyable slice of hokum with as batty a plot as one is likely to come across in many a year. To take the grandson of Dr. Jeckyll and introduce the serum that “created” Mr. Hyde and not only bring them into a modern scenario, but then to merge them into a Werewolf story truly required considerable ingenuity and those behind the story and script ought to be lauded for their efforts (Jacinto Molina AKA Paul Naschy).

Leon Klimovsky earned himself a big reputation in Euro Horror circles and here he shows his unflinching, non-flashy approach that was a world apart from the OTT style of Italians Argento, Fulci and co. Interesting to note thought that some of the background music used in this movie is identical to music used by Armando de Ossorio in his Blind Dead films – coincidence or perhaps like here in Lollywood and Bollywood, the film makers get most of their background music from a common, stock “library” of background music. On the whole, a film of considerable charm.