by Matt Barnette

1995. Smyrna Video, Smyrna, Tennessee.

My dumpy ass is passing up the Sleepaway Camps, and the Friday the 13th’s and every single other holiday themed monstrosity in my path. I linger in front of I Spit On Your Grave, because who doesn’t want to see a naked butt at the age of fifteen? I see a box with a wild eyed long hair staring back at me with a ridiculous mustache from the cover.

Horror Rises From The Tomb.

“What a stupid fucking title.” I think as my hand reaches out for it’s Styrofoam stuffed case.

I flip the VHS box over and quickly scan the description. A noble comes back to life years after his death and terrorizes the locals, essentially.

What the heck. Maybe it’ll be like those Dr. Phibes movies.

Let me clarify: It was not like those Dr. Phibes movies.

A Sorcerer and his mistress are essentially killed for being into vampirism, witchcraft, lycanthropy (more on this later), cannibalism, and every other thing that you would put on a list of shit that you don’t want to get caught doing in the time of lynch mobs and people with torches beating a bath to your castle, cave, dungeon or lair, especially in a horror movie. The Sorcerer, Alaric DeMarnac and his girl are both dealt with. He loses his head during all the hubbub. Literally. But not before cursing the future generations of their executioners. Natch.

Fast forward 500 years to the 1970’s. The kids of kids of the grandkids of the great grandkids of the great great grandkids of the you-get-the-fucking-point come back to the scene of the crime and come across the (perfectly preserved) head of our wizard buddy Alaric. He pops back to life, resurrects his beloved mistress and they go to town making the locals and the ancestors commit suicide, sacrifices, you name it in the quest to find the rest of his body.

The movie was awesome. It was ridiculous. It was hokey, and scary, and creepy as shit and everything horror could and should be.

I wanted to know more about this Paul Naschy, who most certainly didn’t look like a Paul Naschy….

I never got to meet him. King Juan Carlos of Spain did, though. He met him when he awarded the Gold Medal Award for Fine Arts to him for his lifetime of acting, writing and directing accomplishments in 2001. When he awarded him that Gold Medal in Fine Arts for playing the Wolfman (Hombre Lobo), Frankenstein, The Hunchback of the Morgue, Dracula, Fu Manchu, The Mummy, A Wizard, Jack the Ripper, – you name it – over the course of his forty year career in film.

Spain was the country of origin for Jacinto Molina, also known more fondly and publicly as Paul Naschy. Paul Naschy, the respected horror actor. The Spanish Lon Cheney. The Man of Many Faces.

Spain was the country where Paul Naschy passed away yesterday, on the last day of November 2009 of pancreatic cancer.

Most people who are aware of him know he played a lot of characters, but the one he’s most known for is Waldemar Daninsky…the Wolfman, also known as Hombre Lobo. He played that Wolfman in twelve films (although one has all but vanished off the face of the earth either from a car accident involving the director and producer that tragically included the only known print of the film ) and surpassed even the legendary Lon Cheney for appearances with the seminal lycanthropic character. (Twelve to Cheney’s seven.)

The first appearance of the legendary Daninsky was 1968’s Mark of the Wolfman and the last was in 2004, in Tomb of the Wolfman, when the descendant of Waldemar pulled the silver dagger out of his chest, letting the Hombre loose one last time in an oddly paced attempt to revive the franchise under the guise of a reality tv crew filming a werewolf on a rampage. A sort of spiritual brother to the Jason flicks, there was rarely any continuity or reasoning between the movies in the series, but they were all exactly what they were supposed to be: entertaining and most importantly…scary.

If you’ve never seen Naschy in action, here’s a clip, but not of his famous wolfman, or as the diabolical DeMarnac. It’s just him, in action and in the flesh in a short film retelling Poe’s Tell-tale Heart.

You’ll see the truth in his eyes even if you don’t understand the words that he’s saying. That perhaps he was born too late, and deserved to be right there among the names Cheney, Lugosi, Price and Lorre of the Classic horror age. It’s my opinion, but it’s the opinion of a lot of other Naschy fans as well. The guy was great.

The last I saw of Naschy was in Rojo Sangre (Red Blood) where he played an over the hill horror actor. It’s one of the only roles I saw him in that didn’t really resonate. It wasn’t his performance, or rather…it was, but not because he was bad.

He was having a hard time playing down. He was just too good to play washed up. Too alive. His eyes always screamed that he was smarter, faster, stronger, meaner than anyone else on the screen.

Years have passed, and I got away from horror, and I regret it. I had heard a rumor earlier this year that Christopher Lee, a longtime friend of Naschy, would finally be teaming up with him in a movie, but I never followed up on it. I heard from several friends, including one in Spain, that he was collecting lifetime achievement awards left and right. Had a street named after him. That he was getting the respect he deserved from more than the most cultish for horror fans. That he was hitting the convention circuit despite rumors about deteriorating health.

He was Spain’s Romero and Europe’s Cheney. An author, actor, producer right up until the end.

Gone is the legendary bad ass – and from all accounts – genuinely nice guy who loved his fans and never thought horror was beneath him. The tenuous hold we have with the days of classic horror movies that showed you what you wanted and gave you what you craved is lessening.

Enjoy who we have left from the glory days of horror while we still can.

And if you haven’t, go enjoy some Paul Naschy immediately.

Paul Naschy’s final role in La Herencia Valdemar, comes out in January 2010. For the trailer, click here