The Werewolf

El Retorno del Hombre Lobo (The Return of the Wolfman) is a 1980[citation needed ] Spanish horror film that is the ninth in a 12-film series about the werewolf Count Waldemar Daninsky, played by Paul Naschy. It is also known as The Craving and Night of the Werewolf.

The film was first theatrically released in Spain in April 1981, and was later shown at the 1982 Fantasporto Festival. The film was released theatrically in the U.S. as The Craving in 1985, then released to video as The Craving, and more recently on DVD as Night of the Werewolf. Shout Factory also released it on Blu-ray as part of their "Paul Naschy Collection set.[1]

The film had a much larger budget than previous Naschy werewolf productions. Angel Luis de Diego handled the werewolf makeup and special effects.

Naschy followed this up with a tenth werewolf film, La Bestia y la Espada Magica (The Beast and the Magic Sword).

In 15th Century Hungary, the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky is sentenced to be executed along with his satanic mistress Elizabeth Bathory and her coven of witches. Since it is nearly impossible to truly kill him, he is left in a kind of living death, with a silver dagger through his heart and an iron mask affixed to his face to keep him from biting. Centuries later, the dagger is removed from his chest by two graverobbers and Daninsky returns to life, and allows a group of travelling college girls to stay at his castle.

One of the girls locates the tomb of the Countess Bathory and is hypnotically forced by the Countess to perform a bloody ritual that brings the Countess back to life. Daninsky falls in love with one of the girls named Karen, and when he realizes the Countess has been revived and is vampirizing the denizens of the area, he turns against his former mistress and her vampire slaves to save Karen.

The end of the film features a classic battle in the crypt between Daninsky and Bathory, and he winds up biting the vampire's throat out. Now out of control, he goes on to bite Karen, but as she dies, she manages to stab Daninsky through the heart again with the silver dagger, thus ending the curse on the man she loves.