The Werewolf & The Yeti

This obscure Video Nasty is extremely difficult to find and I wouldn’t be surprised if the original pre-cert cassettes change hands for, what I would call, ‘silly money’. I did manage to watch The Werewolf & The Yeti (AKA Night Of The Howling Beast and La Maldicion de la Bestia), however, on the internet – without having to exchange a ridiculous amount of cash!

This cheap, rough film does have a sense of adventure about it, which makes it quite fun to watch. Werewolf & The Yeti sees Spanish exploitation lothario Paul Naschy (born Jacinto Molina Alvarez) once again reprising his role as Waldermar Daninsky as he attempts to track down the mythical abominable snowman. However, Daninsky falls under the curse of two mountain demonesses, which causes him to sprout hair and claws whenever there’s a full moon out.

 

Naschy is the closest thing the grindhouse has to a James Bond. He’s smooth, charismatic, tough and always gets the girl. Werewolf & the Yeti was the seventh time Naschy played Waldermar – I’m reliably informed he played the character in over a dozen films.

The film was obviously made for very little capital but I think manages to make do pretty well with it’s limited resources. I thought the locations were impressive and added to the gothicness of the movie - although, when it comes to special FX, that’s clearly a bloke in a Werewolf costume. Unconvincing the costume may be, but it reminded me of Lon Chaney’s portrayal of the ‘The Wolf Man’ so it wasn’t too distracting.

Werewolf & The Yeti is notorious for being one of the 72 ‘Video Nasties’ banned in the UK (and remains to this day) by the Director of Public Prosectutions (DPP) in the early 1980s. Once you finally see the film, it’s surprising that the DPP even bothered with it because there’s nothing ‘nasty’ about it really; there are scenes of sex and violence, but they’re so frivolous that it becomes difficult to call the film offensive  – even more surprising is that it was one of the 39 films that were successfully prosecuted! I’ve touched on the issue of how or why certain movies ended up on the Video Nasties list, and how their appearance appears arbitrary when you compare and contrast with other non-Nasties, so I won’t proceed with this argument any further. What I will say is that Werewolf & The Yeti is further evidence of what a nonsense the Video Nasty scandal proved to be.