Night of the Howling Beast (1977)

Waldemar (Paul Naschy), the renowned adventurer, joins an expedition to find the Yeti in the Himalayas. While hiking the mountains, he is captured by two cannibalistic demon nymphets guarding a remote Buddhist temple and becomes their sex slave.This film ignores the events from the earlier films "The Fury of the Wolfman" (1970) and "Curse of the Devil" (1972), and provided an all-new origin for Waldemar's lycanthropy, having the curse transmitted by the bites of not one, but two, vampire women! The mix of supernatural creatures is certainly a good deal of fun.The film was banned in the UK by the BBFC under the Video Recordings Act of 1984 and was featured on the "Video Nasties" list. It has allegedly never been released in the UK. But for us lucky Americans, the film is now available on Blu-ray from Scream! Factory. It is fairly bare bones, with no commentary or other features, but we do get to choose between English and Spanish, which is nice.

This is another one of those I can't understand being labeled a "Video Nasty", though I think many would concur that the VN list doesn't make any f*cking sense anyway. So apart from that discomfiting detail, "The Werewolf and the Yeti" (aka. Night of the Howling Beast) is a relatively disjointed cluster-f*ck 'exploitation' flick among a series of related Spanish werewolf films that I have not seen...A couple of yeti-hunting explorers are attacked by a vicious, furry creature in the mountains of Tibet so a party heads out to look for them. One of the guys from earlier is seen trudging through the snow and stumbles across a pair of cave-dwelling cannibal-vampire-wolf-nymphs who get freaky and bite him - thus, transforming him into a lycanthrope during a full moon... The search party is eventually ambushed by a gang of bandits who like torturing people, so by the end there's a big-ass showdown between the surviving explorers and the bandits and "the wolfman" and a yeti...I guess my main gripe with this one is that it just looks sh*tty. Terrible day-for-night shots and werewolf transformations that cheaply mimic the primitive effects utilized in the 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. classic as well as subsequent 'wolfy' films (stationary shot as they stick fur to a guy's face and fade between 'em). There's a little bit of nudity but not nearly enough to matter all that much and the gore was weak. Plus, there was just too much going on here and it kinda lost me at times. They should've just focused more on the werewolf/yeti and those cave-sluts. That would've kept my ass entertained. In all, this one is just forgettable.More of my reviews @ http://swinesewage.blogspot.com/

So we have Paul Naschy joining an expedition in a Tibetan mountain region. Or somewhere, as this movie looks like it's shot for the most part in some forest in Spain. And then we have snow. And then there's sun and plants. I don't know – it might have been shot on some distant planet in outer space were continuity errors are part of your everyday reality.So, Paul Naschy stumbles upon some cave, enters it and finds two vampiric wenches (that's my guess) and has sex with them (both of them, at the same time, thank you very much). I couldn't tell if those sluts turned him into a werewolf, or if Naschy's character was already a werewolf to begin with. Either way, Naschy is a werewolf and he gets to wrestle around in the snow with a yeti (who just happens to wear a similarly looking werewolf costume, just like the one Naschy's wearing). And then I think this movie ended. I think I spotted an image of Buddha in this movie too, somewhere. Can't really remember.Good Badness? I'm inclined to shout "Yes!", but for the love of Christ possessed, I can't remember why... 1/10 and, uhm, I guess, ehrr, maybe 5/10..., meaning 9/10 for being the worst piece of rubbish out of the lot, and 1/10 because I couldn't laugh with it. So, that's 10/20, which would boil down to... Aw, screw it. This movie sucks and Paul Naschy is a sleaze-ball. 1/10, and no goodies for Naschy.

I really wanted to like "Night of the Howling Beast," or "Werewolf Vs. the Yeti" as it's called in the uncut version. Unfortunately, the filmmakers manipulated us into thinking this film was going to be more about Daninsky and the Yeti's battle. It was not. Once again, we get Waldemar Daninsky being bitten by a werewolf while on an expedition in Tibet. After he disappears, his colleagues follow his trail to Tibet where most of them are wiped out by bandits and an evil sorceress and her equally evil sorcerer lover. This leads to a fight between the sorceress and sorcerer, that leads up to the "climactic" battle between Daninsky (in his werewolf form) and the elusive Yeti of the Himalayas.The battle between both was unintentionally funny, and had me clutching my sides from too much laughter. Unfortunately, it was too brief to leave a long, satisfying effect on the audience.The rest of the film is what you would expect of a Waldemar Daninsky werewolf flick. Paul Naschy once again, playing his tortured character who does nothing but whine about his condition, and the quintessential female lead who loves Waldemar unconditionally.The bonuses include a couple of decent gory deaths (a woman who's back is skinned by the evil sorceress, being the most memorable one), and the competent photography that perfectly captures the beautiful locations. Paul Naschy, of course, delivers a competent performance as the tortured Waldemar Daninsky, and Juliet Mills (Beyond the Door) does quite well as Waldemar's love interest. Their chemistry is really the only thing that keeps the story moving along.Overall, NIGHT OF THE HOWLING BEAST is nothing new. It's the same Waldemar Daninsky story but with a new setting. Paul Naschy fans should enjoy this nonetheless, others will feel extremely disappointed. It would have been much better if they had focused a tad bit longer on the battle scene between Daninsky and the Yeti.A word of warning. It is extremely RARE and almost impossible to come by, especially in its Super Video release. You can acquire a legitimate bootleg copy of it on horrortheatervideo.com for fairly cheap. Check it out only if you are a Naschy completionist.