Paul Naschy

Biography

Naschy was born as Jacinto Molina Alvarez in Madrid in 1934, and grew up during the Spanish Civil War, a period of great turmoil in Spanish history. His father Enrique Molina was a successful furrier, and Naschy grew up in very comfortable surroundings, at one point living in a veritable country mansion. After college, Naschy started out as a professional weightlifter, but soon gravitated to acting. His favorite film character from childhood was the Wolf Man, dating back to when he saw the classic Universal film Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) as a child. At times, he tried his hand at designing record album covers, writing pulp western novels and drawing comic book stories, but did not meet with much success. In his 20's, Naschy moved back and forth between professional weightlifting and acting, but wasn't able to secure important roles, usually obtaining bit parts.

Naschy had an uncredited bit part in the classic 1961 Biblical epic King of Kings and a few other films of that period, and the experience drew him further into filmmaking. While appearing as an extra in an episode of the American TV show I Spy that was being filmed in a remote country site in Spain in 1966, Naschy met horror icon Boris Karloff on the set, a thrill he never forgot. (Karloff was in a very poor mood that day, apparently depressed and in poor health. This encounter led to a posthumously produced film biography on Naschy being entitled Paul Naschy: The Man Who Saw Frankenstein Cry.)

In 1968, at age 34, he wrote a screenplay for a werewolf movie entitled La Marca del Hombre Lobo (about a Polish werewolf named Waldemar Daninsky) and managed to interest some German producers into financing it. Naschy never intended to play "el Hombre Lobo" (as the doomed lycanthrope came to be called in Spain), he just wound up with the part when the producers couldn't find a suitable actor. (They had tried to hire Lon Chaney Jr., but at age 62, the fabled Hollywood horror star was far too sickly to travel).

The German producers insisted he change his name from Jacinto Molina because it sounded too Spanish, which would've hurt the film's chances at the box offices in various countries outside of Spain. So he created the name "Paul Naschy"...."Paul" after the then-Pope Paul, and "Naschy" as a Germanic sounding version of Imre Nagy, one of Naschy's weightlifting idols. Naschy later wrote and starred in eleven sequels featuring his Waldemar Daninsky werewolf character, and spun off a very successful acting and directing career in the process.

Naschy wrote the screenplays for most of the films he starred in, especially the horror movies. His most prolific year was 1972, during which time he wrote and starred in no less than seven movies. During the 1970s, Naschy worked for some of the best Euro-horror film directors in the business, including Leon Klimovsky, Carlos Aured, Javier Aguirre, Jose Luis Madrid, Juan Piquer Simon, Francisco Lara Polop and Jose Luis Merino.

In 1976, he decided to try his hand at directing as well, choosing the costume drama Inquisicion as his first project. He did well initially, even producing and directing a number of successful Japanese/Spanish co-productions and made-for-Spanish-TV documentaries, but by 1984, his films were no longer breaking even, and after losing a lot of money on his ill-conceived spy spoof Operation Mantis (1984), Naschy's production company, Aconito Films, wound up in bankruptcy. (Aconito is the scientific term for the herb wolfsbane).

On June 20, 1984, Naschy's father Enrique Molina died of a heart attack while fishing alone on the shores of a lake. Some boys playing in the woods discovered his body, too late to revive him. The unexpected sudden loss of his father (with whom he had always been very close), coinciding with the bankruptcy of his production company, plunged Naschy into a lengthy period of depression, only returning to filmmaking in 1987 with his cult classic El Aullido del Diablo. Naschy's son Sergio starred in the film, along with famed horror icons Howard Vernon and Caroline Munro (the film was very poorly distributed unfortunately, and is still not available on DVD).

Naschy's career took a second downturn when he suffered a near-fatal heart attack himself on August 27, 1991, triggered by weightlifting in a local gym. He was hospitalized for more than a week, then had major heart surgery performed on Sept. 5. A rumor circulated throughout horror film fandom that Naschy had died, since he disappeared from the film scene for a while after his operation. He had to later contact a number of fanzine publishers in various countries to inform them that he was still very much alive.

In 1996, Naschy wrote and starred in his eleventh werewolf film Licantropo, which he thought would be a big comeback film for him, but the movie didn't do well at all, critically or financially. He continued to appear in a number of low budget horror films and crime dramas however during the following decade, during which time he won a number of prestigious fan awards and appeared as a celebrated guest at many horror film conventions (both in the United States and in Europe), although he was always doing poorly financially and complained bitterly in interviews about the state of the corrupt Spanish film industry. In 1997, Naschy wrote a detailed autobiography entitled Memoirs of a Wolf Man (which included his complete filmography as well).

Naschy even travelled to Hollywood briefly in 2004 to appear in two filmed-on-video horror flicks directed by Donald F. Glut and Fred Olen Ray, two former horror fans-turned-directors who must have treated him like royalty on the set. During his sojourn in Hollywood, Naschy even visited the famed "Ackermansion" museum of Forrest J. Ackerman, the editor of the legendary Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine.

Naschy died of pancreatic cancer on November 30, 2009. He was 75 years old. He struggled desperately to stay alive but the end was inevitable. Although he ended his life in relatively poor financial straits, Naschy always received a tremendous outpouring of love from his many fans at the conventions he attended and died knowing he would always be regarded as a major horror film icon.

Naschy was married only once, on October 24, 1969, to a woman named Elvira Primavera, the daughter of an Italian diplomat living in Spain. They were still happily married 40 years later at the time of his death. His wife was always very supportive of Naschy's filmmaking projects and was undoubtedly one of the factors that led to his success. He was survived by his widow Elvira and his two sons, Bruno and Sergio Molina.

Naschy's favorite director was Leon Klimovsky, with whom he made 9 horror & action films. Naschy praised Klimovsky's professional workmanlike attitude, but he always felt that Klimovsky rushed through the filming and never allowed for enough retakes that might have improved some of their films. He also enjoyed working for director Carlos Aured, and was proud of the films they did together.

The only horror film actor who ever portrayed Dracula, the Mummy, the Frankenstein Monster, Fu Manchu, the Hunchback, Rasputin, a warlock, a zombie, a medieval Inquisitor, a serial killer (not to mention a werewolf in 16 different films) died on November 30, 2009 from pancreatic cancer in Madrid.

An excellent hardcover book entitled Muchas Gracias, Senor Lobo was published in Germany after Naschy's death, collecting hundreds of rare photos, lobby cards, posters, etc. that had been used to promote Naschy's films over the decades in a number of different countries. A comprehensive film biography entitled Paul Naschy: The Man Who Saw Frankenstein Cry (a reference to Naschy's meeting with Boris Karloff in 1966) has also been released on dvd.

Most famous characters

The werewolf Waldemar Daninsky (known in Spain as "El Hombre Lobo") is without a doubt Paul Naschy's most famous horror character, since he played Daninsky in 12 different films. In fact, Naschy holds the record for playing a werewolf the most number of times, easily beating out the great Lon Chaney Jr. (who played the Wolf Man only five times during his career).

Unlike the Chaney Universal films, however, which formed a somewhat chronological storyline from picture to picture, Naschy's Daninsky films were not connected to each other plotwise. Each film was more or less a free-standing story that wasn't meant to relate to the other films in the series the way the old Universal films did. Daninsky's lycanthropy had a different origin in each film (which many Naschy fans find confusing). This was probably for the best however, since in the 1970s, Euro-horror films were often theatrically distributed in the USA several years after they were completed, and they probably would have all been released out of order anyway.

Naschy's only other recurring character was the villainous medieval warlock Alaric de Marnac (who appeared in Naschy's Horror Rises from the Tomb (1972) and returned to life again in a sequel, Panic Beats (1982)). Naschy claims he based this character on a real-life medieval nobleman named Gilles de Rais, a bizarre medieval serial killer on whose life story Naschy also based the lead character in his 1974 film El Mariscal del Infierno (The Devil's Possessed).

The Hombre Lobo series (featuring the Waldemar Daninsky character)

Naschy's twelve "Hombre Lobo" movies are not a series in the strictest sense. They seem to be a collection of unrelated plotlines, but all of which involve a werewolf named Waldemar Daninsky. Both La Furia del Hombre Lobo (1970) and La Maldicion de la Bestia (1975) refer to an origin involving Waldemar's being bitten by a Yeti (and there is a brief Yeti reference in La Noche de Walpurgis (1970) as well), but the other films presented him with entirely different origin stories. The fact that these films have also been retitled by the various film distributors many times over the years only adds to the confusion. Despite the numerous plot inconsistencies and convoluted flashbacks, however, Naschy's Wolf Man series as a whole is still considered his most famous work by most of his many fans.

Only eleven of the 12 "Hombre Lobo" films actually exist today. All traces of Las Noches del Hombre Lobo (1968) apparently vanished before the film was ever shown anywhere (not even Naschy has seen it), and it remains a mystery to this day whether or not the film ever really existed at all in completed form. Naschy said in interviews that he specifically remembered going to Paris for a week to shoot his scenes for the film, but he went right back to Spain after completing his scenes and never saw any rushes. The French producer of the film, Rene Govar (who apparently only directed this one film), is said to have died in a car accident in Paris a week after the filming was completed, and no one ever picked up the lab bill that was outstanding. Hence it is thought that the lab may have confiscated the film negative and years later they probably just discarded it. Naschy claimed he only became aware decades later that the film had never been released anywhere. Some Naschy fans think the film was scrapped in 1968 and the script may have been later rewritten to become the 4th film in the series, La Furia del Hombre Lobo (1970). This is possible since Naschy himself vaguely remembered both films as having virtually the same plot!

In order of production, the "Hombre Lobo" films are as follows:

There were four other Paul Naschy werewolf films that were not part of the Waldemar Daninsky series, as follows:

Paul Naschy starred in many other horror films that did not feature el Hombre Lobo, as well as a number of crime films, costume dramas, action thrillers, etc. Below is a comprehensive list of all his movies, in strict chronological order of production. Dates shown are when the films were made, not when they were theatrically released in various foreign markets. This information was taken from Naschy's own autobiography (Memoirs of a Wolfman) and the release date information is much more accurate than that found on any other websites.

Note* - Naschy allegedly played uncredited bit parts in King of Kings (1960, playing a servant to Pontius Pilate), El Principe Encadenado / The Chained Prince (1960, a.k.a. King of the Vikings, playing a Mongol chieftain), 55 Days at Peking (1963), Operation Plus Ultra (1966, playing a masked surgeon), Las Viudas / The Widows (1966, very briefly in the "Honeymoon" segment only) and La Esclava del Paraiso / Slave of Paradise (1968, playing a palace servant named Shantal). In most of these films, if you blinked, you'd miss him. Naschy allegedly acted as an assistant to the director on 2 other films, Aventura en el Palacio Viejo (1967) and Cronica de Nueve Meses (1967).

Posthumously released projects

Naschy died on November 30, 2009 in Madrid, Spain.