On Paul Naschy

In 2009, Paul Naschy died. For those to whom the name means nothing, I can only state that you were not around in the 1970s, when he was, to foreign horror films, what Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Lon Chaney, were to English language horror. I exclude Vincent Price because, well, Price was in a league of his own.

Most of his films were filled with soft core porno, as well as horror, and in this way they parodied the Eurotrash films of haughtier filmmakers like Pier Paolo Pasolini and Luis Bunuel. There was no place for pretension in Naschy's films.



My pals and I would sneak into theaters, and get high watching his films, along with the stuff released by Hammer, Roger Corman, Ray Harryhausen, and the Godzilla film series. Occasionally, we'd even go in for a blaxploitation or martial arts film.



Naschy often scripted his own films, and if there was one flaw to them it was that he never quite succeeded in making them as memorably bad as the films of Ed Wood. Perhaps had he not acted in them he would have acheived this. But, he was a damned fine actor. No, the Oliviers of the world will not have to roll over in their graves, but outside of the aforementioned Vincent Price, few actors in the horror genre were capable of bringing in a gravitas to their roles, no matter how silly.

Naschy did, and his work, while largely forgotten on this side of the Atlantic, did push boundaries and meld genres like few before. And, it's worth noting that he did this before the slasher film genre took off in the late 1970s. That genre, in fact,owes a debt to Naschy, as a pioneer, and one who mixed horror and sex better than any of those genre films did.

It's a little late, but R.I.P. Jacinto Molina Álvarez (aka Paul Naschy).

Eurotrash

This was a cinema term from my youth, when pretentious artsy films were released, but had no real art to them. A notable precursor to Eurotrash films was the crap of Jean Cocteau; but Eurotrash hit its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.



Sorry, but Buster Keaton did it better.

Perhaps the first Eurotrasher, chronologically, was Luis Bunuel, whose pompous, bloated films were dull, although he had a modicum of filmic talent.



The same could be said by New Wave poseur Jean-Luc Godard: no depth, but a little skill, here and there.



How about Rainer Werner Fassbinder? His films were pretentious, but bad....yet, some were so bad that they engendered an Ed Woodian level humor to them.



The same could not be said for Pier Paolo Pasolini; possibly the worst film director who's taken 'seriously' as an artist by critics. Why? Because he was a Left Wing lunatic who stuffed all sorts of crap into his films with that sort of ideal.



But his films were garbage- soft core porno.

Yet, the films of Spanish B film superstar Paul Naschy (whose films I recently got and NEED to watch) were laughed at, as piffle. It's been well over 30 years since I saw a wolfman or a vampire ravage a bare Castilian breast, but, even though my memory is not perfect, Naschy's films were far superior to all the Eurotrashers I have named.



See?

Paul Naschy Lives!

When I was a child, my friends and I would often sneak into local theaters during late summer mornings or early afternoons. Back then, many theaters were open 24 hours, to try to maximize profits. Sometimes we'd outright sneak in, and other times we'd do little errands for the theater owners to get in, especially for skin flicks and horror crap.

Back then, the crap that ran in off hours was usually B film detritus- Toho monster flicks, Ray Harryhausen flicks, soft to hard core porno, Hammer horror films, AIP-Roger Corman crapola, and, if lucky, stuff with monsters and chicks.

Enter Paul Naschy and the films he scripted.

Naschy was the king of Spanish exploitation and horror films. Many of them showed nudity, too!

Imagine being a six or seven year old in the early 70s, and seeing stuff like that.

Well, recently I saw a boxed set of Naschy films really cheap at a Half Price Books store, and given the decades intervening, will savor my watching of the films.

Anyway, here is a clip of the films in the Naschy boxed set:



And, if you wanna find out more about the grand man himself, check out his website: http://www.naschy.com/