He was born Jacinto Molina in Madrid in 1934. But the world would remember him as Paul Naschy, the stage name he chose when starring in his first film, The Mark of the Wolf Man (Enrique López Eguiluz, 1968), for which he already wrote the screenplay himself. There, he first embodied Waldemar Daninsky, a tormented man cursed to become a werewolf on every full moon night.
He would go on to reprise the werewolf role fourteen times, earning him the nickname “the Spanish Lon Chaney.” A weightlifting champion, his physique was well suited to portraying other classic horror monsters as Count Dracula, Mr. Hyde, the Mummy, or the Hunchback. It was the golden age of fantaterror, a subgenre produced in Spain but consumed mainly abroad (where censorship could be bypassed) and that basically imitated the horror productions of Universal and Hammer with reduced budgets, skimpy outfits, and a lot of audacity.
The Exhibition
On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of The Return of the Wolf Man and the 55th of Walpurgis Night, two of his most remembered films, CEART (C/ Leganés 51, Fuenlabrada, Madrid) opened last September the exhibition The Werewolf and the Sins of Capital. The Cinema of Paul Naschy. It will be available free of charge on Fridays (from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.), Saturdays, Sundays and holidays (from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.) until next November 1.
Curated by filmmaker and writer Víctor Matellano, it gathers all kinds of costumes, posters, original screenplays, photos, explanatory panels, props and special effects from Molina’s filmography. Special attention is paid to his werewolf films: “Werewolves in cinema are born as a response to humans’ fear of wars, man against man, the duality of humanity. And returning to Paul Naschy’s cinema, to The Return of the Wolf Man, is to review his approach to telling humanity’s fears through genre cinema,” Víctor explains in the booklet handed out at the entrance.
A screen loops a documentary about Naschy. Although the most striking feature is the life-size hyperrealistic figure in the background, where you can take a photo beside the famous werewolf Waldemar Daninsky.
