(166) GOOD NIGHT MONSTER (1982) Paul Naschy werewolf rarity
5100DVD
original Spanish
title BUENAS NOCHES SENOR MONSTRUO [Good Night Mr Monster]
director: Antonio Mercero
starring: Regaliz · Paul Naschy · Fernando Bilbao · Luis Escabar · Andres
Mejuto · Guillermo Mejuto
This
is the Paul Naschy werewolf film you've never seen (and certainly his
only musical comedy, unless you include THE
TRANSSEXUAL). However, Paul does not play his role for laughs, remaining
a tortured lycanthrope throughout [the only exception being an odd flashight
gag]. The movie features one of Paul's better transformation scenes and
he truly seems quite obsessed by the scent of an adolescent girl. In his
lifetime, Paul Naschy made 120 films. Although he is best known for his
wolfman movies, Paul only made 14 of them (including this one). Just prior,
he starred in NIGHT
OF THE WEREWOLF (1981); it was followed by PANIC
BEATS (Heart Beats) and BEAST
AND THE MAGIC SWORD (both 1983). Paul Naschy died from pancreatic
cancer in November 2009 at age 75. His last film was EMPUSA.
During a school picnic,
four kids (Astrid and Eva, Jaime and Eduardo, from the Spanish pop group
Regaliz) get lost in the woods during a nasty thunderstorm. They
take refuge in an old mansion where five "traditional" monsters are complaining about how nobody takes them seriously anymore.
The perky kids interrupt this heavy discussion between Doctor Frankenstein,
Quasimodo, Dracula and the Wolfman who immediately decide the intruders
won't make it through the night. Despite the monsters' attempt to scare
Regaliz to death, the kids react with naive pep and abusive antics that
stop the boogymen in their tracks.
Regaliz was a Euro
pop/visual group (1980-85), described by music critic John Soven as "If
Abba had kids and raised them in Spain." Here, they sing catchy Xuxa-styled
songs accompanied by energetic dance routines. The most memorable numbers
are the title track [repeated many times during the film, creating a potent
musical wormhole inside the viewer's brain], plus "El Show del
Hombre Lobo" (The Wolfman's Show) and a big dance-off
finale "El Balle de los Monstrultos" (The Monsters'
Ball). They also provided music for a previous Paul Naschy/Peter Cushing
movie called MYSTERY
ON MONSTER ISLAND (1981).
A Spanish
film with optional English subtitles; uncut 82 minutes,
on a DVD encoded for ALL REGION NTSC WORLD FORMAT.
Extras include Paul Naschy theatrical trailers.
