Panic Beats

On learning that his shrewish wife Genevieve (Julia Saly) is suffering from a potentially life-threatening heart condition and should not be exposed to any sudden shocks, Paul de Marnac (Jacinto Molina) does what any caring husband in his situation would do: Take his wife for a quiet stay at his country retreat.

Or, not quite. For Paul, you see, is your typical greedy, philandering husband who, besides wanting his wife's more considerable fortune has a bit of a chip on his shoulder over the way her family treated him with something less than noble courtesy. (It's worth noting here that Paul besides sharing his name with writer-director-star Jacinto Molina's Paul Naschy alter ego also shares an occupation, with Naschy being an architecture student prior to his days as a weightlifter and cineaste.)

His ancestral pile is earmarked as the place where Genevieve can meet a shocking – but perfectly natural seeming – demise, being haunted – so the legend goes – by the spirit of the murderous Alaric de Marnac, a satan-worshipping knight who, evincing a surprisingly puritanical streak, went literally medieval on his unfaithful wife and – again according to legend – returns every 100 or so years to do the same to subsequent generations of de Marnac femmes…

As Paul and Genevieve make their way to the country house we meet the creepy housekeeper Maville (Lola Gaos) and her bad seed niece Julie (Pat/Paquita Ondiviela), recently released from reformm school, along with some of Paul's co-conspirators as, when his car 'unexpectedly' runs out of petrol on a remote road and he leaves Genevieve alone to go back to the villge and get some, she is menaced by a couple of rogues…

This time round, however, Genevieve is shaken but not fatally shocked and so, arriving on the scene, Paul does some heroics, all the better to secure his wife's trust for a more effective betrayal later once the story of Alaric has taken hold…

After some scenes of suspenseful skulking around the place and of pure soap opera, Paul finally succeeds in scaring Jessica Genevieve to death, donning a skull mask and armour to reincarnate Alaric after taking Maville – more a sinister Mrs Danvers type than an actual murderess – out of the equation with a drugged drink.

For a brief moment it seems he is home and dry. Except he's now falling for the less-than-trustworthy Julie and his present mistress (Silvia Miro) – first glimpsed in a leopard print catsuit, complete with tail! – isn't about to let him go that easily… Plus, Maville is soon onto the truth… and what if Alaric should turn out to be no mere legend…

With an Old Dark House style setting, Rebecca-esque housekeeper and a plot that was old when Les Diaboliques was young, Paul Naschy's 1982 Spanish shocker is the sort of film that could easily have been made 30 or more years earlier but for the explicitness of its nudity and splatter; the writer-director-star's stall being set out early with a stylish pre-credits sequence that sees the vengeful Alaric pursue his naked wife through the mist-shrouded woods and freeze-frame as he raises his morning star to strike.

But originality has never been a particularly strong suit in Spanish cult and horror filmmaking. Rather, what film-makers like Naschy do is take old ingredients, mix them up and put them in new bottles, whether it be re-visioning the Universal monsters of the 30s in his Waldemar Daninsky films and their spin-offs or – here – taking the Alaric de Marnac character from Horror Rises from the Tomb – already somewhat reminiscent of the zombie knights templar of Amando De Ossorio's Blind Dead films, themselves a distinctively Iberian take on Romero's Night of the Living Dead – and giving him a new lease of (un)life.

What matters, then, is whether the ingredients of the cocktail work together. In Panic Beats' case, one would have to say for the most part yes, they do. The set pieces, always the high points of a cinema that privileges emotional effect over coherent narrative and intellectual response, are well orchestrated, while the supernatural gloss given events – see also not dissimilar Italian gothic and giallo entries like The Ghost and The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave – provides a useful get-out clause should one be needed to explain away some thunder and lightning and weirdness with tarot cards.

Not, however, that Panic Beats works solely on the level of trash spectacle. Though there are certainly plenty of fashion crimes and other moments that you laugh at rather than with – not least the cigar-chomping Naschy's Latin lover aspect as he enjoys a love scene with each and every starlet – these are counterbalanced by some moments of fine, intelligent film-making. One stand out is the first encounter between Paul and Julie where a faintly Exorcist-style shot (help, I'm turning into Mark Kermode ;-)) of the former in shadow in the doorframe is followed by a telling cut to a close-up of Julie, her expression speaking volumes and the combination of shots providing a near-textbook example of how to tell your story in pictures. A second, actually taking place after one of the aforementioned lovemaking scenes, sees Paul looking down at the naked body of his mistress, filled not with desire but hatred as he contemplates strangling her and realises he has simply exchanged one prison for another, illustrating Naschy's sometimes surprising skills as writer and performer.

Panic Beats isn't a lost classic, then, but has enough moments to be worthwhile on a multiplicity of levels – and we haven't even begun to look at it's sociological value as a document of the immediate post-Franco era of destape and of how things had, or hadn't, changed in Spain between 1972 and 1982…

It's almost becoming redundant to say this, but this is another top-notch disc from Mondo Macabro.

The Region Free NTSC disc presents the film in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio in a new anamorphic transfer from a negative and, as such, looks good, the very occasional piece of artefacting more than offset by the ability to make out finer details such as the inscription on the painting of a grinning Alaric that forms the centrepiece of the country house.

The stereo audio is fine and the English subtitles easy to follow. (Curiously the opening title is for the Panic Beats, though the rest of the credits, the film itself and the closing Latidos de pánico credit are all in Spanish.)

A 20 minute Eurotika documentary on Spanish horror charting the history of the form from the ground-breaking Awful Dr Orloff through the Blind Dead, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue and beyond with useful contributions from film-makers and performers including Jess Franco, Jose Larraz, Jorge Grau and – now sadly deceased – Amando De Ossorio.

Naschy's own place within this movement is explored in greater detail in a half-hour interview, with the multi-talented writer, director and actor expounding "on" his early cinematic influences including Expressionism and the Universal cycle of the 1930s; his particular fascination for el hombre lobo as the classic monster with the greatest potential; the specifically Spanish/Castillian influences on his work; how he became Paul Naschy – the forename came from the then-pope, the surname from a Germanisation of a Hungarian weightlifter he knew – and much, much more. An animated and infectious speaker, his love for the horror/fantasy genre is self-evident.

The package is rounded off with an extensive gallery of rare stills and Mondo Macabro trailer reel.

Also worth noting is that credit for the cover image is given to Denetia Arellanes of the Mark of Naschy website, an excellent resource for those intrigued by the phenomenon that is Paul Naschy.

You can visit Mondo Macabro DVD at www.mondomacabrodvd.com