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| Images courtesy of Mondo Macabro |
The work of Spanish actor-director Jacinto Molina aka Paul
Naschy has been slowly creeping across the Mondo Macabro home video Blu-Ray
disc library with their deluxe limited red-case releases of Howl of the
Devil, The Frenchman’s Garden and particularly The Devil
Incarnate. Something of a Spanish
Lon Chaney who is regarded as the king of Spanish horror cinema, Naschy was
also a prolific film director often starring in his own movies including Inquisition
and The Night of the Werewolf.
Near the tail end of his career however, in his last complete feature
film as a writer-director, Naschy moved away from the big screen monster movie
to the small screen with his 1992 Death Wish clone Night of the
Executioner. Never released outside
of Spain or theatrically, going straight to video yet gifted now with a new 4K
restoration courtesy of Mondo Macabro, Naschy fans have a chance to see this
grimy, mean little number that turns the ordinarily medieval horror star into
modern Spanish cities.
It is Dr. Hugo Arranz’s (Paul Naschy) 50th
birthday with his wife and daughter when, in the time-honored tradition of the Death
Wish movies, they suffer a home invasion at the hands of a gang of
murderous street thugs. Terrorized and tied
up, the bad guys rob and then rape and murder both his wife and daughter in
front of him but not before cutting his tongue out in graphic close-up,
rendering Dr. Arranz mute. Miraculously
surviving the attack, Arranz in turn quits his medical practice and begins a
single-minded training mission of working out and handling weapons for his
eventual turn as bloodthirsty avenger.
Joining forces with a news reporter with her own observations and plans
for helping to clean up the city of it’s crime wave, the black trench coated
and gloved assailant Arranz sets out into the underbelly of the city’s
prostitution and drug rings aiming to take out those who wronged him.
Partially inspired by a real-life mugging incident
experienced by Naschy and in response to the Death Wish series now into its
fifth iteration, Night of the Executioner filmed in Academy Ratio by Copla
cinematographer José Enrique Izquierdo with an offsetting electronic Wendy
Carlos-sounding keyboard score by Fernando García Morcillo is an expectedly
nasty if not gratuitous rape-revenge action thriller. At once one of Naschy’s few roles spoken with
his own voice before the aforementioned tongue slicing renders him silent for
the remainder of the picture outside of his fierce angry eyes and physicality,
the film is anchored by the surrounding ensemble cast members making up the
gang members and Dr. Arranz’s closest comrades.
While character development in this saga is scant with stock characters
of good guys versus bad guys, there are some striking developments including a
nifty first-person point-of-view shot of one of the head gangsters taking a breath
from his inhaler. Scenes of Naschy
invading the homes of gangsters with posters for Rambo and Predator on
the wall also speak to Naschy’s regard for the influx of Western action-adventure
thrillers in Spanish cinema.
Despite never being released in theaters, going straight to
the home video marketplace, Mondo Macabro in their dedication to publishing
much of Paul Naschy’s filmography on blu-ray disc in the United States have
nevertheless put together a solid package including interviews with some of the
cast and crew members and an audio commentary by Paul Naschy experts Rod
Barnett and Troy Guinn. One of the
better (technically speaking) Mondo Macabro releases as of recent and a mostly
solid Charles Bronson action programmer transposed into Spain with Naschy as
the mute avenger, Night of the Executioner isn’t one of Naschy’s best
but as a vigilante justice flick prominently featuring Spain’s Lon Chaney onscreen
it mostly gets the job done. Brutal and
not for all tastes but for those familiar with this subgenre they’ll get a kick
out of it.
--Andrew Kotwicki
