Spanish film actor/writer/director Paul Naschy died of cancer on 30 November 2009. The acknowledged master of Spanish horror films, he was born Jacinto Molina Álvarez in Madrid on 6 September 1934, and changed his name early in his career to the German-sounding Naschy at the request of a German film distributor.
Growing up during the Spanish Civil War, he sought to escape the real horrors of life in the fictitious horrors of comics and movies, and frequently credited seeing Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman in a movie theater when he was eleven as dictating the course of his life. Growing up, he was a gifted athlete, and in later life, wrote several pulp novels and illustrated an album cover. But he finally moved into the field where he would leave his mark in 1960, when he had his first uncredited film role, in El príncipe encadenado (1960, King of the Vikings).
Soon after he started acting, he also started writing screenplays, and his first produced script was Las noches del Hombre Lobo (1968, Nights of the Werewolf), in which he also starred as the mild-mannered Waldemar Daninsky, who would turn into a werewolf at the most inopportune times. It was a role he would reprise many times in his career. His writing credit for that film (and many subsequent) was Jacinto Molina. In 1976, he also added directing to his repertoire, when he wrote, directed, and starred in Inquisición (Inquisition); he played the dual role of Bernard de Fossey and Satan.
Naschy was frequently described as the Spanish Lon Chaney or the Spanish Boris Karloff. Iconic characters he played include the Devil, Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Fu Manchu, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, Jack the Ripper, the Mummy, and the Phantom of the Opera.
Naschy’s genre films (as actor, writer, director, or two or all three of those credits) include: La esclava del paraíso (1968, 1001 Nights), Las noches del Hombre Lobo (1968, Nights of the Werewolf), La marca del Hombre-lobo (1968, The Wolfman of Count Dracula), Los monstruros del terror (1970, Assignment Terror), Jack el destripador de Londres (1971, Seven Murders for Scotland Yard), La noche de Walpurgis (1971, The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman), El gran amor del conde Dràcula (1972, Count Dracula’s Great Love), La furia del Hombre Lobo (1972, The Fury of the Wolfman), Dr. Jekyll y el Hombre Lobo (1972, Doctor Jekyll and the Werewolf), Los ojos azules de la muñeca rota (1973, Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll), La venganza de la momia (1973, The Mummy’s Revenge), El retorno de Walpurgis (1973, Curse of the Devil), El espanto surge de la tumba (1973, Horror Rises from the Tomb), La rebelión de las muertas (1973, Vengeance of the Zombies), Los crímenes de Petiot (1973, The Crimes of Petiot), El jorobado de la Morgue (1973, Hunchback of the Morgue), La orgía de los muertos (1973, Terror of the Living Dead), Una libéula para cada muerto (1974, A Dragonfly for Each Corpse), El Mariscal del infierno (1974, Devil’s Possessed), La maldición de la bestia (1975, Night of the Howling Beast), Exorcismo (1975, Exorcism), La cruz del diablo (1975, Cross of the Devil), Inquisición (1976, Inquisition), Las ratas no duermen de noche (1976, Crimson), Último deseo (1976, The People Who Own the Dark), El retorno del Hombre-Lobo (1981, Night of the Werewolf), Misterio en la isla de los monstruos (1981, Mystery on Monster Island), Buenas noches, señor monstruo (1982, Good Night, Mr. Monster), Latidos de pácio (1983, Frantic Heartbeat), La bestia y la espada mágica (1983, The Beast and the Magic Sword), El carnaval de las bestias (1985, The Beasts’ Carnival), Pez (1986), El aullido del diablo (1987, Howl of the Devil), Cientificament perfectes (1996, Scientifically Perfect), Licántropo: El asesino de la luna llena (1996, Lycantropus: The Moonlight Murders), School Killer (2001), Mucha sangre (2002), El lado oscuro (2002), Rojo sangre (2004), Tomb of the Werewolf (2004), Countess Dracula’s Orgy of Blood (2004), Necrophagia: Nightmare Scenarios (2004), Rottweiler (2004), Um Lobisomem na Amazônia (2005, A Werewolf in the Amazon), and the forthcoming La herencia Valdemar (2010).
His autobiography, Memoirs of a Wolfman, was published in English in 2000. An extensive tribute site is available at naschy.com.
Naschy is survived by his wife of 40 years, Elvira, and two sons.