Paul Naschy was the stage name of the late Spanish screenwriter and actor
Jacinto Molina. The film's German distributors felt that Molina needed a more Teutonic-sounding pseudonym. “Paul” was an homage to the Pope at the time,
Paul VI, and “Naschy” was inspired by a well-known Hungarian Olympic athlete, Imre Nagy.
La Marca del Hombre Lobo was the first in a long line of werewolf films that would make Paul Naschy world famous. Naschy wrote an autobiography, which included his first encounter with the werewolf mythology in a movie theater as a young child in 1945. He described the first time he saw the
Lon Chaney Jr. classic,
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man: Naschy got the idea to make the first Spanish werewolf film while he was working on
Agonizing in Crime in 1967. He broached the idea to the director of that film, Enrique Eguiluz, who initially tried to dissuade him from doing it. Naschy tried to interest Spanish director Amando de Ossorio in the project, who also tried to dissuade him. Finally, Eguiluz reconsidered and helped Naschy to find an interested Spanish film producer. The film was supposed to be released in Germany as
Der Wolfsmensch, but they decided to release it instead as
Die Vampire des Dr. Dracula (
The Vampires of Dr. Dracula). Later on, the film was re-released in Germany retitled
Hexen des Grauens (
The Witches of Terror). The film was re-released in Spain in 1976, again with the same title
La Marca del Hombre Lobo.In some theaters in the U.S., the film played on a double bill with the Italian horror film
The Embalmer. In the United States, the film was titled ''Frankenstein's Bloody Terror'', solely to satisfy the American distributor's need for a second "Frankenstein film" to pad out a planned
double feature release. To justify this odd choice of title, an animated opening sequence especially created for the film explained that a branch of the Frankenstein family became cursed with lycanthropy and took the name Wolfstein. American producer
Sam Sherman needed to fill 400 play dates for his film
Dracula vs. Frankenstein which, at that time, was entangled in a legal stand-off with an unscrupulous film lab contracted to produce the release prints. The 400 theaters in question had been promised a Frankenstein double feature and Sherman was determined to give them one. Both films thus ran together in 1971 and after only in American theaters.
La Marca del Hombre Lobo was filmed in Jan Jacobsen’s Hi-Fi Stereo 70 3-D format. When Sherman learned this, he was persuaded by other investors to hire optical effects maestro
Linwood Dunn to create single-strip, over-and-under 35mm prints for American release. The final results were reportedly beautiful to look at when projected through high-quality 3-D lenses (such as those created by Robert V. Bernier for Space-Vision), but a celebrity-studded Hollywood premiere was completely undone when Sherman’s fellow investors provided shoddy acrylic lenses for the projectors; hence from then on, it was only shown in Germany in 70mm 3-D. A home 3-D release was held up for many years due to the rightsholders preventing the original 70mm negatives from leaving Spain; however, on September 15, 2024, it was announced that a complete 35mm over-and-under print had been discovered and was being scanned in 4K for a Blu-ray release in early 2025. The Frankenstein's Bloody Terror cut is coming soon (2025) from Kino Lorber in 3D. ==Reception==