The ten thousandth birthday of werewolf leader Stirba is approaching, which will cause all other werewolves to reveal themselves unless Christopher Lee, Reb Brown and Annie McEnroe venture to Transylvania to destroy her. So far, so camp, but then the narrative flies off into the stratosphere. Dannings presence usually signifies a fairly high jiggle quotient, though here shes required not just to disrobe but to break out in fur for a lycanthropic ménage a trois that must rank as one of the least erotic, most unintentionally (?) funny nude scenes ever filmed. When shes not flanked by naked, cooing werewolves, the Playmate wears shades and a leather catsuit, shoots laser beams from her fingertips and causes noses to bleed and eyeballs to rupture with a mystical chant. She can also transform gargoyles into rubbery predators that suck their victims intestines out through their mouths, which is all her castle seems to have in the way of security since the guards are more likely to be found indulging their orgiastic proclivities. She even keeps McEnroes imperilled heroine, clad in rags and slathered in fake blood, chained up in an unlocked and unguarded cellar so that when our heroes arrive they can walk straight in. Armed with nothing less than the Holy Grail, Lees final confrontation with Stirba proves something of a letdown as, having expended her arsenal of colour-swirls, all it takes to defeat the werewolf queen is a single thrust of a titanium blade.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
