In case you missed it, yesterday was Pulaski Day here in the United States, named for Kazimierz Pulaski, who fought for the American Revolution and died during the Siege of Savannah.  (A separate federal holiday marks Pulaski’s death.)  Pulaski Day is big in Chicago, with its vast Polish population, but as I’m a quarter Polish and love my half-Polish madka, I’m dedicating this to my favorite Pole…  Waldemar Daninsky. 

If you don’t recognize the name, you’re probably a normal individual who enjoys the outdoors, possibly even sports, and you never did time in urban grindhouses or rural drive-ins.  If you know the name, you understand that Waldemar Daninsky isn’t a real person… but a character created 40 years ago by Spanish actor Jacinto Molina.  The Madrid-born Molina spent his childhood watching American horror films and entertained aspirations of making his own after the example of Universal’s classic monsters:  Frankenstein's Undying Creature, Count Dracula, The Mummy and The Wolfman.   

In 1968, Molina starred in his first movie.  Financed with German money, La Marca del Hombre Lobo (The Mark of the Werewolf) was a paean to the Universal monster rallies of his youth.  Because the producers didn’t want their shape-shifting hero to be a Spaniard, Molina christened the blighted character Waldemar Daninsky and adopted the vaguely Germanic stage name Paul Naschy.  Although “Paul Naschy” would enjoy a long career playing various vampires, mummies, hunchbacks, rippers, Satanists, torturers and zombie-makers, he remains best known for his Daninsky cycle of werewolf movies, which comprises 12 titles, including the Los Monstruos del Terror (Assignment: Terror, 1970) with The Day the Earth Stood Still’s Michael Rennie, La Noche de Walpurgis (The Werewolf Vs. the Vampire Woman, 1971), La Furia del Hombre Lobo (The Fury of the Wolfman, 1972), Dr. Jekyll y El Hombre Lobo (Dr. Jekyll vs. The Wolfman, 1972), La Maldicion de la Bestia (Night of the Howling Beast, 1975) and El Retorno del Hombre Lobo (The Craving, 1980), a partial remake of the influential La Noche de Walpurgis.  Naschy’s most recent outing as Daninsky was in Tomb of the Werewolf (2003), directed by American schlockmeister Fred Olen Ray. 

If you grew up on Euro-Cult movies, you know Waldemar Daninsky was the original Diehard.  James Bond may have appeared in more movies but he also never died at the end of his.  Daninsky rarely caught a break and we loved his pluck and perseverance.  As a husky teen, I appreciated that Naschy was built like a beer keg and yet he still got girls… even if they ultimately stuck a silver cross into his heart.  Happy Belated Pulaski Day, Mr. Daninsky, and dziêkujê for the memories.

To learn more about Paul Naschy and Waldemar Daninsky, check out Mirek Lipinski's The Mark of Naschy website!