El Retorno de Walpurgis (The Return of Walpurgis, also known as Curse of the Devil) is a 1973 Mexican-Spanish co-production horror film that is the seventh in a twelve-film series about the werewolf Count Waldemar Daninsky, played by Paul Naschy. This film ignored the events in all of the earlier Wolf Man films and began an entirely new origin for el Hombre Lobo, which is strange because the film's Spanish title The Return of Walpurgis seems to tie it in with Naschy's earlier 1970 film Walpurgis Night. The Wolf Man makeup was done by Fernando Florido. The film was shot in June 1973, and by September, it was already in theaters in Spain, as El Retorno de Walpurgis. It wasn't released theatrically in the U.S. however until 1976, as Curse of the Devil.

Plot

In medieval times, the nobleman Irineus Daninsky engages in a duel to the death with the evil Barna Bathory, whose wife Elizabeth Bathory runs a cult of Satanic worshippers. Irineus beheads Barna, then has his army round up the Countess and all of her followers. He has them all put to death, but not before the Countess puts a curse on the Daninsky bloodline.