ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the late revival of Naschy's acting career, discussing how a younger generation of directors worked self-reflexively with the star's image and in the process re-invented it for the 21st century and in so doing cemented his position as perhaps the icon of Spanish horror cinema. Once the person perhaps most associated with Iberian horror films, the late 1990s and early 2000s had seen Naschy relegated to supporting roles in Spanish television productions, such as Querido maestro / Dear Teacher, El comisario / The Deputy Desenlace / Outcome. The revival of Spanish horror cinema at the turn of the last century, driven initially by the success of films such as Los sin nombre / The Nameless (Jaume Balaguero, 1999), provided surprising opportunities for some of the veterans of the boom in horror film production in the early 1970s to reappear and be rediscovered by new audiences.
