Tombs of the Blind Dead
(La noche del terror ciego, 1971)

Amando de Ossorio

Spain / Portugal

97 min, color, Spanish (English subtitles)

Review © 2005 Branislav L. Slantchev

The cult classic horror film that may have single-handedly landed Spain on the cinematic terror map, at least when it comes to the under-appreciated zombie genre. Now, I know that the Knights Templar are not zombies, at least according to the director, but they sure look like the walking dead to me, even if they go for the more Eurocentric vampirism instead of the traditional cannibalism they tend to practice in the Americas. As screen villains go, the blind dead are top-notch. They are utterly, irredeemably evil, and they are like that because they chose to be that way. No "explanation" that blames their parents or society or whatever. They are who they are, and they were like that long before they took to sleeping in tombs and hunting at night.

Lesbians usually don't fare too well in horror	Let's see... alone in a sinister ruin... get naked

The backstory is some jumbled version of the Templars who have come back to Portugal (yep, Berzano is not in Spain, even though it's close to the border) and settled in a nice medieval castle. There they practice the black arts, including the secret of immortality which, unfortunately, requires periodic bouts of sadism, slashing of a beautiful peasant virgin, and group drinking of blood. As medieval satanic sects go, this is run of the mill stuff, but the authorities did not take kindly to the periodic disappearance of peasant stock, so they put the knights on trial (there's a hint that the peasants may have been unhappy with the oppressive taxation, but that's as far as Ossorio would go in the political analogy). Anyway, they are found guilty and executed, their corpses left hanging from a tree until birds ate their eyes. Hence, the blind bit.

Occult cemetery, too many normal crosses	One of the blind dead

This, naturally, did not end their existence. As we all know, pacts with the devil have their upside, the screwup with Faust notwithstanding. They survive in their tombs and they still prey on the living. They can't see a thing but they have good hearing. They also have some bad ass horses although it's not exactly clear where their stables are or if the horses are undead as well. They don't seem to be (because one of the heroines actually manages to ride one almost to safety without the beast attempting to suck her blood), but this only leaves the mystery of the missing fodder. Well, no self-respecting horror director would allow such trifles to get in the way of the good scare, so let's just pretend the horses are these modern on-demand type of animals.

Lots of screaming, little running	Honey, I'm home, I brought the Joneses too

The so-called story can be summarized in ten words: people go to medieval ruins and the knights get them. A fancier synopsis would go something like this. Virginia (Maria Arpon) and Betty (Lone Fleming) accidentally meet up and Virginia's friend Roger (Cesar Burner) immediately develops the hots for Bet. He invites her to join him and Virginia on an outing in some exquisite Portuguese resort but quickly becomes clear that his friend is not too happy about that. As it turns out, she and Bet had a whatchamacallit experience in their Catholic school, a lesbian encounter of the third kind. They have now both gone "straight" but it seems Virginia has some unresolved issues: either she still loves Bet or just does not want to share. At any rate, as her friends flirt jovially on the train, Virginia gets way too upset, jumps off (in high heels!), and heads straight to some chateau in the distance. The train engineer mutters some sinister nonsense that foreshadows her doom, and the train rolls on.

Bet and Roger at the morgue	The bashful zombie

Of course, the chateau turns out to be the ruins of the medieval castle. Virginia seems unfazed by the ominous ambient, and promptly undresses, stuffs herself into her sleeping bag, turns on her radio (so she can't hear the midnight tolling of the bell), and buries herself in a book. At midnight, the knights awake in what has to be one of the moodiest sequences in horror film. They are all moving in slow-motion, apparently some time/space displacement having to do with their curse. They hear the radio and quickly locate the hapless Virginia who makes a valiant attempt to escape but is eventually caught and sacrificed. I am not sure if this was meant to be a punishment for yielding to Bet's charms or still having feelings for her, but the prudish killing of the most independent woman in this film must have struck a chord with conservative Europe at the time. Heck, when Virginia's body is dumped at the morgue, one of the orderlies makes a "she was asking for it, flaunting her stuff like that" comment that would send any post-neanderthal into righteous fury.

Sadistic sexploitation, medieval style	Why are your eyes so big?

The other women also get their "just" deserts according to the same idiotic formula and prejudice. Bet teams up with Roger to find out how their mutual friend was murdered and why. They discover the legend of the blind dead, and then recruit the local small-time smuggler Pedro (Joseph Thelman) who is anxious to clear his name on account that the police suspects that he is the murderer. Pedro is the typical caricature of a macho guy whose inane smugness is only matched by the equally idiotic rendition of what passes for a "strong" woman, his lover Maria (Maria Silva). She smokes cigars, has a bad temper, and voracious appetite for men even though she is insanely jealous of her hubby. The stuff adolescent male dreams are made of. Between her and the butch Bet, it's pretty clear who's gonna get the templar shaft first.

Trick or treat! The undead way	Maria is the cigar-chomping femme mortale

I should probably mention that Virginia does wake up from the dead and goes in a killing spree. Well, it's more of a killing limping along because she really manages to put the bite only on the schmuck that runs the morgue. It is worth pointing out that she has developed a sense of modesty in death that she did not possess in life. Last we saw Virginia alive, she was stripping by the fireplace in a ruined castle. Now she gets up from the platform and somehow contrives to keep all the sheets strategically wrapped around her. Imagine that, a zombie with a sense of propriety. Anyway, she does attempt to extend her blood sucking practice... no, not by becoming a lawyer but by breaking into a mannequin manufacturing business and scaring the living daylights of the girl who works there. Unfortunately for the undead, said girl keeps enough of her wits although her inability to open the door for a minute kept me doubting that she would until the very end. So Virginia is burned to death, not a good way to go even if you're dead already.

Your feminist ways amuse me	The totally unnecessary rape sequence

Back in the ruins, the intrepid and mismatched quartet is already at each other's throats. Pedro has designs on Bet, and his jealous girlfriend has decided to even the score by seducing Roger who she mistakenly believes to care for Bet (which I also mistakenly believed to be the case but apparently was not). While we're waiting for midnight and for the knights to kill everyone, Pedro rapes Bet at their cemetery. It is a particularly offensive sequence (not that rape ever is inoffensive). Bet explains to him that she's never been with a man and actually says it's some unspecified childhood trauma that has caused her to pull away at the last moment every time she's attempted to sleep with one. (Apparently, it's not acceptable that she just likes girls.) So Pedro decides to "cure" her and rapes her quite viciously. So when the knights tear him to shreds next, I was actually sort of happy that they did. Too bad they had to ruin it all by going after the other three wretched humans.

Gratuitous shot of a blind dead	Now why did I run into a corner?

Let me rave about the knights a bit once more because they truly are the most menacing and well-done villains I have recently laid eyes upon. They never say a word (except a prayer to satan in a flashback) but the moaning and chanting on the soundtrack is so creepy, the might as well have been speaking in a demonic language. They are very ponderous, always moving deliberately and without the benefit of sight, yet they always catch their victims who are either paralyzed with fear or else the slowness is only apparent. They are relentless, once they pick up the trail of a victim, they never let up, but bear upon him/her with the finality of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. With their rags for mantles, the hooded skeletal remains of the knights are truly a sight to behold. I wish I could offer a decent screen cap of them riding their stallions through the fog in the wee hours of the morning.

Bet trying to still her treacherous heart	The dead on the (slow) move

The ending is particularly nasty. Bet is the sole survivor of the massacre and she manages to escape toward the railways tracks where, as luck would have it, the train is just passing. The engineer and his son notice her and although the older man instructs his son to ignore her, Bet's pleas for help compel the young man to save her. By the time he drags the pathetically powerless Bet to the train, the knights have arrived. They board the train and slaughter everyone. In an often-cut sequence, they begin ripping a woman's flesh while her child is still in her hands. Later, we see the same blood-drenched kid lying still conscious when the skeleton hand touches it almost gently before the bearded skill sinks its teeth into its body. Awful stuff, really, and powerful in its impact. When the train arrives at the station, Virginia emerges from the coal car, ostensibly safe. However, upon opening the doors of the carriage, a freeze frame makes it clear that the knights have not disembarked, they have arrived in town to terrorize the living en masse. The film ends with Virginia adding her screams to those of the new passengers already being attacked in the carriage. Obviously, a setup for a sequel.

Just because censors usually cut this	Yes, that's right, I said a SEQUEL is coming

Blue Underground is among my favorite boutique labels, and this time they have outdone themselves. This DVD is part of The Blind Dead Collection, which includes all four blind dead episodes, a booklet, and an extra DVD with cool extras. On this disc itself, there's a gallery, a trailer, and an absolutely bizarre alternative opening sequence that claims the film is a sequel to The Planet of the Apes, with the knights apparently styled to be reincarnated apes who have come back to wreak vengeance upon the humans who had exterminated them. Utter nonsense but you have to give the distributors credit for ingenuity. The film comes in two flavors, an English dub that's 83 minutes long, and the full Spanish version at 97 minutes. Both are presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.66:1), but I did not bother with the cut English version. The mono soundtrack in Spanish is fine despite the occasional drop here and there. The English subtitles are flawless. An extraordinarily nice presentation of a cult film, this DVD clearly makes my old Anchor Bay one obsolete, so I am listing it on eBay.

December 6, 2005