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Blind
Dead Double Feature
Anchor Bay Edition
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Tombs
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6 |
Return
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4 |
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5 |
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Anchor
Bay released this Eurohorror DVD double feature, with one film
on each side of the disc, back in 1998. Lacking in extras, it
was priced as a single disc. Picture and audio quality, while
not spectacular, were the best these films have looked and sounded
to date. Too bad it's now out of print (as of December 2000).
The only way to buy this baby now is on eBay or used at Amazon.
If you see it in a store, grab it! (Tombs
and Return are still available
— individually — on widescreen VHS.)
Both films are Spanish, made in the early
'70s. The first feature, Tombs Of The
Blind Dead, is subtitled, but if this annoys you I can
report that there are long stretches of the film that contain
no dialog anyway. It's actually very atmospheric, with a marvelously
eerie location (some actual ruined cathedral or fortress in
Spain) in and around which the story unfolds.
Three
friends — Virginia, Bette, and Roger — take a train ride in
rural Portugal on their way to a weekend camping site. Sexy
Virginia fancies Roger, who is a smarmy Eurotrash playboy type
in Sansabelt action wear and a Robert Redford hairdo. She was
originally to have gone camping alone with him, but Rog knows
a go-er when he sees one and invited Bette along the instant
he met her. Virginia freaks out when Roger and Bette energetically
flirt with each other right in her face, and after Bette's apology
fails to console her, jumps off the train in a deserted area
with camping gear in tow. (We learn in a totally gratuitous
flashback scene that Virginia and Bette were lesbian lovers
in boarding school; naturally, this has no bearing on the plot
whatsoever. Unless Virginia is actually jealous of Roger,
and not Bette. Anyway...) Roger and Bette see her walking away
and try to stop the train but the old guy driving it refuses.
The superstitious engineer knows that nearby lie the ruins of
Berzano, home of the dreaded Templars of legend. As the train
continues on with her friends, Virginia — clad in some very
snug hot pants — sets off cross-country till she stumbles across
the crumbling, abandoned Templar fortress, where she decides
to camp out for the night.
Big mistake.
After
a time, Bette and Roger decide they should feel guilty about
Virginia, particularly now that she's missing. They hire horses
and ride out to look for her, only to find police inspectors
at the Berzano ruins. Virginia has been savagely murdered, bitten
by more than a dozen people and drained of blood.
Asked to provide a positive ID for the Lisbon coroner, Bette
and Roger encounter a creepy, sadistic morgue attendant when
viewing the body. (Aside from torturing frogs, he enjoys whipping
the sheets off the cadavers to shock the visiting bereaved.)
Later that night the attendant is attacked and killed by Virginia,
who rises from the slab, vampire-like, in search of blood. An
employee of Bette's almost becomes her second victim but Virginia
is
destroyed in a fire instead. (Bette's business just happens
to be down the
street from the morgue. Uh huh.) While
this is going on, Bette and Roger learn from a university professor
that Berzano was once the headquarters of the Templars, a cult
of evil knights who 500 years ago terrorized the countryside
and made human sacrifices to Satan, drinking blood to attain
immortality. When their excesses could no longer be tolerated
the Templars were seized for trial. All were hanged, their eyes
plucked out by crows while they hung from the gibbet. Now, according
to local legend, the Templars arise from their tombs at night
to hunt the countryside for fresh victims. Sightless, these
undead, skeletal revenants must use sound to locate their prey.
(Ahem... aren't their eardrums gone too?)
Way
out of left field we learn that the professor has a wayward
son, Pedro, who is a wanted bandit and smuggler in the Berzano
region. The police think Pedro had Virginia killed to scare
off nosey people. At this point the police completely disappear
from the story, as intrepid Bette and Rog meet up with Pedro
and decide to check out the Templar ruins. For some reason this
repulsive, chauvinistic criminal — who sports ready-to-wear
armpit stains — actually cares that people might think he's
a murderer. He brings along his slutty girlfriend, who immediately
wants to get into Roger's pants. Their joint investigation doesn't
last 5 minutes once arrived at Berzano, as Pedro proceeds to
brutally rape Bette while Slutty Moll seduces Roger. Thankfully,
the awakening Templars take the opportunity to relieve us of
these thoroughly unlikable characters.
Now despite all this,
I actually enjoyed Tombs. As mentioned
earlier, the location used in the film as Berzano is terrifically
atmospheric. Much of the score (a sort of medieval dirge) is
quite effective, except for an annoying "ice-rink music"-sounding
melody, the kind common in European films of the '60s, that
pops up at inappropriate moments. What makes it all worthwhile
are the Templars themselves. The costumes and makeup are actually
pretty darn good, even if in one key scene an undead Templar
can be seen wearing a silver oven mitt. Also, the Templars
make virtually no sound... No growling or groaning like most
zombies. They just shuffle towards you, bony hands outstretched,
relentlessly closing in, thirsting for your blood. This is genuinely
creepy.
To some surprisingly effective monsters add a nihilist attitude
toward the characters (it has no "hero" in the clichéd
Creature Feature sense; Roger does absolutely nothing
of value to help the situation) and a shock ending that, though
a tad cheesy by today's sensibilities, will definitely gave
you the willies... Tombs Of
The Blind Dead is certainly
worth seeing for anyone exploring Eurohorror's unique catacombs.
I'll be watching it again next Halloween for sure.
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Return
Of The Blind Dead, the
second of four Blind Dead movies, is dubbed in English rather
than subtitled. Sadly, it can't hold a candle to the original.
For one thing, the concepts concerning the origin of the undead
Templars established in Tombs are
inexplicably changed. Instead of being tried and executed by the
Crown, the Templars are said to have been burned at the stake
by a mob of angry peasants from a nearby village, who first put
out their eyes before roasting 'em. (The movie's lamest FX are
presented in this opening prologue.) Also, the events of the first
film are treated as if they never occurred. Given the sock-o ending
of Tombs, this presents a problem.
And again with the goofy love — lust! — story. The handsome
owner of a fireworks company (Luciano Stella, The
Whip And The Body's "Tony Kendall") is visiting a small rural
town to supervise the pyrotechnics that will cap the tiny burg's
annual "We Killed the Templars!" festival. The town's oily mayor
gets pissed when he sees Fireworks Guy making time with his not-really-all-that-attractive
secretary, who happens to be an old flame of the visitor's. Oily
Mayor lusts after the secretary, so he orders his chief enforcer,
Howard (Frank Braña) — who looks like a cross between Jeff Chandler
and Race Bannon of Johnny Quest — to gather his boys and
roughly send Fireworks Guy packing. Howard also lusts after Ms.
Secretary, so he's more than eager to please the boss. He and
his thugs are in the process of pummeling Fireworks Guy when the
Templars, newly risen from their dusty crypts in re-used footage
from the first film, attack the town. Much mayhem ensues, including
a retarded man's decapitation. Fireworks Guy and Howard eventually
team up to fend off the rampaging Templars, gaining temporary
safety for the town's surviving citizens in the local church.
It isn't long, though, before these macho Spaniards are at each
other's throats again over the shapely secretary. In Latin horror
films apparently, the male libido is impervious even to the threat
of imminent death!
The Templars kill a lot more people in this second movie,
but they never bite anyone or drink any blood. They just hack
everyone to death with big swords, except for the first victim,
who is strangled — and who happens to be the same sweaty guy who
played Pedro in Tombs. (We do at
least get an explanation for the Templars' horses, however.) I
hope the other two Blind Dead flicks are more satisfying than
this first sequel. 3/25/01 |
| UPDATE
All of the Blind Dead films, remastered and completely uncut,
were released by Blue Underground in September 2005 as the Blind
Dead Collection — you can read our review here.
The four titles were reissued individually by BU a year later. |
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