Mansion of the Living Dead

Spain | 1982 Directed by Jess Franco Starring Lina Romay Antonio Mayans Eva León Color | 93 Minutes | Not Rated Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC) Severin Films

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		Review by Brian Lindsey

4     6   10 = Highest Rating   SNEAK PREVIEW | DVD Release Date: October 31, 2006

A quartet of horny young women check in to a deserted seaside hotel, unaware that a satanic cult of undead monks occupies the abandoned monastery nearby...     Notorious "horrotica" auteur Jess Franco ventures into Templar territory — sort of — with this pseudo-knockoff of Tombs of the Blind Dead. The similarities are purely on the surface, however. Franco's evil cultists in Mansion of the Living Dead aren't really zombies or revenants, but rather more like ghosts. Nor do they move in slow motion. (Just lethargically, like the movie itself.) They sacrifice victims to Satan but don't bite anyone or drink blood. Religious chanting is heard on the soundtrack whenever they appear; instead of sounding creepy or unnerving it's more like a phonograph recording of the Air Force Academy Choir played at extra-slow speed. The Female Vampire herself, Lina Romay (billed as "Candy Coster", in a platinum blonde wig) ends up being a lot scarier than the titular monsters.     Thank God, then, for the naked ladies.     Mansion of the Living Dead starts off as a sex comedy and ends up a grim, if not very frightening, horror tale. The four girls, supposedly German tourists on holiday, have about a thimble full of brains between them given their insipid dialog. They arrive at the resort and find it eerily deserted, staffed only by a single receptionist named Carlo (Franco regular Antonio Mayans, billed as "Robert Foster") and a creepily cheerful gardener who likes to sing and declare his socialist politics. (He's also a peeping tom, and since the ladies do without clothes for much of the time he's got plenty to peep at.) Somebody throws a knife at them while they're sunbathing, but despite the scare and the odd lack of guests they just blow the incident off, focusing instead on shagging one another and having fun. (I told you these gals were rock stupid!) Amid the giggly muff-diving the ladies note that the area around the resort experiences sudden gusts of strong wind at odd times, causing the bell in the adjacent abbey ruins to toll ominously.     The film now makes a jarring shift in tone when one of the women, off by herself taking photos around the abbey (hiking in short-shorts and high heels, no less), is seized by white-robed monks. Most of these are slow-moving and silent a la the Blind Dead, wearing plastic skull masks, although one of them sports cheesy makeup — looking like a microwave pizza melted on his face — and their leader appears to be the hotel gardener. (At least I think that's the case...) In a ritual to Satan the woman is gang-raped by her captors and then stabbed to death by the leader. Another of the girls is likewise killed, lured to the abbey by Carlo. He is himself one of the monks, the one with the melted pizza face, which is his true countenance. The two remaining tourists get a bit worried when their girlfriends go missing, but, being incredibly dumb, they're more concerned with lesbian lovin' than calling the police or getting the hell out of there. Even when Romay's character discovers a crazy, half-starved naked woman (Eva León) chained to the wall in one of the empty hotel rooms, she still doesn't get all that freaked out — she sees something in Carlo that leads her to trust him. Turns out she has a connection to the cult via one of her ancestors and an incident that occurred centuries ago. Carlo brings her to the abbey, but not as a sacrifice...     Franco opts for a conventional style with Mansion of the Living Dead, for the most part eschewing rapid zoom shots and out-of-focus close-ups. It's well-photographed and, as one might expect, uses the picturesque Canary Islands locations to good effect. He manages a few atmospheric scenes here and there, especially those set in the abbey or when Lina is wandering the corridors of the empty hotel (dressed only in heels, of course), but the characters are just too silly and the story too vague to generate any interest. Were it not for the abundant display of flesh Mansion would be a very dull experience. I suspect that Franco, who also wrote the screenplay, was well aware of the scenario's shortcomings. Solution? Lots and lots and lots of nudity. Once the gals check in to the hotel (around the 10 minute mark) they're topless or buck naked in the majority of the scenes that follow. Romay — a decade after her early-'70s heyday — was starting to pack on a few pounds by this point but can still captivate with those huge dark eyes of hers.

Released by erotica/sexploitation specialists Severin Films, the DVD presents the film via a superb anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen transfer with a solid mono soundtrack. The source print is totally uncut and absolutely pristine — I really wish more Euro-Cult titles ended up looking this good on North American DVD! The Spanish language audio track comes with optional English subtitles that are well-written and easy to read.     There's only one bonus feature included on the disc but it's a good one. The Mansion That Jess Built is a 19-minute featurette comprised of recent interview footage with Franco and Lina Romay. Franco is his typically candid, sardonic self, which always makes for an interesting discussion. His blunt dismissal of George Romero's filmmaking approach, as well as zombie movies in general ("they're dead, so they are silly"), is juxtaposed with his admiration for fellow Spaniard Amando de Ossorio's Tombs of the Blind Dead ("it was very creative"). He explains that the spectral monks in Mansion are meant to personify a truly literal depiction of the term "living dead", since they are actually more alive than deceased. They are not reanimated corpses, but rather beings existing in a sort of limbo between life and death. To him, the stereotypical zombies seen in the vast majority of horror films are "idiots" who can't really do anything but "fall down." Because they have no mind they are not frightening. (Sorry, Jess, but I must strongly disagree on this point.) He cites the 19th Century writings of Spanish author Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer as his main inspiration for the film, and that Mansion's monks are a metaphor for the Catholic ecclesiastical establishment. For her part, Romay talks about how breaking taboos of cinematic sex and nudity contributed to the cultural liberation of Spain at the beginning of that country's post-fascist, democratic era. 10/09/06

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