1971Dir. Amando de Ossorio
AKA
Crypt of the Blind Dead
Mark of the Devil Part 4: - Tombs of the Blind Dead
Night of the Blind Dead
Revenge from Planet Ape (!)
The Blind Dead
The Night of the Blind - Terror
Tombs of the Blind Dead
Whilst on holiday, Roger and Virginia bump into Betty – an old friend of Virginia’s. Roger invites her to join them on a train ride the next day. It all becomes a bit overwhelming for Virginia though - she's annoyed by Roger's blatant flirting with Betty and also confused about her own feelings for Betty, with whom she had a relationship when they were in college together. She jumps from the train to seek solace. Finding refuge after nightfall in the ruins of an ancient monastery, Virginia is horribly murdered and her blood greedily guzzled by the resurrected corpses of the Templar knights buried in the ruins. When she doesn’t return to the hotel, Roger and Betty set out to find her. They don’t however bargain on running into centuries old living-dead knights, hungry for flesh…
After directing several westerns and bizarre vampire flick Malenka (1969), Spanish filmmaker Amando de Ossorio really made his mark on the landscape of horror cinema with his series of Blind Dead films, the first of which was Tombs of the Blind Dead. The film and its sequels (Return of the Evil Dead, The Ghost Galleon and Night of the Seagulls) revolve around the exploits and murderous rampages of a group of living-dead Templar Knights. The Templars, medieval knights who were put to death for their wicked ways and satanic practices, rise from the dead as mummified skeletal beings, shrouded in their bloodied, hooded cloaks, to drink the blood of the living. As a result of having their eyes plucked from their hanging bodies by crows, they rely on sound to track their victims.
Tombs of the Blind Dead has such a simple premise, and while the plot is paper thin, the direction is handled so effectively by de Ossorio, who really shows his strengths when it comes to concocting an overwhelmingly creepy atmosphere dappled with inventive and utterly nightmarish visuals throughout. As this was the Seventies though, he does have a tendency of relying a little heavily on his zoom lens.
The Templars rely only on sound to stalk their victims, which is a great twist. It just so happens that the characters inhabiting this particular story are some of the noisiest imaginable: stomping and thumping around wildly, listening to transistor radios and becoming ludicrously hysterical when confronted with the spectacle of the hideous and bloodthirsty Templars. When the small group of survivors eventually realise how the Templars are tracking them, they quieten down and the tension can at last begin to mount. Templars, crafty scoundrels that they are however, can even hear the beating of a human heart…
The eerie atmosphere and morbid visuals are really what makes this a horror film worth checking out. The acting is quite uneven, the characters are basically fodder and the dialogue is pretty trite. A flashback is inserted into the narrative to provide more characterisation and reveal the prior relationship between Virginia and Betty. Far from adding much depth to the characters, or break ground in terms of Queer representation, it's just an excuse for de Ossorio to include a titillating lesbian scene. The flashback, accompanied by the noise of the steam train the characters are travelling on, is to say the least, unintentionally hilarious. Even some of the steam from said train even wafts into the flashback (!), making it even more soft-focused.
Also hilarious is when Roger and Betty team up with a smuggler and his feisty girlfriend who they initially believed to be responsible for Virginia’s disappearance. The smuggler’s father, conveniently enough, is a highly regarded professor and expert on the Templar knights who is able to shed some highly light on the history of the fiendish creatures. Cue a flashback to the Templars in their heyday, sacrificing a young woman and drinking her blood. Cue also many close-ups of a large knife being plunged into latex flesh and bright red gore effects. When Roger, Betty, the smuggler and his girlfriend stay the night at the ruins in order to try and find out what happened to Virginia, there is a lot of wandering around through dusty, cob-webbed hallways, slowly opening doors and splitting up to investigate, well, completely inconsequential stuff. It’s just an excuse to get the characters by themselves so they can be devoured by the creepy knights. A couple of gratuitous sex scenes are used to pad out the running time. And just in case things aren’t quite exploitative enough, there's a nasty, unnecessary scene depicting the sexual assault of one character.
It is without a doubt the Templars who steal the show. De Ossorio himself crafted the unique appearance of their horrid features - he designed the make-up effects that were utilised to create their ghastly visage. To his credit, they are indeed the stuff of nightmares. The images of the rotting and fetid knights wearily rising, empty-orbed, from their graves are striking and supremely sinister. The knights also ride on the backs of spectral horses, and they do so in slow motion, which adds to the spooky and surreal atmosphere. Even the day-for-night photography, a staple of most low budget horror films from yesteryear, adds a touch of the uncanny to the film. The fact that these mummified and shambolic ghouls are decomposing doesn’t stop them from slowly but surely closing in on their prey. To begin with, the frantic, panic-stricken and hysterical actions of the victims as they desperately try to flee their attackers, contrasts nicely with the shuffling, yet unstoppable advancement of the Templars, and quite a bit of tension is created. However it soon becomes quite tiresome. There’s only so much care and concern you can invest in characters that seem to have problems with such basic tasks as simply opening a door, or, I don’t know, just stepping out of the way of the advancing, arms-outstretched living-blind-dead.
Aside from the eerie appearances of the Templars, another memorable moment occurs right at the end of the film, just as the two remaining survivors board a packed train to seek rescue. The knights also board the train just as it moves off and wreck bloody havoc on-board. When the train plunges into the busy station the ghouls disembark to slaughter more innocents on the platform and we are left with the haunting image of the sole survivor of the carnage as she huddles helplessly in the coal bunker.
Tombs of the Blind Dead is a good old fashioned schlocky horror fest with genuine moments of tension and jaw-droppingly astounding visuals. As the first in the series of de Ossorio’s Blind Dead films, it serves as an eye-opening and appropriate introduction to the ghastly escapades and spectral ridings of the gruesome Templar knights. The series is quite significant in Spanish horror cinema. Tombs of the Blind Dead was produced during Franco’s fascist regime. It is not difficult to see a subtext paralleling Franco's violent, oppressive dictatorship with the atrocious acts of bloodshed committed by the Templar knights, which adds a further layer of oppression and misogyny to the narrative.