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Tombs Of The Blind Dead
[Blue Underground]
1971; color
Directed by Amando de Ossorio
Starring: Lone Fleming, César Burner, María Elena Arpón & Joseph Thelman
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Tombs Of The Blind Dead is a fairly well known slice of Spanish Euro-trash that has experienced a bit of a renaissance as of late due to, among other things, the release of a box set containing this film and the three sequels it inspired. (Packaged in a swanky coffin shaped box, natch.) I'd never heard of any of them until I heard about the box set but, after reading assorted reviews of the films in assorted places, I had to admit I was starting to get curious. (Albeit nowhere near curious enough to be willing to plunk down a hundred bucks to buy the damn thing.) Instead, I decided to start at the beginning and rent this one to see for myself what the deal was with these blind, dead, Blind Dead fellas. I'm pleased to be able to say the film, and it's slow but sinister villains, pretty much lived up to my expectations. At least after I realized we had mistakenly started watching the censored American version instead of the uncensored Spanish version. For a few minutes there I thought I had become so jaded that all the murder, rape and copious amounts of blood I had read about seemed tame and PG-13 to me. Fortunately, as I learned from watching the uncut version, I am not that jaded. I just wasn't paying enough attention when I put the disc in and hit play. (I didn't even notice there were two options on the DVD menu.) Those in the audience who want to see this film but don't want to sit through the scene where the heroine gets raped by the sleazy thug dude or see the part at the end where an innocent child is drenched in her mother's blood when the Blind Dead - very slowly - attack a train full of innocent people, can go ahead and watch the edited version though. The story is pretty much the same either way. Just for the record, it wasn't so much that I wanted to see those things, but I could not figure out why so many of the scenes that I had read about weren't in the movie I was watching. Anywhoo, the basic plotline is as follows: first we meet a young girl, Virginia, and her friend / traveling companion Roger. Within minutes, another character, Betty, is added to the mix and, through flashback, we learn that the girls went to school together and shared some, uh, intimate moments at some point in the past. Which could help to explain Virginia's discomfort around Betty. Soon enough things get even more uncomfortable for Virginia when Roger invites Betty to tag along on their weekend jaunt to wherever the hell they said they were going. Moments after the three board the train together, the flirtatious vibe between her traveling companions inspires Virginia to hop off the train while it's still moving and strike out on her own. As the train keeps moving and her recently ditched friends yell after her, she heads off towards a distant building looming on the horizon. Upon reaching and inspecting the layout of said distant building, which turns out to be a seriously dilapidated castle, Virginia incredulously decides to spend the night there and sets up camp in one of the smaller areas of the compound. She proceeds to make herself right at home; rolling out her sleeping bag, starting a fire and idly passing the evening reading, listening to her portable radio and chain smoking. Unfortunately, Virginia's peaceful camping ground is also the burial ground of a group of blood drinking, virgin killing, devil worshipping Knights who were strung up (literally; they were hung) long ago by some goody-two-shoes Christian types. Then, as legend has it, their eyes were pecked out by crows. I don't know if the crows shared a similar religious belief, or if they were just hungry; either way, this is how these regular old dead folks became the "blind dead." Once they've actually risen from their smoking graves in order to drink the blood of our naive camper, they officially become "The Blind Dead" (they use their still viable sense of hearing to locate their victims by the way) and the carnage begins in earnest. It's a somewhat slowly delivered array of carnage, as compared to the zombie films we're all familiar with, but carnage nonetheless. And, you know, in the end it makes no difference whether a zombie jumps across the screen and rips your entrails out with his bare hands or slowly shuffles up to you, on foot or on horseback, and slowly gnaws away at your flesh. You're still gonna die, the rest is just semantics. There's actually plenty more plot - both necessary and extraneous - to detail but this review is already long so I'll refrain. Those looking for gory effects a la the color pages in a mid-'80s issue of Fangoria might be disappointed in this moody atmospheric zombie flick but those who enjoy Hammer style horror, or any other type of film featuring skeletal dead men who drink blood and ride horses, won't be.
—Bunny
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