|
Horror Rises From The Tomb
[Deimos]
1972; color
Directed by Carlos Aured
Starring: Paul Naschy,Emma Cohen, Vic Winner, Helga Line & Cristina Suriani
|
|
Over the course of 2007 BCI Eclipse / Deimos has done Eurotrash fans worldwide a huge favor by releasing a slew of spectacular Spanish slabs o' sinema from the sexy, somewhat sadistic, seventies. And, needless to say, we here at the Buffet are thankful for this bounty. Of course, you can't really think of Eurotrash films from the '70s or Spanish sinema specifically without thinking of Paul Naschy... well, I suppose you could but I wouldn't be in favor of it. If you've watched any of the recent releases starring Senior Lobo you may have noticed each contains one or more missives from the man himself, and the DVD release of Horror Rises From The Tomb is no exception. In this case he lends an introductory note to both the film and the liner notes, and I think this particular quote (culled from the latter) offers an interesting perspective on the proceedings. "Peter Ginet called me up in a terrible hurry - he urgently needed a horror screenplay, since the creation of a production company depended on it. I didn't have one but I told him I could write one pretty fast. I had to do it in a day and a half. With the help of amphetamine tablets I managed to do it in what was obviously record time." I'm not sure if this time constraint or the 36 hour speed binge is what led our intrepid screenwriter (etc.) to take on so many roles in the same production but it I suppose I should note that this isn't the only film we've reviewed here at the Buffet where Naschy plays multiple roles. (Hell, it's not even the only film we've reviewed in the past six months where he plays multiple roles.) This type of behavior is but a wee part of what we love about the man though, thus we can easily forgive things like the fact that this movie is, in a number of ways, very similar to a number of other ones he's made and also features all sorts of other nonsense like flesh that rips apart with the tug of a fingernail and pretty much every scene with Naschy's disembodied head - which is so barely disembodied that it's a bit laughable in parts. (Particularly the parts where you can see his shoulders and the black fabric they kind of haphazardly toss on him to create their "special" effect.) This is not to take anything away from the general tone of debauchery, rampant nudity and scenes that could have easily slipped into hardcore territory at any moment. While you may have seen some of these themes pop up in other films, HRFTT is a bit of a smorgasbord, offering almost all of the many shades of Naschy in one neat sleazy package. Honestly, there was a part of me that was expecting Alaric de Marnac to grow fangs and start howling at the moon, a la his more famous Waldemar Daninsky character, at any second but I guess at some point in his drug induced haze cooler heads prevailed, preventing the wolfman from making an appearance. On the whole, despite the film's obvious flaws - and in many ways because of them - this rates as recommended viewing.
—Bunny
|
|
