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Return Of The Blind Dead
[Blue Underground]
1973; color
Directed by Amando De Ossorio
Starring: Tony Kendall, Fernando Sancho, Esperanza Roy, Frank Braña & José Canalejas
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Director Armando De Ossorio must have known he'd really struck (pay)dirt with the Tombs Of The Blind Dead because he revisited the concept three more times. Return Of The Blind Dead is the first of those sequels. Despite making a few minor changes to the story of the Knights Templar, like having the Knights' eyes burned out by angry villagers rather than pecked out by birds (as told in TOTBD), the movie retains all the elements that make the blind dead the watchable bunch of revenge-crazed undead guys they were / are. (Even the undead horses are back, still in slow motion, and this time we even get a brief glimpse of one with it's hood off.) The story in this film centers around a little town in the midst of an annual celebration commemorating the vanquishing of the evil Knights Templar and subsequent liberation of the village. This year it just so happens to be the 500th anniversary of said momentous event and the party is the town's biggest ever; complete with never-ending fireworks, live music, and effigies of the Knights burning in the town square. (Nothing burns like an effigy.) Since we all know there ain't no party like a blind dead party, it should come as no surprise that the Knights not only come back to life on this very night - they show up at the party, surround the town square, attack the villagers and pretty much cause mega-havoc. (It's interesting to note that, again, most of the time the villains move at an excruciatingly slow pace but once the swords come out and they start attacking, they get around pretty quickly.) Most of the townspeople flee the rampaging Knights, leaving a small group behind, holed up in a church; apparently a place the Templars can't tread due to their satanic allegiance. As would happen by this point in just about any horror movie, we end up watching the ranks of this group get whittled away during vain attempts to escape. We also see, later on, that all of those who fled the town ended up slaughtered in a nearby field so it makes the straits of the few stranded in the church all the more dire. Yes, there are survivors at the film's end, although who they are isn't nearly as important as what they discover when they make their break at dawn. In the daylight the blind dead, true to legend, have no power and can literally be pushed over with the brush of a finger. (That, and the crow of a rooster.) I've omitted a lot of plot and subplot details in this review because Return Of The Blind Dead is almost too good to spoil. In fact, each of the sequels gets progressively better as De Ossorio continued to find new ways to recycle some of the greatest horror villains ever to grace the screen. ROTHBD, like each of it's brethren in the series, is well worth multiple viewings.
—the Kommandant
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