aka Crypt of the Blind Dead, aka Night of the Blind Dead, aka Knights of Blood
- Written and directed by Amando de Ossorio
- Starring
- Lone Fleming
- Cesar Burner
- Elena Arpon
- Joseph Thelman
Sometimes life is just plain good.
For instance, imagine you’re wandering through a brand new Hollywood Video outlet. Normally, new outlets don’t hold much promise for the discriminating Turkeyologist; the stock is mostly new movies or perennial “favorites” that you can buy new at Wal-Mart. But hey, they sent some coupons for their grand opening, so you figure your wife can get a chick flick, and you can scrounge something that will be worth ninety-nine cents.
So you’re wandering through the new-smelling shelves, and what should you see?
How about the digitally-remastered, slightly letterboxed, original-language-with-subtitles Anchor Bay release of Amando de Ossorio’s classic Tombs of the Blind Dead?
(I still want to know what went through the video clerk’s head when I handed Tombs of the Blind Dead and Step Mom over the counter together.)
Given how little I had seen of this flick, I had almost been resigned to the fate of seeing it under the title of Night of the Blind Terror, released by the same crummy outfit that gave me the Castle of Death version of The Devil’s Nightmare. Can you blame my enthusiasm?
Hey, I’m here to tell you that the good version is everything it’s cracked up to be. Here’s what we have:
Opening in Lisbon, we see the somewhat strained reunion between two formerly-teenaged friends, Betty and Virginia. Virginia, the younger one, is in the company of seventies-style hunk Roger, and are about to embark on a camping trip; Roger, typically male in his inability to read Virginia’s negative signals, invites Betty along.
Betty arrives at the train station without a date, so it’s just a threesome; Virginia gets real tense about it, and we’re treated to a subtle but powerful flashback of their teenaged lesbian experimentation, instigated by Betty.
Seeing the attraction between Roger and Betty, Virginia decides to screw the camping trip. The young conductor tells her there’s no village between their location and their destination, but Virginia sees some structures on a far hill and, on impulse, throws her baggage off the train and jumps after it.
The young conductor points this out to his father, the senior conductor, who refuses to stop the train and effectively writes her off.
Virginia hikes to the buildings, which turn out to be a ruined abbey of some sort. In a series of sweeping, languid shots, she explores the ruins, noting the cross-filled graveyard (and failing to note that ankhs stand in for crosses on at least half of them). I should point out that the movie takes place at an unhurried pace, with long sequences absent of dialog or action. Rather than seeming long or drawn-out, however, the effect is to accentuate the subtle, pregnant mood. If de Ossorio is remembered for nothing else, this should be his memorial.
So night falls; Virginia sets up a little campsite in a not-as-collapsed building and builds a little fire in the fireplace. (Here’s something I didn’t know: Apparently, Spanish chicks wear bras but no panties.) With her sleeping bag and her transistor radio, she’s as snug as a bug.
But outside… steam rises from the graves, and the tombstones start to quiver…
If you’ve never seen the Blind Dead in any of Ossorio’s movies, let me tell you that they’re a nifty respite from the standard Romeroesque zombie. Clad in long hooded linen cloaks that once were white, all we see of them are their skeletal faces, with leathery skin stretched tight and random clots of facial hair, and grasping skeletal hands. (They also manage to procure horses from somewhere, draped in the same dissolving linen. Oddly, we weren’t shown the massive stable-tombs in which the horses must be kept — but this little lapse is very forgiveable, as it allows the wonderful image of the mounted dead, riding in slo-mo across the courtyard, the spectral clop-clop echoing off broken stone.)
And when Virginia hears something, finally, she changes from her flimsy pajamas to her even-more-revealing day clothes, but it’s too late; the dead have found her. Their approach is slow, but not shuffling like the standard zombies; instead, they seem to have the same pace as de Ossorio’s direction: unhurried, but inexorable. The only flaw here is that it ends in scenes shot in really bad day-for-night — so bad that I was trying to rationalize, “Nuh-uh, it must already be dawn or something.”
The next day, Betty and Roger (ensconced in their comfortable hotel — is this what they call “camping” in Spain?) are anxious for Virginia, and decide to hire some horses to ride out and find her. They hear whispers of a place called “Berzano,” which is probably where Virginia headed, but no one will tell them about it.
With their rented horses, they arrive at the ruins of Berzano, where all is as it was before Virginia arrived; even the graves are undisturbed. The horses spook immediately, but Roger and Betty immediately find new companions: two policemen, who inform them of Virginia’s murder.
Our next scene shows the great lengths de Ossorio went to to keep the ruins from being his sole stand-out location. Roger and Betty go to the morgue to identify Virginia’s body. A swinging light gives the room some eery motion, and the ghoulish morgue attendant looks like Stephen King’s crazy twin brother.
With nothing else to do, Betty and Roger go back to their lives; Betty’s job, it so happens, is at the mannequin-manufacturing shop right next to the morgue. Again, de Ossorio juices up the location: to get from the front door to the workshop, visitors pass through a wide corridor lined on both sides with naked mannequin bodies, and illuminated through the skylight by the flashing red neon sign next door (not on the morgue, one assumes). It’s a wonderful set, and it’s worth however many hours de Ossorio stayed up at night dreaming it up.
It turns out that Betty’s assistant grew up forty miles from Berzano, and under duress she tells Roger and Betty what she was told as a child: that the bloodsucking Templars come out at night.
(Meanwhile — in one of the weakest parts of the movie — Virginia’s dead body comes back to life and kills the morgue attendant, who’s busy torturing his pet frog. Sorry, but there’s no way a single bite on the back of the neck’ll kill ya.)
Roger and Betty pay a visit to Professor Cantrell, an expert in medieval history at the local university. He tells them of the Knights Templar, a heretical sect who practiced virgin sacrifice and vampirism to gain immortality, and how the Church repressed and slaughtered them, plucking out their eyes before executing them. Now, the undead Templars rise whenever a victim strays into their territory at night, and use their hearing to track their prey.
Accompanying this narration, we get to see a full flashback of a (presumed) virgin struggling as she’s strapped to a rack in the Templar abbey, then slashed by mounted riders with swords are they race around and around her, followed by a dozen Templars sucking at her wounds. Would have been more striking if the effects torso hadn’t so obviously been plastic, but there you go.
In the middle of this explanation, one of the earlier police officers enters and offers an alternative explanation: The professor’s son, Pedro, is a small-time smuggler not far from Berzano, and these rumors of undead Templars might be his “cover,” to keep the curious away. Oh, and by the way, the coroner’s report shows that Virginia was bitten to death — and by at least twelve different people. (Oddly, though, this detail-oriented coroner found no evidence that the perpetrators were rotting corpses.)
Meanwhile (in the second half of the weakest part of the movie), Betty’s assistant, working alone in the mannequin shop, is attacked by the reanimated Virginia, and only manages to fight her off by fire; it seems that the undead are incredibly flammable. While the effects were well done (I was impressed with the superimposed flames, this being a ’70s film and all), I just didn’t get it. What did this subplot accomplish? What’s the point of making Virginia undead, when none of the Templars’ later victims come back? And can you imagine what the Templars are thinking — “Great, I spent all this time in Satanic ritual, and now anyone I bite is just as immortal as I am — what a gyp!”
Anyway. Roger tracks down wanna-be-bad Pedro and enlists him to help solve the Templar mystery, seeing how Pedro is now a suspect and all. (Plus, he called him “chicken.” Always works on these tough guys.)
That night, Roger, Betty, Pedro, and Pedro’s girl end up in the ruins. Pedro and Betty go for a look around, and Pedro promptly rapes her. (And may I say, Ewww.) Pedro’s girlfriend tries to put the moves on Roger, but Roger gets worried about Pedro and Betty. When Pedro’s done his dirty deed, Betty runs off, and…
Well, whaddaya know. It’s time for the dead to rise.
Pedro is surrounded by the spectral Templars and quickly dispatched. (Pedro brought a switchblade. The Templars brought swords. Figure it out.)
Betty makes it back inside with the girlfriend, who locks Roger out. Roger finds himself hammering on the door as the Templars congregate; while Betty and the girlfriend catfight, Roger loses an arm to a Templar blade.
Eventually Betty gets the door open, and the Templars immediately swarm the screaming girlfriend and devour her. Roger expires in Betty’s arms.
Remembering the professor’s advice, Betty tries to keep as still as she can. But there’s a sound she just can’t still:
Her heartbeat.
As they advance, Betty jumps between them, gets outside, and grabs one of their horses. It’s now dawn, and she rides toward the train track, the Templars pursuing.
The young conductor sees her, and, father be damned, stops the train to help. It’s a bad choice; the Templars overtake the train and climb aboard, slaughtering the passengers. (Even more disturbing than the rape scene is the image of a crying girl, still in her mother’s arms, covered in her mother’s blood.)
And the train rolls into the station.
Fin.
Now, as I said, I’ve got qualms about the “undead Virginia” storyline; it seems a pointless bit of time-wasting, and stands out like a sore thumb against the rest of de Ossorio’s perfect pacing. Maybe he was setting the “flammable undead” thing up for the sequels; not having seen them, I can’t say.
However, that nitpicking aside, I think this is one of the masterpieces of modern European horror. Of course, having spooky ruins around in the country of production is definitely a plus, but you just need to compare this film to a Charles Band Romanian crank-em-out to see how poorly good locations can be used. I wish this were shown in film school classes, to teach young directors how to structure pacing so that “slow” does not equate to “boring”; in fact, “slow” can sometimes equal “scary.”
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 16 (give or take some passengers on the train)
- breasts: 4
- explosions: 0
- dream sequences: 0
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
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