While vacationing, Virginia (María Elena Arpón), and her pal Roger (César Burner) bump into Virginia’s former boarding school chum/former lover Betty (Lone Fleming) decide to take a train ride.
Whoopie-shit you may say, but wait… Virginia gets super jealous of Roger’s interest in Betty and decides to hop of that train and goes for a stroll where she ends up wandering in the wind-swept ruined town of Berzano.
While that would be creepy enough on it’s own, this location was once home to a cadre of Knights Templar in the Middle Ages… but they were executed by hanging for crimes of cavortin’ with the Devil… oh, and performing ritual, cannibalistic sacrifice… but unfortunately for our good friend Virginia, they are more of the walking dead-style of deceased… and at night they rise as rotted, eyeless, hooded cloak wearing zombie mother fuckers… and their horses too!
Being the supernatural menace that they are, the knights dispatch Virginia by biting the living hell out of her, which is definitely on brand for these dudes… however, them shits are back 666 feet under by the time her body is found.
As Roger and Betty investigate matters further, they learn horrible fact after horrible fact about the Knights, which makes the chances of them surviving this ordeal in one, un-bitten piece rather minuscule indeed.
Coming hot n’ heavy from the fevered imagination of Director Amando de Ossorio (who also co-wrote the picture along with Jesús Navarro Carrión), Tombs of the Blind Dead is one hell of a fright flick let me tell you!
For starters, the atmosphere here is absolutely incredible and thick as hell!
Starting off with picturesque locations, the narrative soon takes us to the dilapidated, empty town of Berzano… a place comprised of crumbling buildings, howling wind, and the fog shrouded cemetery our protagonists call home sweet hell (realized by combining shots from two separate locations flawlessly).
But that isn’t the only stellar locale as part of the action here takes place in a freaky-deaky mannequin factory owned by Betty… which of course stands adjacent to the local morgue, which sees plenty of grizzly action as well.
And all of that arcane atmosphere and action is made all the more creepy thanks to the titular Blind Dead; Satanic zombie knights covered in the dirt of the grave, their skeletal faces peering from the shadowy depths of their filthy hooded robes. One can only imagine how horrible it must be to fall victim to the rotten teeth that protrude from those lip-less mouths… I mean they show it, so you don’t really have to imagine it per se, but you get what I mean. It’s iconic work through and through.
Those shamblin’ soldiers are made even more fearful thanks to their accompanying theme song; a truly haunting, and at times disturbing, mix of throaty groans, heavy breathing, and Gregorian chant… composer Antón García Abril went above and beyond here!
Add in groovy early ‘70s fashions and hairstyles, flashbacks to Berzano’s past… specifically when the Knights Templar were alive and well (except mentally), and plenty of beastly bloodshed and you have a monsterpiece through and through!
That being said it should be mentioned that the film features a rather nasty rape sequence, so if you are sensitive to viewing that kind of material, here’s your warning.
Speaking of “material” this 2 Disc Blu-ray release (with one disc devoted to the Spanish cut of the film, and the other to the U.S. cut) brought to us by our fine, fiendish friends at Synapse contains plenty of special features to enhance your viewing pleasure… but not the Blind Dead’s…
Kicking things off we get three audio commentaries; one from European Horror Film Scholar Troy Howarth, another featuring Actress Fleming, and a third from Rod Barnett and Troy Guinn of the NaschyCast podcast. Between the three we get an absolute avalanche of info that covers the film’s production and legacy in detail, on set, first person anecdotes, and an analysis of the film from the fan’s perspective… excellent listens one and all!
Following that comes a featurette covering the film’s place within the Spanish horror genre (in German no less… subtitles are provided though), an industrial music video featuring footage from the film, a feature-length documentary called The Macabre Magic of the Spanish Zombie Movie (an interesting and informative addition!), a still gallery, and the film’s original U.S. theatrical trailer.
But by far, the greatest extra present here is the trailer for Revenge From Planet Ape; an absolutely fucking bat-shit baffling attempt to market Tombs of the Blind Dead as a zombie-centric entry in the Planet of the Apes franchise via some opening narration. Side-splitting doesn’t even begin to cover this shit…
As previously mentioned, Disc 2 contains the heavily edited U.S. cut of the film that runs nearly twenty minutes shorter than it’s Spanish counterpart, and no additional bonus material… which is no big deal when you count the Disc 1 gift of the Revenge From Planet Ape trailer…
Full of arcane aesthetics, legendary creatures, and an impossibly cool ‘70s vibe; Tombs of the Blind Dead is Euro-horror perfection, and this release is definitely one you should add to your creepy collection post haste!
