Director: Amando de Ossorio
Country: Spain
Country: Spain
Year of Release: 1973
Runtime: 93 mins.
Other Titles: The Return of the Evil Dead, The Return of the Blind Dead
Other Titles: The Return of the Evil Dead, The Return of the Blind Dead
I know I'm about seven years late to the party, but I recently obtained Blue Underground's gorgeous Blind Dead box set. I pray to the gods of trash that all worthy titles one day can see releases of this quality. It's worth pausing a moment just to notice how nice everything looks. One particular detail that strikes me is the inside of each case: there are these color-washed stills from the movie that fill in the interior (instead of say opaque plastic), and this really sets off the full color images (of the movie posters, I think) printed onto the discs themselves. It's just really nice looking, and I'm not sure I've seen anyone mention it, as I've trawled around for reviews. Any old way...
Tombs of the Blind Dead was one of the first movies that really got me into this whole horror movie thing (along with Psychomania, Vampyres, and The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism), and I was delighted to re-watch it yesterday in its beautiful Spanish transfer. And it was even better than I remembered. But until today -- I had not seen any of the sequels. And I am glad to have finally rectified this.
Now, fanpinion (that's uh, fan opinion) seems split on the issue -- some say Return is better than the original, others that it is decent but doesn't quite cut the mustard. The argument for the former is a strong one -- the templars get more screen time than they did in the original. But the counter-argument is strong too -- that what the movie does with that opportunity is a bit lackluster. The town invasion scene, for instance, is a a bit of an editing mess. The camera films up at the templars as they swing over and over and over again at the camera. It's not terrible. And I am definitely respectful of what Ossorio was able to due with his micro-budgets (more on this in a second), but I couldn't stop myself from wishing the camera would just zoom out a little, so I could see something.
This confusion is thankfully short lived and, actually, it goes a ways towards illustrating just how effective the "standard" scenes of the templars really are. They are at their best when shuffling, riding, or just standing menacingly. I know this point has been hit to death, but g-damn if these guys aren't the last word in inexorable doom. Even though they're not zombies per se -- they're more like a cross between mummies and vampires -- they out zombie any zombie I've ever scene. There isn't anything quite as effective, in this film, as the way the templars would just glide into the shot as they hunted in the tombs. But there are glorious shots of the templars standing stock still with their hands folded on their swords, silent in the twilight. And really, those sorts of shots are what this movie lives for. If you don't get that man, you just don't got it, man.
The templars manage to transcend their budgetary limitations in amazing ways. You would expect them to be less convincing, but they still work wonderfully. And it shows in the little things: the way they just don't seem to care is echoed in the almost careless way they attack, or the way they hold their hands limp at their waists, or how some hold gauntleted paws in the air for no real reason. Not so much careless, as casually haughty and assured. The lack of budget that might have let them move in more "convincing" ways seems, paradoxically, to be the exact reason they are so convincing. They act and move like living corpses might, only half alive, driven lazily by instinct. This seemed to be the reason why some of them carried their swords in the first movie, more because they remembered doing it when they were alive, rather than any need created by the situation (at least when they first ride out of the grave).
Back to the movie at hand, though. One notable change from the first movie is that the blood drinking aspect -- outside the "blood ritual" scene, featuring virgin heart-eating -- is absent here. As a trade-off, we get more swordplay. So, I'll say we can call it even. Speaking of sword wielding skeletons, I should probably tell you that sentient skeletons have kind of been a thing of mine ever since my infinity engine days. In Icewind Dale, there is a memorable sequence that takes place in the Vale of Shadows, essentially the home of long dead knights and undead priests. The howling winter wind, the vague hum of centuries lost in time. It has lived in my memory ever since. Ahh, memories. This is all to say that watching the Blind Dead films is like watching my childhood dreams come true. (Okay, I was a strange child.)
The pacing is a much tauter here. I even kind of dig the Captain. He's a nice solid lead, and doesn't actually seem like too much of a jerk. And it's nice, overall, to take the templars out of their natural setting. But with the exception of the ending, which is wonderful and disappointing at the same time, what's missing for me in this movie is the weirdness of the first one: the lesbian romance, hopping off of trains, our heroine changing into her pajamas and catching some jazz on her transistor unperturbed in an ancient tomb, the mannequin factory, the final massacre -- and above all, the unique setting that the Berzano area and countryside impart. They're as much characters in the movie as anything else. All this and the greater emphasis on dreamy slow-mo.
Return seemed much more conventional. It has been noted that the church sequence bears a strong resemblance to Night of the Living Dead, and El Santo (in his review) points out that the indestructibly evil threat of the templars is somewhat undercut by the fact that some are destroyed by the townspeople. As he suggets, too, the promise of the town invasion scene for further mayhem is undercut as well. The remainder of the film has the templars catching the run-off. But I teeter here. On the other hand, what's kind of awesome about this is that by the movie's halfway point, the templars have essentially killed everyone in the town. This is subtly suggested by the shot of a field full of bodies. It's almost easy to miss, if you're not paying attention. This fact and the generally remote setting really end up giving the movie an apocalyptic feel. And I can't help but find the anticlimax of the final escape -- in which the undead collapse when besieged by their great nemesis the sun (because, of course -- are they vampires?) -- a wonderful dreamy ending. Even though the heroes have survived, they've still suffered a horrible trauma. It seems as if the world itself has ended with the templars and they are damned to a kind of purgatory as they wander into the Spanish countryside in the credits. It's beautiful and mysterious and melancholy.
And so, I can't help but love this movie, too -- just as much as the first one. In fact, part of what fascinates me so deeply is the way it builds and revises the previous movie. I like that it is almost an alternate dimension that ignores everything that happened in the first movie. I hadn't even considered (until now) what potential was squandered when Ossorio didn't follow the ending of the first movie. I like it for the quiet, slow-burn qualities it has. It sounds like it was an ordeal to get these movies made, and Ossorio was constantly frustrated by his limitations. They remain labors of frustrated love. And I love that you can feel his vision and dreams beneath the low budget.
So far, it's these qualities that define Spanish horror for me. Granted the few I've seen (namely Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and Vampyres) are English and Spanish co-productions, but they have Spanish directors -- Grau and Larraz -- so there is a Spanish sensibility to them as well. Somewhere (I can't remember where), I remember someone describing the Spanish horror industry as the idiot brother of the Italians. But, I just can't countenance this statement. There is magic in Spanish horror films -- in their quiet atmosphere, their ultra-sleaze, their haunting dreaminess -- that I don't quite find in Italian pictures. At least not in the same way. I'll put my finger on it someday. But I hold them triumphs of imagination over budgetary limitation. As such, Spanish horror epitomizes for me the 70s grindhouse. Atmosphere to soak in.
Above all, it seems like directors like Ossorio and Franco -- they tread the line between hack and genius for many people. But they seem to legitimately represent the aspiration that underlies the trash film. That is, I think sometimes they really believed in their movies. And you can feel that in them. The Blind Dead movies, for all their cult currency, seem to get snubbed by a lot of reviewers (just look at the Netflix reviews), so I would hereby like to declare my love for them, firmly and irrevocably. We'll see how Ghost Galleon goes (and its infamous tub boat) -- but it's an Electric Wizard select movie, so I bet it's actually something quite wonderful. I just know I want to watch movies like this forever.
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