For those hording toilet paper

 

Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971)

About done with this, but wanted to go ahead and drop the write-up and add some revisions later tonight.

 

Tombs of the Blind Dead is kind of a bridge between the Gothic horror in the age of Dracula and the exploitation film forming into the 60s and blooming in full into the ‘70s. While the ghouls in undead form rise from their graves looking for human sacrifices, the atmosphere created by director Ossorio is firstrate, while lesbianism and rape could be incorporated into his film due to when it was made. Victoria is in love with a man who doesn’t think of her as anything but a friend. He instead is smitten by her visiting tourist former acquaintance (and lover when the two were in college), Elizabeth. Victoria plans to go into the country with him, perhaps believing she could seduce him, but Elizabeth squanders those plans by inadvertently showing up. While on a train, Victoria can no longer tolerate seeing Elizabeth and him flirting so she overacts by getting off and heading to an abandoned village…when her entourage follow suit, the three will all encounter the Knights Templar.

I have mixed feelings about this movie. I adore the ruins of the Spanish village, the look of the skeletal ghouls, and how Ossorio presents them. I abhor the idiocy behind how the victims fall prey to them when it is clear that anyone with even a slight bit of skip in their step could get away and escape if so inclined. I do like how Ossorio knows how cool this location is and has Victoria walk all throughout the village, including within the gutted stone buildings and across the streets. It firmly establishes place and because this village is remote and ancient few will be anywhere near it to help those that are besieged. I do wonder if certain viewers will be besought by impatience because they are so accustomed to fast paced/edited plots; will they be able to endure Victoria's investigation of the village she finds herself?

Obviously, the first bothersome detail avoided is where the horses come from. That is a given. It immediately pops in the mind. Later explained, during this film, however, they just appear while the skeletal undead Knights Templar emerge from their tombs. It isn’t the most annoying detail, because the sight of them riding the horses is rather cool.

I think getting a load of the village during the day—when it doesn’t appear to be quite so menacing—helps increase the level of sinister that exists when the village is in the dark of night, with the graveyard producing the ghouls that will surround and kill anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in this godforsaken place. Victoria chooses a spot, in a building that still has a sound foundation, but it traps her. She goes from one room to another but the Knights Templar are everywhere. One door to another, she takes a deep breath looks ahead and sees them. Like the zombies in a George Romero picture, moving slow and shambling, once the Knights Templar gather in number tragedy ensues.

Another occurrence in the film that didn’t make sense to me was Victoria’s returning as a zombie to kill a morgue employee (and possible necrophiliac). What about the legend of the Knights Templar says their bite will reawaken murdered victims? This is a direct rip from Night of the Living Dead but within the framework of this particular film, I don’t understand why she returns from the dead because she wasn’t affiliated with the devil. I think this is one of those unnecessary scenes that could be excised and wouldn’t hurt Tombs at all. And, furthermore, it just ruins Ossorio’s unique approach regarding the Knights Templar and what makes them stand out against typical ghouls that rise from the dead stories so complacent in horror. It, to me, seems to indicate Ossorio is desperate to appeal to the base who loved Living Dead but his film didn’t need to do that considering the unique look and savagery of his film’s ghouls. Saying this, I think the scene is well executed and creepy, but it belongs in another film. Just my response to it, that’s all. Perhaps it was supposed to say that the curse of the ghouls spreads to those it bites, but I think their whole reason for existing at all is because of their ritualistic lifestyle and religious devotion to the devil; because of such devotion, they are allowed to remain in that odd limbo between dead and undead. Allowing the Romero-esque return from the dead due to an infected bite took away what makes Ossorio’s ghouls unique unto themselves.

Then there’s the inclusion of Pedro, the smuggler. Supposedly, he smuggles around the area of Berzano, and his father is a librarian who provides Bette and Roger with the goods on the Knights Templar. Pedro will later rape Bette in a scene that infuriates me because its showing up in the film has no merit other than to abuse the lead heroine before the Knights Templar come after her. The rape happens and then Pedro dies afterward. It is just used because it seems as if those who wrote in the movie felt obligated to add an exploitative part that has no importance other than to emphasize what we already knew: Pedro is a scumbag. I don’t really even know why Pedro was written into the film. His importance to the overall plot is insignificant other than to offer someone else up to be savaged by the Knights Templar. Sure he’s an asshole and a crook…but he doesn’t even make an appearance in dialogue until about an hour into the film, and his part to play in the film offers little to the grand scheme of things. Do we really need to see Bette enduring a forced rape right before the Knights Templar possibly attack her? I think not, but it is in the film, and so that is a strike I personally hold against the film. That and Pedro’s insufferable lover tagging along…she’s obvious fodder for the Knights Templar.