Tombs of the Blind Dead

1973 "Makes "Night of the Living Dead" Look Like a Kids' Pajama Party!"
6.1| 1h41m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 01 February 1973 Released
Producted By: Plata Films S.A.
Country: Spain
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

In 13th century Berzano, a legion of knights known as the Templar were executed for conducting black magic rituals and committing human sacrifices in a quest for eternal life. 700 years later, they rise from the dead and attack a group of vacationing college students who visit the remains of their abandoned monastery.

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Reviews

TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film
2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!
XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.
Abegail Noëlle While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.
Platypuschow Tombs Of The Blind Dead is the first in the Blind Dead franchise, a Spanish series of zombie movies that have evaded me for a fair while.I'm glad to say that it really impressed me and is highly similiar to Italian movies of the same ilk also from the same period.It tells the story of a girl who is murdered in an abandoned ruined village once occupied by Templars. Her friends set about investigating and discover the villages horrifying secret.What makes this stand out is that not only do our zombies have origins but that they have personality. Robed, skeletal, blind and horse riding! This is original stuff and it works wonders.Ontop of that the movie is well scored, looks fantastic and really delivers on every front. Because of this I can't wait to get stuck into the remaining films.The Good:Looks greatQuite original for it's genreWell madeBrilliant finaleThe Bad:Couple of ropey looking momentsCould have been longerThings I Learnt From This Movie:Porcupines are sweet and suave
jacobjohntaylor1 This is not scary so I do not know why it got 6.2. It has an awful story line. It also has awful acting. The ending is awful. I do not know why people like this movie. It is not a 6.2. It is a 1. If you want to see something real scary see The Exorcist. The Exorcist II is also very scary. The Exorcist III is also very scary. But this is not scary. 6.2 is just overrating it. If I want get scared I will see Exorcist the beginning. The actors in this movie need acting lessons. The ending is just awful. Damnation is a good horror movie to see. But not this. Do not wast your time or money do not see this movie.
Leofwine_draca This spooky Spanish shocker is a film which actually manages to be frightening - an achievement which I have yet to see any Naschy film fulfil. Thanks to plenty of unsettling atmospherics and an eerie, isolated locale, TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD is a scary, if slow-moving, film. This is also a zombie film which avoids ripping off Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD unnecessarily, instead the zombies here are some of the most distinctive - and memorable - ever filmed.They've been long dead, that much is obvious; dressed in moulding robes, grimacing skulls peer out from underneath decaying hoods. Some of them are bearded, some of them are armed, all of them look horrifying. The fact that these skeletal bastards will bite and nibble at you if they catch you makes them even worse. While this film has an excellent opening and an excellent ending, the middle bit is indeed a bit slow, with too much expository dialogue and too little action. Amando de Ossorio felt the need to fill out the time with a silly lesbian dream sequence plus plenty of unwanted romantic intrigue between central characters. If they'd lost this, the film would have been even better.The action sequences take place in an abandoned church, where the blind dead claw their way from their tombs in slow-motion, extremely unsettling. The famed slow-motion horseback sequences are also impressive. Various characters find themselves on the run from these unstoppable menaces and hide behind rotted wooden doors in a vain attempt to protect themselves. But the zombies get in and devour everybody inside...now that's what I call entertainment! The version I saw had most of the gore and violence trimmed (even the prologue was missing!) but despite this there are still a couple of grisly bits, involving a hand being severed and some grisly cannibalism.The acting is pretty good and understated for a change, but the biggest impression comes from the chilling score. At first the soundtrack is populated by annoyingly twee songs, but soon these give way to some unholy chanting which really add to the spooky feel of the piece. A fun subplot has a female zombie biting into a creepy morgue attendant's neck before being burned in a fight. This is a horror film which has everything: interesting characters, good music, gore, action, suspense, and plenty of terror. Thus it is well established as a minor classic of the genre and proof that any country is capable of making a good horror film, whatever the language.
InjunNose I'm not a big fan of Eurohorror because it tended to elevate style and flash over substance. Amando de Ossorio, however, was a refreshing exception to the rule: he knew what was frightening and that's what he focused on, keeping the superfluous stuff to a minimum. Nowhere is his firm grasp of the genre's fundamentals more evident than in "Tombs of the Blind Dead". This is truly a meat-and-potatoes horror film, loaded with atmosphere and well-crafted scary moments. Ossorio favored the slow, deliberate buildup of tension, so it's a long time before you see the hooded Templar mummies gnawing on human flesh; first you have to witness the María Elena Arpón character's arrival at the abandoned monastery, her uneasy exploration of the ruins, and that's when you realize you're watching a master at work. When the horror is finally made visible, "Tombs" becomes an edge-of-your-seat viewing experience, and some of the images (the Templars on their phantom horses, galloping in slow motion across an eerily beautiful Portuguese landscape, and the grainy still photo that Ossorio made the brilliant decision to end his film with) will remain with you literally for years after you've seen the movie. Any hack can make a horror film, but very few directors get it right. Amando de Ossorio was one of them. If you're serious about your horror--if you've had it up to here with sexy vampires and mindless zombie shoot-'em-ups, and want to be chilled to the bone--then you should see "Tombs of the Blind Dead".