La noche del terror ciego (1972) Reviews

• The skeletons on horses in slow motion was epic man. Decent atmospheric horror film n the best in the series.

  Fella_shibby2017-04-29

  I had seen only one film from the blind dead series (Return of the blind/evil dead) in the mid 80s on a VHS. I saw this just few days back on a DVD. The story is about 2 girls n one guy who goes on a weekend trip. Sounds erotic huh. Don't get your hopes high. On the train ride there, one of the girl is overcome with jealousy and jumps off the train, deciding to spend the night in some nearby ruins. Wtf? It is a horror film n so the ruins are home of the blind dead knights who were into some satanic rituals until angry villagers killed them n left them for the crows to peck their eyes out. Some decent cinematography. It is an effective atmospheric film. The locations were really good. The abandoned n ruined village in the middle of nowhere, the endless fields, the only single train running n always passing by the ruins n the best part- the slow motion shots of the knights riding their horses in pursuit of their victims. When the knights r on the foot, they r slower than the snails but suddenly out of nowhere they get their horses n once they r on their horses, they ride faster in slow motions. Very creepy though. The skeletons, with their dark, odd beard hair features, actually look as if they've risen from their graves. Good effects.

• Disturbing

  Zombiewalkin2005-02-03

  I first found this film for rent back in the 80's. It was the old Paragon rental and I really liked it right from the get go. I had actually already seen Horror of the Zombies (aka El Buque Maldito) which is film numero three in De Ossorio's quadrilogy of the Blind Dead. I initially found that one to be a waste but seeing Tombs got me back into the swing of things. Yes this film is slow moving but most Eurohorror films are a little on the slow side. That is because the spend more time on mood and atmosphere instead of clonking the audience over the head with the point of the story. Like Squonkamatic said his review of this film, you turn your brain on not OFF when you watch these types of films. Tons of atmosphere in this film. The Templars rising from their tombs and then mounting ghostly horseback! Well you just cant much better than that! I absolutely love the soundtrack as well with the moaning/chanting Templar voices. The ending of this film also still packs a punch. THAT is a key sequence that must be seen it's complete form and THEN will you know why I titled this review as "disturbing". Pick this up if you can. I have the double DVD from Anchor Bay which is outta print. Stick with the Anchor Bay VHS or wait because it might be coming out again, supposedly in late 2005. All FOUR films in fact if the cards are played right and the planets align. I will have my fingers crossed and my prayers prayed for Blue Underground who has taken on this task. Rock on!

• This zombie films mostly relies on atmosphere and suspense instead of gore and action

  Milo-Jeeder2007-05-10

  "La noche del teror ciego", tells the story of a legion of evil warriors who lived through the 13th century, known as the Templar Knights. These warriors wanted to live forever and the way to achieve that, was by drinking human blood and offering sacrifices to Satan. So The Templar Knights would gladly torture and use innocent maidens for their rituals and please their master. However, their atrocious deeds come to an end, when the Holy Inquisition decides to punish them, by hanging them in public. Several centuries later, in the 1970s, two girls named Virginia and Betty go on a trip together with a guy named Roger. After a pathetic soap opera incident, Virginia gets jealous of her friends and jumps off the train. Landing on a strange place, she finds shelter in some kind of forsaken fortress in ruins. Unfortunately, that place is also a shelter for some hideously frightening creatures that become alive during the nightfall until dawn. Those creatures are, in fact, the Templar Knights, who come back to life as zombies every night. Director Armando de Ossorio didn't try to please a blood-thirsty audience that wanted brutal killings for an hour and a half. For the contrary, the body count may be humble, but "La noche del terror ciego" takes the zombie subgenre to a different level, in which the creatures are more dark, mysterious and frightening than gory and brutal. If you are a zombie lover, you're probably going to love this film and if you are not, you might be pleasantly surprised by this. I have read on the message boards that there were a lot of gore lovers dissatisfied by the lack of blood and guts, but I think this film contains a pretty well-brought-up amount. My favorite scene in the entire movie is one in which one of the girls is trying to hide from the zombies. Since the zombies are blind, the girl stays in the same room with them and the only thing she can do to remain undetected, is staying absolutely quiet. But since she's so afraid and tense, her heart starts beating more and more quickly and all of a sudden, we see a close-up of her chest, pointing out that she's on the verge of either fainting or running for her life. The living dead knights hear those heartbeats and turn to the poor girl, who has no choice but finally running away in fear, trying to avoid the nightmarish creatures. This was perhaps one of the most atmospheric situations I have ever seen in a zombie flick. To be honest, most of the chasing sequences were practically faultless, but that one in particular had to be remarked. Reading the message boards, I also came across some people who also complained about a few unresolved questions like: "How could the zombies hear?", "Where did they get the horses?" "How come they were so strong if they were only skeletons?". The answer to all those questions could be: "this is a horror movie about living dead creatures and it's really not supposed to be realistic". To be honest, I think the zombies were more believable than the pointless lesbian story between the two girls, which didn't serve a purpose to the story. Then again, most couples in horror movies make no sense, anyway.

• Nothing Short of a Masterpiece

  Squonkamatic2003-07-28

  I am shocked to see the comments on this film by the users of the IMDB. Shocked and saddened; Amando de Ossorio's BLIND DEAD films are the quintessential viewing experience for 1970's Eurohorror. This particular film is nothing short of a masterpiece, though brain cell count and attention span deficit disorders that run rampant amongst the youth of today could account for SOME of the negative comments logged. Still ... The first BLIND DEAD film does NOTHING to set it's scene, other than to show you Goya-esque views of a crumbling Spanish citadel ... One of the problems in assessing the cultural significance of a film that is 33 years old is related to how it is marketed, and by marketing the BLIND DEAD films as "Zombie Flesh Eating Gore Fests" is to miss Ossorio's point. Therefore the distributors themselves might be as much to blame as any one factor -- by trying to cash in on Zombie gorehounds and their easily parted with money, companies like Anchor Bay took a beautiful little movie and turned it into an instant reseller's nightmare. If plot is something you look for in your films, the BLIND DEAD movies will fall short. They will also fall short on the gore factor, since Ossorio was using the gore effects as ways to color his pallete of moods [see the first ten minutes of NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS/NIGHT OF THE DEATH CULT for the most vivid example]. Ossorio was very much a director of moods and visuals rather than a strict, trudging story line that plods from A to B to C and then you're through. Like most European horror from the early 1970's, the stories are actually rather unimportant next to considerations like lighting, texture, color schemes and movement. If you watch a BLIND DEAD movie for a lightning fast paced blood soaked zombie fest OF COURSE you are going to feel like you wasted $15. Ossorio was making parables about his time: I see this series as being very subversive commentaries on the Franco regime, with the Templar Knights summond from the grave at the start of each film as a way of representing the old values of Spain finding a voice amidst the artistic repression of their time. Spanish art has always been filled with images of horror & suffering, so it would make sense that an artist like Ossorio would choose the medium of his time -- film, rather than oil & canvas -- with which to bring forth his vision, and fill it with images of horror. But that doesn't mean that his objective was to make a mind numbing splatter film that would beat it's audience into submission with a meathook. If thematic relevance could be found for allowing a pretty supporting actress to be torn to shreds by vampiric Templars in a death ritual, well so be it -- that kind of stuff sells, and was permissable under Franco's dictatorship where straight out sexual content was not. TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD [as we know it today] stands as one of the watershed films in mixing horror with eroticism: before Ossorio, the erotically tinged horror flick tended to be softer edged, not confront the viewer with TOO much carnage [though torture films were huge during the 1970's, especially in places like Italy and Germany where film makers were free to make films about whatever they wanted], and tended to end "happily". Ossorio's work changed all of that: we see graphic amputations, decapitations & other forms of bloodletting right next to the boobs, bikini lines and Go-Go boots. Ossorio had a great eye for beauty too, and packed his films with a bevy of gorgeous, beautiful Eurobabes who would have the most apalling things happen to them right on camera but were never "exploitational" -- the sexual content in Ossorio's work is treated as a plot element itself, not just inserted into the storyline to keep the attention of the jaded from slipping. Several of the commentors are correct when pointing out that this movie is "slow", but I contend that it is slow in a way that emphasizes the poetic nature of his visions -- events transpire in a deliberate manner, with the action taking place almost like a walz or ballad. Is this a cultural sensitivity issue? Probably -- American consumers want MORE, FASTER, BIGGER and they want it NOW. To require an audience to sit through 25 minutes of a film before even learning why any of this is happening was apparently so unbearable that the original distributor of this film -- Paragon Video -- actually took it upon themselves to restructure the film so that the middle came at the beginning, and the film opens with a death ritual/blood sacrifice of a sexy woman to assure brain-dead Americans that they were going to get to see the boobs & blood that the films were marketed as delivering. And by doing so they not only did a dis-service to the movie, but shot themselves in the foot, since the action never again reaches that frenzied peak of luridness. Anchor Bay Entertainment and Video Treasures did better with their "remastered" widescreen presentations, but still failed to grasp how to adequately market the films to what audience, and as such you can go to Amazon & score this tape for about eight bucks from a reseller [the out-of-print DVD containing both this and the second installment usually runs $30 - $50 and is considered tres collectable] and not even have to put up with a prior rental, since AB was marketing to consumers for home sales, not rental outlets. If you are interested in finding the pivotal moment of 1970's Eurohorror when art & entertainment met head on and brought forth one of the most widely respected series of the genre, this IS it. If you are looking for a gut munching Zombie fest with splatterings and disembowlings, I am delighted to report that this isn't it. You don't check your brains at the door when you watch a BLIND DEAD movie, you use them. If that is beneath you as a film consumer, you are indeed well advised to look elsewhere.

• La noche del terror ciego: Fantastic vintage zombie title

  Platypuschow2018-03-02

  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 great Quite original for it's genre Well made Brilliant finale The Bad: Couple of ropey looking moments Could have been longer Things I Learnt From This Movie: Porcupines are sweet and suave