Tombs of the blind Dead is a Spanish horror movie from 1971 that I just had to check out. The movie gets a bad rating on online reviews but I thought it was really cool and I really digged it.
The story is about two friends (a male and a female who's names escape me at this hour) who are going for a trip into the countryside when the female bumps into her old college room mate who just so happens to be an old lesbian fling and they decide to bring her along on just for the hell of it. On the train ride the woman gets jealous of the other two flirting so she jumps off the really slow moving steam train and heads off into an abandoned Medieval village. She sets camp up there only to find that at night time undead hooded skeletons (that ride horses really slowly that look cool as fuck by the way) rise from their grave looking for flesh. She gets chased and bitten to fuck and left dead.
The next day the other 2 decide to leave their really nice hotel and go and look for her. This bit puzzled me as if you were that concerned surely you would have started the search the day before and especially before nightfall? Oh well I guess if they would have found her during the day and just gone back to the hotel this movie would have ended up being a porn film as it was leaning that way. After finding the police in the village and finding out their female friend was "murdered in a ritual killing" the plot thickens and they start doing a bit of detective work.
During their investigation it turns out that the village was ruled by Templar Knights who practiced Satanic rituals and sacrifices in order for them to gain the secret of eternal life. Then we get a cool flashback of some hot chick getting fucked up by these cool knights and are then told the knights were all hung and their eyes pecked out by crows. They return from the grave blind and hunt using the sense of sound so upon hearing all of this they decide to go back there, why? I don't fucking know but again if they didn't the movie would just end there I guess. During this time the body of the woman comes to life in the morgue and kills some weird bloke who likes playing with frogs and chases a woman around a mannequin workshop until she burns.
The couple then enlist the help of a flick knife wielding smuggler called Pedro (who kinda looks like Earl from my name is Earl) to go back to the village along with some other chick because they needed the body count I guess. When returning to the cursed village there is rape scene involving Pedro and the main character woman which is random and has nothing to do with anything and to top it off after its finished the woman just does her top up and acts like nothings happened. Maybe that kind of thing is normal in Spain or something but it made me laugh more than it shocked me. To cut it short though without ruining the ending the Blind dead return from their Tombs and go on a rampage on al the dickheads who decided it was a good idea to go back there and all hell breaks loose.
In all fairness I enjoyed the movie it had a dark atmosphere and was a really cool concept. The filming locations are spot on and the effects of the blind dead are spot on. Before judging this movie too harshly you must remember that this was made in 1971 and for the time it was made and the resources they had I think they pulled off a pretty good film. Yes there are endless plot holes and lots of bits that make no sense but what other horror movies are flawless in that department apart from a few high budget master pieces. I am at the stage now where I have pretty much seen almost every zombie/horror movie around and now I am just ticking off the list of ones I havent viewed and this was enjoyable. The movie is in Spanish with text subtitles which I do not prefer as I really enjoy the work of shit dub over acting but there isnt that much dialogue as you can imagine.
After viewing the movie I discovered that when the movie was released for drive in theaters in the US that they re edited the movie and put in an alternate opening sequence from the original to make it look like a Planet of the Apes sequel to sucker in movie goers to watch it. Watch the video to see it
