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| From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Tombs_of_the_Blind_Dead_Poster.jpg |
Dir. Amando de Ossorio
The most entertaining thing from
the viewing experience of Tombs of the
Blind Dead wasn't anything in the film; needing a drink to get through it
part of the way through, it was the beer upon opening it exploding in a
fountain of golden ale foam and not seeming to end that was more entertaining. It
made a mess of the kitchen top, but it was of more interest than the disappointment
when, viewing this highly regarded horror film, the first in a whole series of
them, I find it to be such a complete failure in what I was hoping for. The
beginning of film's series, Tombs of the
Blind Dead touts a cultish space in European horror cinema in depicting
undead Templar Knights on horseback with swords on a rudimentary level, a
potential for adding historical and mystical material to familiar horror tropes.
It's a long wait before you even get to the knights as the first twenty minutes
or so is an incredibly dull drama, ending with a woman jumping off a train, in
the middle of nowhere, when her boarding school friend gets too close to her
boyfriend (and her) for comfort. Its plodding dramatic scenes you have to put
up with. And it may just say something about me, but up to viewing this film at
the moment I did, I had more enough depictions of lipstick lesbians already so
that the risqué twist shown here was enough to make me oversaturated to it. It
actually shows how clunky and arbitrary this kind of material can be presented
though, lurid or with depth or both, when comparing it to other works that
don't seem to have crowbarred it in without any sense of nuisance or
entertainment in it, and this sense of cheapness runs through other aspects of
the whole film.
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| From http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3085/2865460697_bded6df2db_o.jpg |
When the Blind Dead do make their
appearance, it's clear I was in a place where the film would never get good. The
idea of Templar Knights and the fact that, blind, they have to use sound to
find their prey is great, but they're never threatening or scary. The image
dashed, in my head for all these years before finally seeing this, was of an
atmospheric film, very misty or fog covered, an occult or threatening edge to
make the Templar even more unsettling when they arrive on horseback or rise
from their graves. It doesn't turn out that way. Its men in costumes slowly
lumbering along, occasionally swinging a sword. There is no sense of dreading
mood, even though its set around an abandoned medieval village where the Templar rest. The whole
film is really cheap, sluggish horror. It tries to bring in zombie infection
briefly which never goes anywhere, and drags the narrative into a different
location without any reason. Characters are pointlessly introduced, and in
complete tastelessness, there's an abrupt rape scene near the end where, after
being forced to the ground, the female character just buttons her shirt back up
with no sense of a negative reaction to it. Say what you want of a director
like Lucio Fulci, even if someone
bring up The New York Ripper (1982) to
question this point I'm about to make, but something like this scene for me is
an actual case of something incredibly sexist and morally objectionable. I
don't use the word 'misogyny' because my definition of the word, the complete
hatred of the whole female gender, means it should only be used in extreme
cases, but a scene like this in Tombs of
the Blind Dead is a prime candidate for foul gender depictions and more so
for how slapdash its depicted. A director like Fulci, for an example of someone accused of objectionable content,
comes off as a misanthropic nihilist, and more importantly from what I've seen
of his, even if he lingers luridly on something it still feels extremely
painful and horrifying when he shows something horrible. Here, its sexual
violence which happens with no sense of the director making it painful to sit
through even in the context of an exploitation film, and its worse because its
quickly forgotten and is incredibly pointless in its placement there. A film
that was already terrible shows how poor it is further with a moment like this
because, despite the scene not being that explicit, it shows that it clearly
has no sense of care and thought in how it was put together. That a film can do
something this cack-handed, without taking into account how offensive it truly
is, shows how sloppy the movie is more so with a moment that digs its own grave
the viewer would have made to kick it in after the end credits.
And I realise how head and above
a critically maligned director like Fulci
viewing this. Even Jess Franco is
above this by many, many tiers in his lowest. Directors like them, even if they
could fail miserably, had the ability to create potent moods and tension with
even hack material. Zombi 2 (1979), Fulci's film, is art in a legitimate
sense next to this, completely in a different world in the construction and
what is shown onscreen in images and tone. In comparison there's a decided lack
of artistry here, a squandered potential. There's nothing entertaining about it
even as just a junky zombie film. The later films in this series could redeem
the experience of this one, but as I fall in love with European horror films of
the seventies and early eighties, I may defend less than good ones occasionally
but I'm also incredibly picky with them too. Just red paint blood and people
screaming is not enough unless its well made, effecting or completely insane,
and this has none of the above.
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