Movie Details
| Title: | Tombs of the Blind Dead | |
| Director: | Amando de Ossorio | |
| Year: | 1971 | |
| Genre: | Horror | |
| Times Seen: | 2 | |
| Last Seen: | 01.18.07 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 01.18.07 | Terror Thursday | So I've now seen Revenge From Planet Ape... I was fully prepared to call it its own movie and make a separate entry here but... it's really not. After the (admittedly hilarious) tacked-on intro with the narration over stills of the ruins from the movie talking about how long ago we fought with a race of alien super-apes and defeated them and seared out their eyes with red-hot pokers before they voweds to return for revenge, the only difference between this and Tombs is a few scene excisions: all the raunchy make-out near-sex-talk and the shot of the first girl switching shirts, the beginning flashback of the knights swording the girl in some sort of Templar ritual, and the minute-long scene where they learn about the templars from that book with the illustration. So... a new 30 seconds and about 2 minutes gone and there you go. Still, I'm really glad I saw this cut. It makes a great example of how distributors and exhibitors of the classic drive-in era were... kind of like a semi-modern-day example of the how they used to recut the silent pictures from unsuccessfull tragedy to successful comedy without telling any of the people who shot the film to begin with. Even the cut sexy-talk scenes I can't be sure was a blanket thing with all Planet Ape prints... it might've just been the guy at the drive-in taking sissors to it in order to let kids in without angry parents. It's a mystery... but one I find pretty fascinating. Anyway, the crowd had a good enough time with this I think. It definitely helped me enjoy it... especially the weirdo morgue attendant. I still don't know why the train goes so unbelievably slow but I guess I should just write it off as European. |
| 01.17.07 | Netflix | A girl gets in a fight with her boyfriend and hops off an incredibly slow-moving train into the wrong neck of the woods, ending up in a burial ground for Knights Templar. I guess she gets bored or tired or something because she makes a fire and lays down to listen to some jazz, smoke a cigarette, and read a book. Meanwhile, the ghosts of the templar come out riding ghost horses and clop around outside. Maybe Europeans are just like that but... ok one: i wouldn't jump off a train at some random spot in the middle of nowhere, two: i wouldn't stop and get undressed and sleep just because it gets dark outside, and three: i sure as hell wouldn't pick a creepy old ruin of a castle or keep or village or whatever it is to do it in. That's the best aspect of this movie though. It works best when its all atmosphere and singular images or ideas rather than any sort of cohesive plot or story... like a nightmare with bad acting. Like a frog hopping through a puddle of blood or a burning mannequin's head melting. spectral beings wearing rotted armor riding toward you on horseback in slow motion, your silence betrayed by the beating of your heart. The idea of it works on you more than actually seeing the dudes and the mediocre make-up, never mind sitting through the slow bits that spackle these scenes together. So this movie makes a better memory than experience for me. I'm glad I saw it though, because tomorrow for Terror Thursday they're playing a version of this recut to exploit the Planet of the Apes craze... which has to be pretty interesting. I didn't want my first exposure to this movie to be that though... Although the DVD has the intro to the recut version on it with the really quickly put-together titles and beginning narration, and it says "thanks to Harry Guerro" so I wonder if I'll be seeing the same print that Blue Underground transferred for the DVD. A minor thrill but still. |
