Movie Notes: Tombs Of The Blind Dead

August 6th, 2007

Note: This is an entry in the Second Webomatica Contest: So Bad They’re Good Movies

0 stars
So Bad It’s Good Rating –3 stars

Starring Lone Fleming, Cesar Burner, Maria Elena Arpon
Directed by Amando de Ossorio

Argh. After watching this flick I feel I’ve been blinded — my eyes picked out by ravens.

I’m not a horror fan, mostly because scary movie stuff has a bad habit of becoming funny if it isn’t executed well. Unconvincing costumes, fake blood, and terrible acting can all sink the threat of impending doom. Tombs of the Blind Dead is yet another entry in the Webomatica bad movie contest, and it’s pretty much both, and the film’s title could have also included “tone deaf” and “dumb.”

This foreign entry into schlock-horror starts out rather slow, but it’s all a tension build-up to about 30 minutes in when the scary stuff begins. Creepy monsters start chasing a pretty girl and eventually other clueless people, all so paralyzed by fear that their brains freeze and they become easy prey. There’s a break in the action as a professor educates the main characters about the old legend regarding Knights Templar — which is conveniently ignored.

Tombs Of The Blind Dead contains a long list of unintentionally hilarious horror movie moments and cliches:

• Two pretty girls = lesbian encounter.
• Pretty girls remove their clothing for no logical reason.
• Pretty girl thinks it’s a good idea to get off a train and wander into an abandoned village, alone.
• Creepy monsters in terrible makeup, and a skeletal hand that is essentially a long stick with immobile fingers.
• Totally manipulative horror film tactics such as sudden camera zooms enhanced by scary sound effects.
• Creepy monsters move so slowly that anybody under the age of 54 could outrun them. And the kicker: they’re blind. But of course, everyone screams when they approach, making the blind thing not much of an issue.
• While chased by creepy monsters, girl’s impractical shoe gets stuck in a staircase.
• Two people ride horses into the abandoned town — and the horses run off, conveniently leaving them stranded.
• The local police are useless.
• A demonic-looking doctor (well, he actually kind of looks like Jack Black) in the morgue shows the wrong body — scaring everyone — for no reason whatsoever.
• Demonic-looking Jack Black doctor is then killed by pretty girl who has inexplicably been transformed into an undead vampire (I think).
• Pretty undead vampire girl is set on fire in a mannequin factory.
• Scary (satanic?) blood drinking ritual with cuts on a nude woman’s body… that looks like a mannequin. No, I don’t think it’s from the factory.
• Nobody takes the legend concerning dead Knights Templar seriously until it’s too late.
• Four people go to the abandoned town but through petty disagreements, are separated and picked off one by one by creepy monsters.
• Did I mention buckets of fake blood?
• One of the people killed is a real asshole, so we’re glad to see him perish.

Probably the most notable bad movie element of Tombs of the Blind Dead is its complete lack of a resolution. The monsters kill most of the main characters — and that’s the end. There’s never any satisfying headway made in fighting these creepy, slow moving vampire undead Knights Templar creatures, and now they have ridden a train into town where I guess they will kill even more glaically moving, clueless Europeans. Maybe this lack of an ending is why there were several sequels. I think it’s safe to say I’m not going to watch any of them.

To top things off, I found a bit of trivia at Hollywood Gothique that is laughably bad:

TOMB OF THE BLIND DEAD also underwent the indignity of being retitled REVENGE FROM PLANET APE, in an attempt to pass it off as part of the PLANET OF THE APES film series. The DVD includes a brief alternate opening sequence wherein a voice-over narrator explains that the eyeless horrors we are to meet later in the film are actually simian invaders from another planet, defeated and blinded centuries ago!

Now, that’s a bad movie. Do I have to watch more of these? Oh, the horror.

IMDB: Tombs Of The Blind Dead
Wikipedia: Tombs Of The Blind Dead
Rotten Tomatoes: Tombs Of The Blind Dead 67%