Excellent, a Must See

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Really enjoyed this atmospheric and engaging horror movie. The central idea of Knight Templar revenants returning from the grave to hunt humans is a splendid one; and the scenes of the satanic Templars themselves are creepily effective and powerful. Director De Ossario has a real feel for the genre and he and his cinematographer work wonders in successfully blending a medieval horror theme with modern day Age of Aquarius stuff.The story concerns a somewhat awkward party of three campers on a holiday caught up with the Templars when one of their number goes missing. Sensing the attraction between her cohorts, Virginia (well played by Maria Arpon) jumps from a slow-moving steam train and heads off on her own, eventually camping out in a forbidding (and splendidly photographed) ruined castle. Not a very wise move when there's a Templar graveyard within its grounds....Not a moment of boredom in this film. I watched the full 101 minute version and was engrossed throughout. Just a couple of things I must mention, though that I felt marred the movie a little.Firstly, there's a rape scene that's totally unnecessary to the story. It isn't hugely graphic (the bloke rather comically keeps his jeans on!) but it's in bad taste none the less, as the scene seems to be strongly hinting (hey Lesbians are up for it, really) which I found deplorable. The film would be better off without it.Secondly during a splendidly macabre climax aboard the steam train a child has blood split all over her when the mummified Templars make a meal of her mother. Did we really need this? Apart from this, a truly splendid and fine horror movie. Don't let the scenes I've described above put you off- they are only brief. I'm a bit of a tyro concerning Continental horror but I've made it my New Years' resolution to catch up a bit. Glad I did with movies this good around...

This spooky Spanish shocker is a film which actually manages to be frightening - an achievement which I have yet to see any Naschy film fulfil. Thanks to plenty of unsettling atmospherics and an eerie, isolated locale, TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD is a scary, if slow-moving, film. This is also a zombie film which avoids ripping off Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD unnecessarily, instead the zombies here are some of the most distinctive - and memorable - ever filmed.They've been long dead, that much is obvious; dressed in moulding robes, grimacing skulls peer out from underneath decaying hoods. Some of them are bearded, some of them are armed, all of them look horrifying. The fact that these skeletal bastards will bite and nibble at you if they catch you makes them even worse. While this film has an excellent opening and an excellent ending, the middle bit is indeed a bit slow, with too much expository dialogue and too little action. Amando de Ossorio felt the need to fill out the time with a silly lesbian dream sequence plus plenty of unwanted romantic intrigue between central characters. If they'd lost this, the film would have been even better.The action sequences take place in an abandoned church, where the blind dead claw their way from their tombs in slow-motion, extremely unsettling. The famed slow-motion horseback sequences are also impressive. Various characters find themselves on the run from these unstoppable menaces and hide behind rotted wooden doors in a vain attempt to protect themselves. But the zombies get in and devour everybody inside...now that's what I call entertainment! The version I saw had most of the gore and violence trimmed (even the prologue was missing!) but despite this there are still a couple of grisly bits, involving a hand being severed and some grisly cannibalism.The acting is pretty good and understated for a change, but the biggest impression comes from the chilling score. At first the soundtrack is populated by annoyingly twee songs, but soon these give way to some unholy chanting which really add to the spooky feel of the piece. A fun subplot has a female zombie biting into a creepy morgue attendant's neck before being burned in a fight. This is a horror film which has everything: interesting characters, good music, gore, action, suspense, and plenty of terror. Thus it is well established as a minor classic of the genre and proof that any country is capable of making a good horror film, whatever the language.

As other commentators have noted, this movie has a lot of "sketchy" character decisions. The most egregious is this one: Virginia, if you thought your boyfriend was paying too much of the wrong kind of attention to your female friend, the thing to do was to cause a scene right there on the train...not bail out in the middle of nowhere and start walking! Jeez, passive-aggressive drama queen....Aside from that, and aside from some other logical plot holes, character decisions that make no sense, and a revived victim scene that seems to be there for padding, this can be enjoyed as a wonderful visual treat. It's way better than "Horror Of The Zombies", a later "Blind Dead" film that I actually saw first. (That movie was sabotaged by unlikable characters and some intermittently terrible special effects).Also contributing to the atmosphere are the historical and mythic resonances. These weren't really "zombies" in the classic sense, more like mummies with a taste for human blood. Mummies are way scarier than zombies, because mummies have an implacable intelligence that wants you, you personally, dead. And this comes across in the film. These particular mummies also have a basis in an actual (if controversial) historic cult, which is nice. And the way they advanced on their victims was mysterious and creepy instead of repulsive and gory. In fact, actual gore is kept to a bare minimum here. My other quibble with the plot: After the disastrous botched rescue attempt and the messy dispatching of the train crew and passengers, wouldn't the authorities roll a bunch of tanks through that castle and destroy everything with fire? But that's probably just my American desire for happy endings and closure...apparently not a priority in Euro-Horror. I don't really feel the need to see another "Blind Dead" movie after this, but this was worth my time.

This is a decent horror film--thanks mostly to some amazingly scary monsters. However, you should note that in the original Portuguese-Spanish production, the skeletons were NOT from the Knights Templar but from some weird little Satanic coven. This makes MUCH more sense than the English-dubbed version where they are described as from the Knights Templar. Despite the Knights being popular in fiction (such as from the Dan Brown stories), they were not Satanic nor did they have any weird codes--they were just an order of knights wiped out by a greedy French king who wanted their wealth...period. Also, they couldn't have been from the Knights Templar because the symbol on their outfit was all wrong--a red ankh (from ancient Egypt) was used in the film instead of a red cross (which is a Christian symbol).This is a film that I found the plot a lot less important than the monsters. That's because the plot had a few problems--though none made it a bad film. The film begins with two ladies meeting after many years apart. The boyfriend of one of the ladies invites the other to accompany them on a camp out--but, oddly, his girlfriend is not at all pleased. She becomes very jealous of him and stupidly stomps off the world's slowest moving train while they are headed for their camp out. Not surprisingly, she wanders into the ruins of an old abbey and soon she is killed by very cool looking zombie skeletons. While the skeletons' hands are kind of cheesy, the rest of the character design is really neat--and very scary. And, through the rest of the film, these resurrected demonic skeletons do VERY bad things! And, interestingly, the film does NOT have an ending that I had anticipated in the least--and I appreciated that.By the way, what's up with that morgue?! The attendant was MEGA-creepy and why would anyone keep a bird and a frog there?! Also, the jammed door lock in the mannequin shop was a bit of a cheesy cliché in an otherwise decent film.By the way, the DVD for this is GREAT. It had the dubbed AND original version of the film. It also has the intro to the little-known drive-in version where they stuck a very confusing and stupid prologue onto it to try, believe it or not, to capitalize on the Planet of the Apes films--and they retitled it "Revenge From Planet Ape".