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| All Images Courtesy: Synapse Films |
Just in time for Halloween, Synapse Films has released a standard-edition version of last years’s extravagant – and extravagantly priced – limited edition steelbook package of Amando de Ossorio’s game-changing 1971 Spanish horror film, Tombs of the Blind Dead. Tombs has long been a cult classic of the 70s Eurohorror movement, and one of the foundational works of Spanish horror more specifically, its legacy burned into the brains of horror fans everywhere thanks to the genuinely chilling image of its eyeless, skeletal, robe-wearing zombie Knights Templar. And yet for most of its history it has been a relatively difficult film to reliably find, repeatedly being out-of-print for long periods of time between various nice-for-their-day disc editions: an Anchor Bay DVD in 1998, a subsequent Blue Underground DVD in 2006, and then many years where it was very rare until Synapse’s steelbook last year. As a result, it is a film whose word-of-mouth cult reputation has always been heavily driven by images from the film that horror fans have seen and been struck by whether they’ve been able to actually watch the movie or not; a case where truly its reputation precedes itself. So the question is… does Tombs of the Blind Dead live up to the hype, now that it actually has a readily-available, high-end blu-ray? Let’s review the film itself, and then Synapse’s two-disc special edition, and find out!
THE FILM:
In Medieval Portugal, an order of Knights Templar turned to witchcraft and ritual sacrifice in hopes of making themselves immortal, but once their murderous ways were discovered, the local villagers stormed their fortress and executed them, leaving their corpses out so that vultures would peck out their eyes. But now, in the present day, the village of Berzano where the knights ruled is long-abandoned, due to legends that the eyeless zombie knights, immortal after all, rise from the grave each night to find fresh sacrifices to sustain themselves. When a young woman disappears after trying to spend the night in the ruins, her boyfriend and friend set out to discover what happened, and face the myth of the knights. While certainly not the most original premise for the most part, the grisly gothic myth of the blind dead's origin story is a strong one, as is the concept of how they don't have eyes, and thus must hunt by sound. It certainly is a good hook to hang a cult-classic zombie film on, with a lot of possibility. Tombs of the Blind Dead only makes good on those possibilities sometimes, and falls totally flat other times, but when it's good, it's extremely effective, delivering at least a couple truly great horror sequences which many horror fans will find worth the journey, even if the whole experience is not nearly as strong.
After an eerie opening sequence consisting of beautiful but ominous shots of Spanish ruins, Tombs of the Blind Dead gets off to a very awkward start, spending its first 15 minutes establishing a very stiff, unconvincing, poorly-written love triangle which gives us absolutely no reason to care about any of these characters. Unfortunately this establishes a trend for the rest of the film: too much runtime spent with poorly-written characters who are not particularly likable. However, the film improves immediately when one of the three splits off from the others and finds herself exploring the creepy and otherworldly ruins of Berzano alone. The location is a character in its own right: a beautiful, dreamlike, and genuinely spooky locale which oozes foreboding even as you can see how beautiful the architecture must once have been. They obviously are real ruins, and not a constructed set, and the quality of this location does more to elevate the film than any other element besides the blind dead themselves. If the film had as good a screenwriter as it did a location scout or makeup designer, it would be a much better movie.
The first scene in which the blind dead emerge and stalk their first victim is incredible: the buildup of atmosphere is great, and the images of the blind dead emerging from their graves, prying open coffins with skeletal hands, are superbly spooky. There really are no other cinematic zombies like them. When the first of the dead rides into frame on his zombie horse, it is a moment horror fans will remember. The movie basically earns its cult-classic reputation with this one sequence alone, and it is no surprise that it captured the imaginations of so many; it really is that strong.
A couple more very strong, well-shot zombie sequences follow, including a particularly good one in a neon-lit mannequin factory that looks like something out of the gorgeously-shot Messiah of Evil. But unfortunately after that first sequence with the blind dead the film returns to being a very uneven experience. Too much time is spent with characters who are neither particularly well-developed nor likable, and it drags the movie down. And crucially, after that stunning first sequence we really don't see the blind dead again until the climax of the film; there just is not enough of the blind dead in a film called Tombs of the Blind Dead, and to a degree they are wasted as villains in their own movie. The movie also does weirdly little with the whole concept of them being blind and hunting by sound; especially after A Quiet Place mined that concept for suspense so effectively, it feels bizarre that this film does almost nothing with it, to the point that things would barely be different if they could see.
Tombs of the Blind Dead also suffers from a couple real weird tonal shifts that I found very off-putting. It feels sometimes like de Ossorio wasn't quite sure what type of horror film he wanted to make, or was trying to make it every type of horror film for every type of horror audience, in a way that doesn't work. In its best moments - that first sequence of the blind dead rising, the moody morgue and mannequin factory sequences - it feels like a slow-burn gothic mood-piece with touches of surrealism (the type of thing that Messiah of Evil did so brilliantly around the same time). But at other times the movie veers off into full-blown exploitation mode, which feels very jarring because the rest of the movie doesn't feel like an exploitation film. This is particularly true of the third act's entirely gratuitous, completely out of nowhere, unexpectedly brutal rape scene, which feels like it was spliced in from a different, much sleazier movie and doesn't belong here. It is very off-putting, especially since it so shamelessly feels like it was added for absolutely no reason except to up the shock/sleaze factor, and it detracted from the film for me, more or less derailing it before a zombie-filled climax which isn't as good as the first blind dead sequence anyway. Tolerance for that type of gratuitous sleaze content certainly varies among horror fans, but for me Tombs of the Blind Dead takes a sharp nose-dive in its last act and loses me, which is unfortunate, because as uneven as I found the whole film to be, its first two thirds have some undeniably compelling strong points.
That assessment is, however, based on the director’s cut of the film, which has been the primary version available in the US ever since the 1998 Anchor Bay DVD standardized it. This Synapse blu-ray, however, also includes the film’s US theatrical cut, which I got to see for the first time when watching through my screener discs for this review. That US cut shortens the film by 20 minutes – it was, after all, designed for drive-in theater double-bills – in addition to a few MPAA trims here and there. And this might be blasphemous to some fans, but upon comparing the two versions, I honestly prefer the shorter US cut, by a pretty wide margin. Considering how much the director’s cut drags, in both the first few minutes and especially the long middle section, I found that the US version’s 20 minutes of cuts substantially improved the pacing, and trimmed fat that should have been trimmed in the first place. The tighter pace makes it a much more entertaining watch, and since the plot is very straightforward and the characters are pretty weak and underbaked to begin with, the film doesn’t narratively suffer from the cuts. The US cut also cuts out the film’s very nasty rape scene entirely (leaving it offscreen, but narratively it’s still clear that it happened), which I found to be an improvement. It is a bummer that there are a couple MPAA trims to the gore effects in the scenes when the blind dead attack, but honestly these trims are pretty minor and not that big of a deal, since this is a film that prioritizes atmosphere and creepiness over gore to begin with. Ultimately I didn’t mind losing a couple shots of nifty gore effects if it meant that the film is much better paced, with 20 minutes of fat trimmed.
Again, I totally understand that plenty of cult film fans will find it blasphemous to say that a heavily-cut US theatrical version is superior in any way, and normally that’s how I’d feel too, but since the theatrical cut has always struck me as having some pretty big problems, and the US cut actually addresses most of these problems, I found it to be a much more enjoyable watch, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who will feel that way. The better pacing goes a long way with this one for me, especially since the film’s four really great sequences – the two blind dead attacks, the morgue zombie scene, and the mannequin factory zombie scene – are all presented intact in all their glory, short of two or three gore shots getting unfortunately cut.
While Tombs of the Blind Dead definitely has its excellent moments that justify its cult-classic status, on the whole I don’t think it lives up to the hype. However, I do think there is a Blind Dead movie that does: the second film in the series, Return of the Blind Dead/Return of the Evil Dead, is a big improvement on the first, and delivers much more of what I wanted from this film. Its pacing and story are both significantly better, and it takes what is great about the first film and delivers a much more satisfying amount of it. The blind dead really take center stage in the second film, getting MUCH more to do, and the film is much better because of it. Interestingly enough, it also feels very much like a predecessor to John Carpenter’s The Fog, which is a cool surprise. You can read my full review of that film here (a double-feature review of both of the first two Blind Dead films, from which much of the above review was taken and expanded upon). I really hope that Synapse follows up this blu-ray with an equally excellent special edition of Return of the Blind Dead – I would recommend it much more enthusiastically. As it is, I would recommend that viewers watch Tombs of the Blind Dead prior to buying, rather than purchasing it blind (no pun intended).
THE SYNAPSE SPECIAL EDITION BLU-RAY:
This standard-edition Synapse blu-ray is identical to the first two discs from last year’s steelbook limited edition (disc 3 which is not included in this standard version was a CD of the film’s score), so if you have that release already then this is nothing new. However, the steelbook limited edition was extravagantly expensive, so this release is a very welcome more-affordable variant, and remains a stellar special edition.
The disc boasts a new 2k restoration of both cuts of the film from the original negative, and it looks great. The opening credits appear to have been taken from a theatrical print, and have a lot of swarming grain, wobble, and a bit of wear, which at first I found concerning, but as soon as the credits finish the picture quality instantly and dramatically improves. The restoration work on this transfer is beautiful: detail is quite sharp while still retaining a very filmic look, and the transfer is quite pristine, with no visible damage or wear. There is a healthy presence of film grain, and it looks very natural and organic with none of the distracting swarming present in the presumably print-sourced opening credits. The colors are very vibrant - in fact, if I have any issue with the transfer, it is that the colors might look a tad artificially saturated. Blues, purples, and reds especially are VERY intense. But it is also possible that this is the film's intended look, since prior to this I have only seen the film on the significantly more muted 1998 Anchor Bay DVD, which is not exactly a good source of reference. The intense colors did not necessarily strike me as wrong, just very noticeable. That one question of color saturation aside though, this is a gorgeous transfer, and considering the age of the film, the budget, and that it went this long without the negative being preserved in a modern scan, caught up in some kind of rights limbo that made me fear for the preservation of the film elements, it is pretty stunning how good it looks. I'm sure there are some people who will be automatically disappointed that this is a 2k scan on a blu-ray and not a 4k scan on a UHD, but this transfer looks so good that I truly cannot see any need for complaint.
The 2.0 mono sound mix on the disc likewise sounds quite good, and as impressively restored as it can be. Dialogue is clear, music and sound effects sound good, and the track is very clean with no issues or artifacts. It is limited by the source, hence the decision to only present it in the original mono and not build it out into an artificial surround mix, but I am very happy with the decision, and have no complaints. The uncut version of the film on disc one features the original Spanish soundtrack, and a rather strange hybrid english dub: the American version of the film on disc two, the only english-dubbed version, is significantly shorter, so there is a good amount of footage that was never dubbed at all, and this hybrid track uses the english audio wherever possible, and the Spanish audio with subtitles for the moments that were never dubbed, a bit like the English-language version of the director's cut of Deep Red. But at least in the case of Deep Red, the star of the film is a British actor speaking English in his own voice; I am honestly not sure why anyone would watch Tombs of the Blind Dead like this when it is a straight-up dub and all the actors are speaking Spanish. Just watch it in the original Spanish; it's more authentic anyway, and even leaving that aside this hybrid dub is just weird. The US theatrical version of the film on disc two, on the other hand, is exclusively presented dubbed, with no option to watch it in Spanish; once again, a weird choice that I don't entirely understand, and definitely a flaw in the release.
The extras on this release include three commentaries, two by film scholars and one by lead actress Lone Fleming, an archival featurette from a previous European DVD, and an excellent feature-length documentary. This documentary, Marauders from the Mediterranean, is definitely the star extra. It is not just about Tombs of the Blind Dead, but the entire Spanish zombie-movie movement, and the history of Spanish horror more broadly. It covers the production of Tombs quite thoroughly, but also puts it in two much larger contexts: the context of a genre-study understanding of Spanish zombie films of that era, and how they evolved from the influence of Night of the Living Dead, and the context of how Spanish horror films were made under Spain's fascist government at that time, and how they used their genre trappings to veil criticisms of the fascist regime. It is a fascinating documentary, and whether you love Tombs of the Blind Dead specifically or not, if you are a horror fan you are likely to find it a very interesting watch.
Overall this is a very nice package for a film that understandably has earned a major cult-classic status, even if I don't think the film itself entirely lives up to its reputation. Given my mixed feelings about the film, I recommend watching it before you buy, but if you are a fan of the film already, then this blu-ray set is an essential purchase. Between the great restoration and the fascinating extras, Synapse knocked it out of the park with this one. Now I just hope they do the same for the much better Return of the Blind Dead.
- Christopher S. Jordan
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