Another film review. Sorry - I'm on a movie kick lately, particularly horror, due to the season and the upcoming con. Noche... is a horror film from Spain, 1973. Called Night of the Blind Dead for the US release (they were cashing in on Night of the Living Dead craze). It was also called Revenge of Planet Ape to cash in on the Planet of the Apes craze (even though there isn't a single simian in it...). Is this movie about undead apes? Nope.
The movie opens with twelve or so Knights Templar riding into a Spanish castle. They have a virgin sacrifice with them. They perform a dark ritual with her that ends in each Knight biting her, and this imbues them, somehow, with eternal skeletal life on horseback. Ringwraiths, of sorts. The plot quickly switches to modern times (1970's). Two swinging Spanish girls (who share some dark uncomfortable college secret) have an accidental pool-side reunion (both in their bikinis). They are joined shortly by the one's boyfriend, who likes what he sees, and then invites the new girl (who he was just introduced to) to go "camping" with them. A threesome, of sorts. His girlfriend (Girl A) is none to happy about this. The next day they all get on a train to go camping (in their polyester leisurewear). On the train, there's some flirtation between the new girl (Girl B) and the boyfriend which sends Girl A steaming out of the railroad car. Girl B follows in pursuit and the two discuss the "uncomfortable situation" between them. We are treated to a flashback: the two girls in their college dorm room. Girl B makes some unwanted advances on Girl A. The flashback ends in a kiss.
Shortly, Girl A jumps off the train, leaving her boyfriend and Girl B to get on with their travels. These two see her running off into the woods and ask the conductor to stop the train. He informs them that the train can not stop at this point. It is an evil, evil area... Instead of jumping off the slow-moving train, they decide to just double-back the next day to find her. She, of course, must spend the night in the haunted castle of the Knights Templar, who arise from their crypts and slowly chase her for, what seems to be, hours. (The only thing slower in this movie is the earlier train.) The action culminates with the mounted skeletal Knights Templar chasing Girl A on horseback (she somehow gets a horse). This scene is a dead-ringer for the scene in Peter Jackson's Fellowship Of The Ring, where the wraiths chase Liv (sorry, I'm not in the mood for typing Elvish names at this point, especially when I've been reduced to calling the other characters Girl A and Girl B...).
Girl A's body is found and this kicks off a whole investigation that culminates in the boyfriend, Girl B, a Spanish smuggler and his girlfriend spending one swinging night in the castle. The dead rise and all hell breaks loose until dawn. There's a big subplot wherein Girl A reanimates as a zombie and then hunts down Girl B's office assistant in a city many miles away...
I'm not sure why any one of the twelve of you who read this blog would want to watch this. The movie is soooo bad on so many levels - but its soooo easy to enjoy. I'm sure none of the script quality was lost in translation either. See it for the pre-Jackson version of the Wraiths. I think these guys are creepier - especially the bearded one (who could have been Dr. Zaius, I suppose). See it for the creepy guy who hangs around the morgue playing with frogs. See it for the plethora of female mannequin torsos (there's a LOT of them and this film borders on strange fetish stuff throughout).
This film is weird - really weird. It's just one more reason to realize that the 70s were the last great age of entertainment when movies could be made just 'cause folks had a free weekend, a couple of cans of film, a semi-finished script and some skeleton props. And these flicks actually made it to the theatres without a single commercial product endorsement in this flick - end rant.
The best part is that this is just Part 1 of the director's quadrilogy. Yes... There's four of them! I'm tempted to see the next one - and that's more than I can say for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise... As per the original movie poster for this film "It makes Night of the Living Dead look like a pajama party!"
Time to watch From Dusk Till Dawn...
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