Return Of The Evil Dead

 Return of the Evil Dead (El Ataque de los Muertos Sin Ojos) (1973)

Runtime: 92 minutes

Directed by: Amando de Ossorio

Starring: Tony Kendall, Fernando Sancho, Esperanza Roy, Frank Brana, Loreta Tovar

From: Ancla Century Films

No matter if you call this Return of the Blind Dead, Return of the Evil Dead, Attack of the Blind Dead or something else, this was a pretty good time. 2 ½ years ago I saw the first in this tetralogy of Spanish horror films (Tombs of the Blind Dead), which had fascinating lore-furthermore, back in like '03 I saw the edited American versions of that and this, so it was nice to experience both in full. In fact, I’ll copy and paste part of the review for Tombs as it helps explain the backstory:

“The titular Blind Dead rise at night… they are Knights Templar from the Middle Ages who became evil and via “Egyptian black magic” become immortal. Here, some villagers burn them alive and blind them w/ torches. Like with the aliens in A Quiet Place, they hunt only by sound, so of course all their victims do plenty of screaming and otherwise make plenty of noise. Say what you will about aspects of the story, mood and atmosphere do carry the film. It is a chilling tale and the soundtrack plays a critical role in creating this feeling-it is just creepy. The undead knights never looked not frightening, but when they are on their undead horses (that's right) and are shown riding in slow motion... that will be something I won't forget in the future.”

Like in Tombs, there is romantic drama done to flesh out the story. This time the characters are in a Portuguese village who are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Knights being defeated. Unlike someone who put this “goof” in that section of this movie’s IMDb page, I understand what “day for night” shooting is and how that was done often back in the day… a few scenes are like this but that doesn’t diminish the effectiveness of the movie. While it isn’t as atmospheric and moody (to paraphrase someone I follow here) there is more of everything: nudity, blood, violence, etc. After all, this begins with a woman having her top ripped off then her blood is lapped up AND her heart is eaten. Anyhow, the residents of the village attempt to fight back while trying to use the lore to their advantage, which is pretty neat.

It has the expected heroes & jerks, and even a “village idiot”. It’s all mixed together into a rather entertaining jam which thankfully was different enough from what else I’ve seen the past two months to make this worthwhile. BTW, I’ll admit this was a YouTube watch as it was in HD quality… albeit there’s more than one scene which are dubbed in different languages. One sounded like Spanish and the other definitely was German; it’s happened a few times before w/ me and it never ceases to amuse me.