Thursday 3 October 2013

Representing Portugal By Way of Spain: Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cd/Tombs_of_the_Blind_Dead_Poster.jpg

Dir. Amando de Ossorio

The most entertaining thing from the viewing experience of Tombs of the Blind Dead wasn't anything in the film; needing a drink to get through it part of the way through, it was the beer upon opening it exploding in a fountain of golden ale foam and not seeming to end that was more entertaining. It made a mess of the kitchen top, but it was of more interest than the disappointment when, viewing this highly regarded horror film, the first in a whole series of them, I find it to be such a complete failure in what I was hoping for. The beginning of film's series, Tombs of the Blind Dead touts a cultish space in European horror cinema in depicting undead Templar Knights on horseback with swords on a rudimentary level, a potential for adding historical and mystical material to familiar horror tropes. It's a long wait before you even get to the knights as the first twenty minutes or so is an incredibly dull drama, ending with a woman jumping off a train, in the middle of nowhere, when her boarding school friend gets too close to her boyfriend (and her) for comfort. Its plodding dramatic scenes you have to put up with. And it may just say something about me, but up to viewing this film at the moment I did, I had more enough depictions of lipstick lesbians already so that the risqué twist shown here was enough to make me oversaturated to it. It actually shows how clunky and arbitrary this kind of material can be presented though, lurid or with depth or both, when comparing it to other works that don't seem to have crowbarred it in without any sense of nuisance or entertainment in it, and this sense of cheapness runs through other aspects of the whole film.


From http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3085/2865460697_bded6df2db_o.jpg

When the Blind Dead do make their appearance, it's clear I was in a place where the film would never get good. The idea of Templar Knights and the fact that, blind, they have to use sound to find their prey is great, but they're never threatening or scary. The image dashed, in my head for all these years before finally seeing this, was of an atmospheric film, very misty or fog covered, an occult or threatening edge to make the Templar even more unsettling when they arrive on horseback or rise from their graves. It doesn't turn out that way. Its men in costumes slowly lumbering along, occasionally swinging a sword. There is no sense of dreading mood, even though its set around an abandoned medieval  village where the Templar rest. The whole film is really cheap, sluggish horror. It tries to bring in zombie infection briefly which never goes anywhere, and drags the narrative into a different location without any reason. Characters are pointlessly introduced, and in complete tastelessness, there's an abrupt rape scene near the end where, after being forced to the ground, the female character just buttons her shirt back up with no sense of a negative reaction to it. Say what you want of a director like Lucio Fulci, even if someone bring up The New York Ripper (1982) to question this point I'm about to make, but something like this scene for me is an actual case of something incredibly sexist and morally objectionable. I don't use the word 'misogyny' because my definition of the word, the complete hatred of the whole female gender, means it should only be used in extreme cases, but a scene like this in Tombs of the Blind Dead is a prime candidate for foul gender depictions and more so for how slapdash its depicted. A director like Fulci, for an example of someone accused of objectionable content, comes off as a misanthropic nihilist, and more importantly from what I've seen of his, even if he lingers luridly on something it still feels extremely painful and horrifying when he shows something horrible. Here, its sexual violence which happens with no sense of the director making it painful to sit through even in the context of an exploitation film, and its worse because its quickly forgotten and is incredibly pointless in its placement there. A film that was already terrible shows how poor it is further with a moment like this because, despite the scene not being that explicit, it shows that it clearly has no sense of care and thought in how it was put together. That a film can do something this cack-handed, without taking into account how offensive it truly is, shows how sloppy the movie is more so with a moment that digs its own grave the viewer would have made to kick it in after the end credits.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4rgS5z_NBYJT16YoBwQDDJzNkoJElpxS118ucrUtqA275BfsGSv17D6lgmIdXFUiO3ekvFVoPBi2ABjzOhX56lDdKoq4rmIEGXxl7CfetCdwPstA5qaAwKnu0D_pjUx9px_C1S826RlM/s1600/vlcsnap-2012-10-23-19h20m03s201.png

And I realise how head and above a critically maligned director like Fulci viewing this. Even Jess Franco is above this by many, many tiers in his lowest. Directors like them, even if they could fail miserably, had the ability to create potent moods and tension with even hack material. Zombi 2 (1979), Fulci's film, is art in a legitimate sense next to this, completely in a different world in the construction and what is shown onscreen in images and tone. In comparison there's a decided lack of artistry here, a squandered potential. There's nothing entertaining about it even as just a junky zombie film. The later films in this series could redeem the experience of this one, but as I fall in love with European horror films of the seventies and early eighties, I may defend less than good ones occasionally but I'm also incredibly picky with them too. Just red paint blood and people screaming is not enough unless its well made, effecting or completely insane, and this has none of the above.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhADM6Y511MY7mhyMlOxfN1pLodal8RCGnhGTTfHjm3yZIYfpJthEf3uKy-Hykj_w2yzh7nrLK2qDJKI_qC2RYXoEzxnIyhgiKUD0xo5UTttTKFVknjdhbouwBRyjYrvsJdb_lRLrqwFG4/s1600/blind+dead+mannequins.jpg

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