Noche de las gaviotas, La (1975)

... aka: Blind Dead 4, The
... aka: Bloodfeast of the Blind Dead, The
... aka: Don't Go Out at Night
... aka: Night of the Death Cult
... aka: Night of the Evil Dead
... aka: Night of the Seagulls, The
... aka: Terror Beach

Directed by:
Amando de Ossorio

De Ossorio's Blind Dead series concluded with this fourth and final chapter, which follows TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD (1971), RETURN OF EVIL DEAD (1972) and THE GHOST GALLEON (1973). In the opening period-set sequence, a lost couple traveling alone at night are ambushed by the evil (and still human) Templar knights, who arrive on horseback looking for a sacrifice. The villagers refuse to open their doors to help the couple as the man is killed. The woman is dragged back to the Templar's lair where they rip off her top, cut out her heart, offer it up to some Sea God (I'm sure he's thankful), partially cannibalize her corpse and then let crabs take care of the scraps. The film then jumps ahead to today in the same exact village where history's about to repeat itself. A couple; Dr. Henry Stein (Victor Petit) and his wife Joan (María Kosty), arrive in the same tiny, crumbling village and find themselves also being given a cold shoulder by all the superstitious and unfriendly villagers. Perhaps there's a good reason they don't want them there?

When Henry and Joan make it to the pile of rubble that is to be their new home, they meet up with the elderly doctor Henry is supposed to replace. He warns them to leave immediately and says if they insist on staying there to never ask the villagers questions and never to go outside at night. So what do the couple do? Stay there, immediately go out at night and then start asking the villagers questions. Joan meets a pitiable retarded man named Teddy (José Antonio Calvo) whom the villagers like to beat on and lets him stay in the attic of their home because he has no place else to go. Later that night, Joan is awaken by singing, the sound of bells and the cries of seagulls (which isn't supposed to happen after dark), so she and her hubby go down to the beach and see a procession of hooded people leading a nightgown-clad woman along the beach. Chalking it up to old customs, they return to their home and just miss out on a human sacrifice. Maybe that would have finally been enough to scare these suckers away.

As it turns out, the evil undead knights - now skeletal zombies - like to crawl out of their tombs in their ocean-front castle home, saddle up their ghost horses and then head out onto the beach to find an unlucky maiden chained to a rock who's been offered up to them willingly by the villagers. The young women are eventually scooped up by the zombies and go through the same routine as the woman in the opening sequence (crabs included). Every seven years, seven girls must be sacrificed for seven consecutive days to pacify these corpses or else there will be hell to pay. Henry and Joan feel compelled to get involved when a young woman named Tilda ("Julie James" aka Julia Saly) shows up at their home all hysterical and then is never heard from again after the villagers come get her.

Another girl in peril is teenager Lucy (Sandra Mozarowsky), a sad orphan who comes to work for Henry and Joan but is too afraid to tell them anything, at least at first. And it's no wonder. When Teddy simply shows the doctor where Tilda lives, some village men chase after him with sticks, pelt him with rocks and then push him off a cliff! The villagers eventually come for Lucy and cart her off but Henry goes down to the beach that night and rescues her, breaking the chain of seven needed to keep the "horsemen of the sea" happy. As legend has it, if the knights aren't given all of their sacrifices they'll ride into town and slaughter everyone there. The locals are smart enough to load up their donkeys and head out, but our heroes aren't so fortunate. Because their car is stolen and Teddy cannot be moved from his injuries, Henry, Joan and Lucy all must face the wrath of the Blind Dead all by themselves. They board themselves up in their house NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD-style and hope for the best.

I'll admit to blasting this series over the years, but I honestly felt justified. I found Tombs to be uneven and overrated by many fans, Return to be enjoyably cheesy at best and Galleon to be flat out terrible. As a result of those, I put off watching this final entry for a very long time. Hell, I've owned the DVD for seven years and just now got around to watching it. So I'm very pleased to report that I actually really enjoyed this one. It's easily the best entry of the series for me. One problem De Ossorio never had was great villains at his disposal. In the other three films, the designs on these creaky, slow-moving skeleton knights were clearly the best thing about an otherwise mediocre film. Here, they are a great assets to an otherwise solidly-made one. The director is smart enough to keep them in the shadows until towards the end and has made some alterations to the mythology to make them seem more mysterious and creepy. Of course, all of this would be for naught if this film had the same weak writing, bad acting and terrible dialogue that plagued the other three movies. Thankfully, it does not.

After getting over my initial annoyance of the couple sticking around when they really shouldn't (and to be fair - the wife really doesn't want to be there), I found myself eventually getting swept into this intoxicatingly atmospheric tale. The music (which is often reminiscent of the Oscar-winning OMEN score), shooting locations and even the hazy, day-for-night photography are all great. The storyline is solid, surprisingly good performances (and English dubbing) usually keep this from lapsing into unintentional comedy and the atmosphere; crumbling stone buildings, ocean waters glimmering in the moonlight, rocky cliffs and mossy step hillsides dotted with pebbles, is superbly creepy. The director fumbles a few of the action sequences toward the end, but for the most part does a fine job with the pacing and horror scenes.

The characters are much more likable (and far less annoying) than in the previous entries. Of the cast, three of the actresses probably provide the most interest. Pretty, wide-eyed blonde Kosty (who'd already appeared in DEMON WITCH CHILD and [the lousy] NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS for the same director) always seems to be overlooked in these things despite being a fine actress. She really seems to be into all of her scenes here and there's a great moment where she has to go from being terrified to empathetic in a split second that she absolutely nails. Mozarowsky was another lovely young actress who made a handful of genre appearances (her largest role was perhaps in the dull SCHOOL OF DEATH) before tragically taking her own life in 1977 (she was only 18 years old). Saly went on to act alongside Paul Naschy in many features (including playing Countess Bathory in NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF) and even produced some of these films. Petit is sufficient in the lead, the actor playing Teddy is great and the older actors cast as the villagers look their parts.

Originally released in cut form to U.S. theatres as Night of the Death Cult, this later made its way to video under both that title and as Terror Beach. In Germany, the title was The Bloodfeast of the Blind Dead. The uncut DVD is from Blue Underground.

★★★

Las garras de lorelei (1974)

... aka: Grasp of the Lorelei
... aka: Lorelei's Grasp, The
... aka: Loreley's Grasp, The
... aka: Night the Screaming Stopped, The
... aka: When the Screaming Stops

Directed by:
Amando de Ossorio

When a young woman tells her future husband "It's bad luck to see the bride before the wedding" she ain't a kidding as a scaly lizard monster leaps through her window and claws her to death. An autopsy uncovers that the girl's heart is missing and the m.o. matches the "Legend of the Seven Full Moons" which states that a sea siren known as the Lorelei will periodically transform into a ferocious beast who will need to devour human hearts in order to return to her centuries old "dream." A Hungarian wandering minstral who stands on the street corner playing the song of the Lorelei on his violin for spare change tries to warn of the legend, but no one takes him seriously. Elke Ackerman (Silvia Tortosa), an uptight, sexually-repressed teacher (uh-huh... just take a look at this babe [fourth picture down]) at the local all-girls school, shows up at a pub looking for someone to help. The mayor (Luis Induni) hooks her up with Sirgurd (Tony Kendall), one of the best and most experienced hunters in the area. He's to guard the school and make sure nothing becomes of the nubile, boy-crazy young ladies there. Sirgurd sets down a 9pm curfew, where all windows and doors are to be locked and no one is to leave the gated school grounds. Meanwhile, a female villager who doesn't have the luxury of Sirgurd's services gets an unscheduled mastectomy when the vicious sea critter shows up at her home and rips her tit off.

While patrolling the school grounds one night, Sirgurd comes across a mysterious, cloaked, pale-skinned redhead (Helga Liné) lurking about. She runs off before he can catch her. Since the school rules forbid men from swimming with the students, Sirgurd is forced to go bathe in a nearby lake instead. There, he catches sight of the same woman he'd seen the night before, though this time she's clad in a green fringe bikini. She runs off yet again. He is however able to catch a man hanging around the area who turns out be a scientist on the hunt for the creature. The scientist - Professor Von Lander (Ángel Menéndez) - takes Sirgurd back to his lab for a demonstration of how a chemical taken from a chameleon combined with light from an "analytic spectrum" that mimics moonlight can turn a human hand into a clawed lizard hand. And thus the chemical plus the moonlight combined together can revert a human back to the distant origin of the species. Or something like that. He also happens to have a radioactively-charged dagger that can "destroy the cellular mutations of Lorelei and send her back into the legendary night from which she has come." Both the blind man and the man whose girlfriend was killed (who's vowed to hunt the beast down) are killed. In fact, anyone with knowledge of, or a vendetta against, the Lorelei ends up dead and missing a certain vital organ.

Needless to say, the alluring redhead Sirgurd keeps seeing is the Lorelei... but someone should have clued our dense hero in on this. Despite the legend, despite the murders, despite the fact she's lurking around the school at all hours of the night and despite the science demonstration, Sirgurd refuses to believe the strange woman he's just fallen in love with is the creature... Even when she says her name is Lorelei. Hey, I know that Helga Liné is hot and all that, but really, man? Lorelei and her male servant Alberic (an uncredited Luis Barboo) decide to pay the professor - who lets all kinds of animals run loose in his lab, including a sheep! - a visit. Lorelei burns all of his research papers and Alberic whips him until a beaker full of acid falls over onto his face. Eventually, Sirgurd goes diving and discovers an underground cave that leads to a huge hidden palace where Lorelei, Alberic and three man-hungry cave women dressed in rags (!?) live. Sirgurd is tied up while Lorelei goes to the school to try to kill Elke. Thankfully, one of the cavewomen is jealous of Lorelei and decides to let him loose, which results in a cave woman catfight, the palace exploding thanks to dynamite that doesn't explode until about twenty minutes after it's lit and Sirgurd rushing to the school to try to save Elke.

In Loreley's Grasp, the good and the bad duke it out to see who comes out on top. In the good corner, the director makes good use of some lovely outdoor locations, there's a haunting theme song, several of the actresses are gorgeous to look at, the photography isn't bad and many of the murder sequences are surprisingly quite gory. In the bad corner, the film is stuck with a bland, uninteresting male lead who decides to just act macho and stoic throughout, the man-in-a-rubber-suit lizard creature design is weak (though they're smart enough to keep it shrouded in the dark for the most part) and De Ossorio's script is pretty awful. The premise is serviceable enough, but the dialogue is awful, the characters are dull and the plot - ridiculous and stupid as it often is - is presented very matter-of-factly. It's both humorless and dramatically flaccid, and also refuses to even stick with its own created mythology. One man claims the creature "claims new victims every night" and another says it only attacks on a full moon. Make up your mind! There's actually some potential in here for a very good film but we end up with mildly-entertaining schlock instead. Worse things have happened I suppose. On the battle of good vs. bad, it's about a draw.

The cast includes Loreta Tovar as a blonde schoolgirl who's attacked while taking a bubble bath, José Thelman as the vengeful groom-to-be, Betsabé Ruiz as the first victim and Marisol Delgado as another of the teachers. All of them - along with Kendall and Barboo - were also in the director's RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD (1973), filmed the same year. Tortosa (who's absolutely gorgeous but gets shoved off to the side toward the end) and Line (whose unconventional beauty is perfect for her role) had both appeared in the classic HORROR EXPRESS (1972), alongside Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savales, before this one.

 

These are pretty cool. On one of the original U.S. theatrical trailers, someone added psychedelic flashes of comic-like art into the trailer. I snatched 'em all up for your viewing pleasure.  

 

It was reissued in the U.S. in a cut version as When the Screaming Stops. That version had a theatrical gimmick; a flashing red light preceding the gore scenes, added. That version was also released on VHS by Lightning Video. The Deimos DVD version doesn't come with it, but of course is the superior remastered, uncut print.

★★