Explore the Evil Death Cult of The Blind Dead
by Keri O’Shea
There have been countless undead hordes down through the years, but Amando de Ossorio’s skeletal, cowl-wearing Knights from his Blind Dead series of films have a special place in the history of the genre. Appearing in four films altogether – Tombs of the Blind Dead, Return of the Evil Dead, Horror of the Zombies and Night of the Seagulls – Ossorio’s walking corpses emerge straight out of a unique place and time in European cinema.
Spain in the 1970s was a country on the cusp of some great social changes: by this time, Spain was at last experiencing the death throes of General Franco’s repressive fascist regime. Yet, although the younger generation sensed that change was coming, Franco – like practically every dictator before and after him – still maintained his skeletal grip on the creative arts, and film was no exception. Many Spanish filmmakers had no choice but to take their projects elsewhere in Europe. Jess Franco went to France in order to make his more lurid, sex-and-violence-heavy movies during the same decade; Amando de Ossorio made Tombs of the Blind Dead in the less-reactionary, neighbouring country of Portugal. Wherever filmmakers might find themselves, though, it was inevitable that they would carry the issues of their homeland with them as contextualising factors.
Not only was Ossorio’s background unusual, but the inspiration for his undead comes from an ingenious source too. The creatures fighting their way out from under their Ankh-shaped grave markers are Knights Templar. The Templars – who have found their way into several conspiracy yarns in recent years – were a Medieval Crusading order responsible for much of the infrastructure put in place by Christians during their battles for the Holy Land. As the Christians gradually lost the lands they had won from the Muslims, the Templars lost influence, and their eventual fall from grace was spectacular. They were accused of occult practices, with many being tortured and executed. These scandals are our basis for the Blind Dead series: in Ossorio’s vision, the Templar rituals granting eternal life were effective…
It’s a uniquely creepy vision. These mostly skeletonised beings are reanimated not by radiation, nor secret army experiments: here, it is supernatural forces which make them crave (mostly nubile, female) flesh, or, more accurately, blood, according to the same rituals they were practicing in the Middle Ages. These may be some of the oldest reawakened corpses ever to grace the screen and – although they have much in common with screen zombies – they aren’t simply automatons, as they use their sense of hearing and touch to locate their victims (having been blinded when their eyes were pecked out by birds while they languished on the gallows). They aren’t confined to shambling after their victims either, as they can also track them, Nazgul-style, on ghostly horseback.
The series starts with Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971) and an unhappy ménage a trois – Virginia White (María Elena Arpón) meets up with old school friend Betty (Lone Fleming) whilst poolside in Lisbon, but when Virginia’s male companion Roger (César Burner) invites Betty along for a weekend break, Virginia gets jealous. In a fit of pique, she jumps out of the train on which they’re travelling to their hotel. She decides to stay the night in some nearby ruins – where her presence awakens the Templars who are buried on the property. Betty and Roger dedicate themselves to finding out what happened to Virginia, whose body has, we learn from the morgue attendant, been mutilated by a number of ‘sadistic’ assailants. Those bite marks on her body come from multiple sources…
Although by no means a straightforward zombie flick, the Templars from Tombs of the Blind Dead do seem able to communicate their condition to their victims through biting. They also share the relentlessness of their zombie brethren – with a subtle, yet shocking ending, which very definitely says that modernity is no barrier to their particular brand of danger.
Return of the Evil Dead (1973) – AKA Return of the Blind Dead, sees the Templars return to terrorize a village during its celebration of victory over the Templars 500 years previously. Whilst lacking the punch of the first film, it’s still capable of some decidedly tense moments – and again, it is the blood of a terrified young woman which reawakens the dead. The dead then assault the town, exploiting people’s self-interest and their inability to work together as they pick off the inhabitants one by one. We get even more female flesh under threat in the third sequel, the rather disappointing Horror of the Zombies (1974) – AKA The Ghost Galleon. A pair of – wouldn’t you know – stranded swimsuit models discover a mysterious old ship which turns out to be a floating Templar graveyard. They decide to explore the vessel and to radio for help, but they then disappear. A group of rescuers, including a professor interested in the legend of the Templar ship, sets out to look for them and, although the Templars lack their trademark steeds in this film, they can still hold their own against such a motley crew in a film which still boasts some powerful visuals, but not the intensity of the first film in the series. The final instalment of the Blind Dead series – Night of the Seagulls – was released in 1975. Whilst suffering from some of the same issues as its predecessor in terms of pacing, it’s notable for the fact that, here, all the villagers living alongside the Templar dead are complicit in their actions: every seven years, they assuage their bloodlust by offering them human sacrifices. When a new doctor and his wife move to the village just before another wave of killings is due to take place, they find that the villagers are very keen to keep their behaviour secret.
As with any series of films which run to four parts, the quality of these films varies. The first two films certainly, for me, set the bar: although there are still commendable features in each sequel, Tombs of the Blind Dead and Return of the Evil Dead more easily balance action and atmosphere, as well as making the most of the unique qualities of the Templars themselves. What all the films have in common, however, is the type of victim which the Templars are especially motivated to hunt and kill. These Templar undead – wicked, relentless, murderous – decimate the liberated and the young, providing us with Ossorio’s vision of a modern Spain which cannot leave its fusty past behind. Self-declared ‘city slickers’ like Betty and Virginia in Tombs of the Blind Dead bear the brunt of this; no matter how self-reliant these young women think they are, they will have the life literally sucked out of them by the inhabitants of a rotten, repressive and unchanged old world. Corrupt 
Old Spain is destroying its own people – as much if they fight against it (Virginia in Tombs of the Blind Dead) as if they acquiesce to it, providing sacrifices to it (Night of the Seagulls).
Although you might spot evidence of the influence of the Templar undead in later Euro horrors – such as perhaps the monastic gut-munchers of Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground or Jess Franco’s later movie Mansion of the Living Dead – the Blind Dead series is disturbingly innovative, and well-deserves its place in the canon.
