Rating: NR
Genre: Horror
Release Date: 09/26/2006
SubTitles: English
Dubbed: English/Espanol
Sound: DDM2.0
Run Time: 184 min
Flags: Not For Children
Distributor/Studio: Blue Underground

A young woman's unplanned visit to an abandoned village awakens a deadly ancient evil in director Amando De Ossorio's eerie, graphic horror flick that spawned a trio of lesser sequels. While vacationing with a male friend named Roger (Cesar Burner), pretty Virginia (Elena Arpon aka "Helen Harp") runs into her old girlfriend, Betty (Lone Fleming), with whom she once shared an intimate experience. At Roger's insistence -- and to Virginia's annoyance -- Betty joins the couple on a train excursion. Virginia decides to jump off the train and camp out in the solitary village of Berzano. She discovers the place is a ghost town, but as night closes in, evil Templar knights rise from their graves to kill her and to drink her blood. The next day, Betty and Roger begin searching for their friend, but are shocked when a detective (Rufino Ingles) takes them to identify her brutalized corpse. Their investigation leads them to a local expert, Professor Cantell (Francisco Sanz), who explains the terrifying legend of the Templars: 13th century Satan-worshipping knights who were executed and had their eyes plucked out by crows. Meanwhile, Virginia's corpse rises from the dead and kills a morgue attendant before being torched by Betty's frightened assistant. Not wanting to believe Cantell's outrageous story, Roger and Betty meet with the professor's son, Pedro (Joseph Thelman), a suspect in Virginia's murder because of his criminal background. He agrees to help them stake out Berzano and find the real killer, but as night arrives, the blind Knights rise once again from their graves leading to murder and mayhem. Betty manages to escape and jumps on a passing train, but it's all for nought as the horse-riding Templars catch up to the train and continue their bloody rampage.

~ Patrick Legare, All Movie Guide

Amando De Ossorio's 1971 cult classic has arguably proven to be the Spanish director's best and most successful film. The chilling tale focuses on the 13th century Templars, a group of murderous, devil-worshipping knights whose desire for eternal life resulted in them being executed. Left to hang, their eyes were plucked out by hungry crows which explains their blindness as undead ghouls. The arrival of flesh-and-blood visitors awakens the blind corpses who then go on a bloody rampage in which they follow their victims by sound -- including a heartbeat in one fantastic sequence. While its low budget is obvious, De Ossorio manages to keep the film on its feet thanks to an unsettling atmosphere and copious amounts of sexuality and gore that are tame by modern standards. The bloody special makeup effects are not always realistic looking, but they are effective, with a passenger-train massacre at the climax providing the coup de grāce. Other technical credits are decent, but it is Pablo Ripoll's shadowy cinematography that stands out the most thanks to an eerie slow-motion technique that works in perfect unison with the shrill, echoey sound effects and a haunting chant-like score by Anton Garcia Abril. The performers do adequate jobs in their roles, but they all really just serve as victims to the skeletal zombies who are the real stars of the film.

~ Patrick Legare, All Movie Guide

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Cast:
Caesar Burner|Helen Harp|Jose Telman|Juan Cortes|Lone Fleming|Maria Silva|Simon Arriaga|Veronica Limera