Der Sumpf der Raben

The Swamp of the Ravens - 1974 (This Film Rates a D )

The Swamp of the Ravens, a 1974 Spanish horror film, is a lackluster effort that fails to deliver on its promising premise. The story follows Dr. Frosta, a ruthless and abusive scientist who conducts twisted experiments in genetic mutations, defying his superiors' orders to cease his research. "You are all wrong if you think you are going to stop me!". Dr. Frosta's work ultimately leads to the reanimation of the dead, but the film's execution is marred by poor pacing, subpar acting, and atrocious dubbing. The script is riddled with cringe-worthy dialogue, and the characters are one-dimensional and unengaging. The film's attempts at horror are uninspired and rely on cheap shocks rather than genuine tension. The autopsy sequence is the only notable exception, but it's not enough to redeem the rest of the film. The rising of the dead is also underwhelming, lacking any real sense of dread or urgency. The Swamp of the Ravens is further hindered by its poor production values. The soundtrack is often grating and fails to complement the on-screen action. The love scenes are awkward and uncomfortable, and the inclusion of soft-core necrophilia was creepy. There are so many unrealized ideas and missed opportunities that could have made this film succeed.

In THE SWAMP OF THE RAVENS, Dr. Frosta (Raymond Oliver) is a scientist driven to reanimate the dead. Of course, this doesn't go over well with his colleagues, causing him to go rogue. Frosta's compulsion leads to several murders and an unholy necrophilia sequence.

This movie features many fetuses in jars, odd nightclub crooning, and an actual autopsy performed -in front of the cast!- in such a nonchalant, matter-of-fact way that they might as well have been carving a turkey!

Though incredibly cheap, cheeezey, and the very epitome of schlock, there's an undeniable sense of dread and bleakness to this film that defies explanation. The scene with the zombies rising from the titular swamp is unexpectedly, skin-bubbling-ly effective...

This truly exemplary vomit of unbound Euro-horror weirdness is messily projected in lurid colour by fiendishly tasteless director Manuel Cano whose gruesome knack for greasy, nut-ball bonkers visuals is given ample room to groove in his grimy opus, 'The Swamp of The Ravens' (1974). While there are many grimily veiled references to Edgar Allan Poe, the film owes a huge diabolical debt to H. P Lovecraft's immortal short story 'Re-Animator'. There are also a few sinister similarities to Stuart Gordon's landmark film; especially in the eerie manner the foully 're-brained' corpses awaken in such a grammatically impaired, full-voiced fashion! Much like maestro Lovecraft's classic eldritch tale, the disgraced medic continues his doomily debased experiments with circumventing the grim finality of brain death, and perfecting his titanically troublesome elixir in a suitably Gothic locale; a mouldering, cadaver-infested swamp seemingly overrun with these truly gross-looking Raven / vulture hybrids constantly shrieking as if at the brink of some terrible agonizing death themselves! The majestically morbid and suitably weird psychedelic pan-pipe soundtrack by Joaquin Torres doing much to increase the already monumental levels of brain-tweaking oddness to vertiginous levels of delirium! (There is this one wildly incongruous montage featuring a series of especially malefic-looking stillborn babies in jaundiced pickle jars which is in delightfully bad taste!) 'The Swamp of The Ravens' is diabolically delirious, psychotronic midnight movie madness that should greatly appease the gibbering necrophiliac that lurks deep inside all of our murky synaptic folds!

Something I always hated with horror movies from the older days of color is how much the blood looks like paint. HG Lewis took that to extremes in movies like Blood Feast and Color Me in Blood. Even the French Connection had cartoonish red paint meant to be blood in a scene or two. This movie does also but watching it without color makes it a suitably disturbing horror movie experience.

The pace for this film is pretty decent. It drags a little when Dr Frosta tries to get his boss involved in his little experiements. There are some disturbing moments like the real autopsy scene, and the bizarre rape scene with his living or dead girlfriend, not sure if she was reanimated by then or not, or at all. Others mentioned the song and it really is a highlight considering how sincerely it is sung. In this age of realdolls, i can imagine some YouTube karoke video turning up with a guy lipsyncing to the song while holding his rubbery lady friend.

Ramiro Oliveros plays a bad doctor named Dr. Frosta, who's up to your usual demented nonsense for a researcher in a horror film. His aim is to conquer death, so he regularly messes around with cadavers. All of the rejects are taken to the nearby swamp for disposal. Meanwhile, Dr. Frostas' fed-up girlfriend Simone (Marcia Bichette) has announced her desire to leave him for another man, night club crooner Richard (Marcos Molina). And Dr. Frosta had better watch it, for a dedicated police inspector, played by the always entertaining Fernando Sancho, is on the case.

This Spanish-Ecuadoran horror film may well test the patience of some Euro-horror lovers. It's not gory enough, sleazy enough, atmospheric enough, or even funny enough, to quite succeed. It's best described as mildly amusing. Not much of note ever happens, but that doesn't mean that "The Swamp of the Ravens" is without its pleasures. For example, the inspector receives a gruesome piece of evidence - a severed hand - while he is stuffing his face at a restaurant.

There are also low points, of course. Early on in the film there are some cringe-inducing romantic episodes with Simone and Richard. Director Manuel Cano fails to give the proceedings much style when it comes to his handling of the material. The performances are on a par with the film itself: no more than passably amusing. Oliveros is a handsome guy, but his antagonist is simply boring. At least we get one interesting character in the form of Frostas' mute assistant (Domingo Valdivieso), who kind of resembles Anthony Perkins.

The dead bodies in the swamp never pay off as much as one would like, and the title is a misnomer: it should have been titled "The Swamp of the Buzzards". However, in presumably some sort of attempt to justify the title, Dr. Frosta quotes Poe right at the end.

Five out of 10.