Necrophagus

This Spanish-made horror flick suffers from many of the common short-comings of this type of genre; a disconjuncted plot, many awkward cuts and innane dialogues, actresses chosen for their looks more then acting ability, as well as a poor English over-dub of the Spanish screen play. The opening scene grabs your attention, but soon on "Graveyard of Horror" keeps you wondering not only what will happen next, but why what you just saw actually took place. That aside, the film does have some qualities which still can provide an attraction to the most-avid horror fan. The graveyard/castle settings provide a few atmospheric, though not chilling scenes. Best of all is the periodic use in the score of an uniquely errie whistled tune very similar to the melody of "Morning has Broken" which offers a seeming tranquil juxtaposition to the gory nature of this topsy-turvy grave robbing tale.

A melancholy aura hangs over this confused, weak-kneed Spanish production that's crammed full of classic gothic horror elements. The eerie photography is excellent and the dusty, scuffed-up, neglected looking castle interiors make for a glum and gloomy experience. It's too bad the story is so badly told and the long-awaited appearance of the monster is a joke, because other than those major shortcomings this movie has a lot going for it. A moody young man arrives at the family castle in Scotland and is told his wife died in childbirth. The castle is occupied by several very odd women (good luck keeping the familial relationships straight) and the details of the wife's demise don't add up. The local doctors are sour, unpleasant old coots, so the grieving husband doesn't get much help. None of the other characters are sympathetic either, and the presence of so many one-dimensionally hostile, antagonistic, sleazy scoundrels tends to limit viewer involvement. The determined hero digs up the grave and finds his wife's coffin empty. A lot of the other graves in the cemetery turn out to be vacant too. He learns that his missing scientist brother, the Earl of Binbrook, was working on some kind of bizarre, never-adequately-explained experiments with severed heads at the time of his disappearance. The audience knows long before the protagonist does that the Earl inadvertantly turned himself into a zombielike monster who has to be kept buried in the earth during the day, sustained with some kind of intraveneous monster serum. At night he crawls up out of his makeshift grave and eats corpses. An evil doctor and the shifty local gravedigger are in on the plot. The movie looks great but the meandering story is dumped into the film (and into bewildered viewers' laps) as a jumbled pile of lengthy flashbacks and memories in a manner that soon becomes more annoying than intriguing. The alleged hero disappears from the movie for about a third of its running time, and the audience knows perfectly well that he's not dead but the other characters discuss his sudden absence and sometimes see him (or think they do) wandering around the periphery. At the end he simply strolls back into the plot and we never do find where he was all that time. Just out for a long walk, it would seem. The worst problem in terms of believability is the monstrous flesh-eating ghoul's appearance. With green hair and a lumpy face with an oversized cartoonish mouth full of shark-like teeth, he looks more like an overaged trick-or-treater than a serious threat. I don't know what the goal of his experiments was, but he proves to be just as easy to kill as any ordinary mortal so I guess the results were something short of miraculous. As hinted at above, the editing is pretty terrible. In one scene the monster crawls up out of a grave in front of his next victim. The terrified meal-to-be is looking down at the rupture in the ground when all of a sudden the ghoul seems to be up above him, jumping down to attack from some kind of ledge! The same melancholy piece of music (it reminded me of "On Top Of Old Smoky") is heard throughout the film. When it isn't playing on the soundtrack, people either hum or whistle it or play it on a harmonica. One girl even does an up-tempo "tra-la-la" version of it. Other peculiarities include a dead cat in a suitcase (why?) and in one shot it looks like a large log is lying in someone's bed. (I've heard of sleeping like a log, but really.) The thing that salvages this movie from the dustbin, other than the memorably decrepit scenery, is the inclusion of a few extremely creepy sequences. When the ghoul wakes up in his grave, a loud heartbeat is heard, the ground throbs and heaves, and green hands with sharp claws thrust out of the earth (classic stuff). And the maddened bloodcurdling scream of rage the monster belts out every time he's about to attack is one of the scariest monster noises I've ever heard. It ought to be included on Halloween sound effect records. Haunted house attractions could scare their patrons half to death with it. The bottom line is that GRAVEYARD OF HORROR (which was made as NECROPHAGUS but given a traditionally dumbed-down title by its American distributors) is a good-looking misfire that will only appeal to diehard gothic Euro-horror fanatics. The English dub calls one character "Skaife" as an in-joke reference to the anglicized name of the director on English language prints.

After having away for some time , a young called Michael Sherrington : Bill Curran, returns home to encounter his spouse to find out that she has died during the childbirth . He attempts to solve what happened , but no one , mother and sisters , answer his questions and in fact they have become hostile . There are also two doctors , Dr Lexter : Frank Braña and Dr Kinberg : Antonio Jiménez Escribano who seem to be suspicious by withholding information and know something about her . Then Michael goes to local cemetery asking for the gravedigger : Victor Israel to unearth his wife , but the latter threatens to denounce him to Police . Nevertheleess , the man goes on his obsession and buries out the tomb by digging up where his wife lies to see if he can find out what happened to her , ultimately to resolve that it is empty. Later on , Michael is attacked and knocked out by two weird demon masked beings , and he suddenly disappears .

A bizarre European Gothic with no much sense , horror , supernatural events , hideous monster, weirdness and lousy dubbing . A twisted and absurd mess whose results will leave you embarrasing and bewildering . Resulting to be a rare and eerie terror tale with thrills , chills , plot twists , and being really boring. There appears some habitual Spanish secondaries : Frank Braña, Victor Israel, Antonio Jiménez Escribinano , all of them regular in all kinds of genres of the Sixties ans Seventies as Spaghetti, Paella Western , Terror , Euro-spy sub-genre , Giallo , or Jesus Franco films .

It displays a dark and sinister cinematography by Alfonso Nieva , being extremely necessary a perfect remastering . As well as a gloomy and terrifying musical score by Alfonso Santiesteban. The motion picture was lousily and badly directed by Miguel Madrid who often uses pseudonym Michael Skaife, here providing a morbid and outlandish terror entry with plenty of flashbacks as well . Miguel Madrid was a hack writer and director . He only mady three films, this "Necrophagus" or "The butcher of Binbrook" or "Graveyard of horror" 1971 , an erotic film titled "Bacanal en Directo" 1979 and another terror giallo film , the really weird "El Asesino de Muñecas" 1975 . Rating : 2.5/10 . Below average . Bottom of barrel .

Firstly a warning: this film is a very aquired taste. If you like 'hip' new American Slasher films such as Wes Craven's "Scream", then this film is probably not for you (your head may explode!) But, if you are a devout fan early-70's Spanish horror films like me, this is very highly recommended. You may feel somewhat dis-orientated - but that is the film's intention, it does not want to you to have a clear idea of exavtly what is going on for the first 50 minutes! The director plays with the viewer by fragmenting the narrative in a jarring way backwards and forwards so the chronology can only be worked out at the end. The wintery locations and gothic imagery give the whole film a sense of unease and melancholy. There would be no point in me trying to explain the plot of this movie as it would ruin the dis-orientating experience. The title has become very mis-leading since Jorg Buttgereit unleashed "Nekromantik" upon the world: there is NO gore, NO nudity, NO graphic depictions of necrophilia. But it certainly IS as disturbing as Buttgereit's film because of all the dark undercurrents in the film's depictions of rural family life and the decay of heritage. However, it is advised that the movie be watched in the language it is shot in, Spanish, as the English dubbing in the American and Scandinavian video releases is truly appalling. Unfortuantely, the Spanish video release (Norma Video) is very very rare.

The English translation of the title on the DVD version of this film is "Graveyard of Horrors," but I think that must be an error. It should have been called "Graveyard of Horribles." Horrible acting, horrible editing, horrible story, and horrible music all make this a horrible film best left in a horrible graveyard.

Horrible.