El sonido de la muerte

If you are a fan of vintage, cult horror movies like I am then you will absolutely love this movie. I cannot believe that it has no cult following! I can't even find a movie poster for it. Although it is a low budget, dubbed, Spanish movie it has a great story with very good acting and the effects are as cool as can be.

Overall it is made in the typical fashion of horror movies of this period but has some real surprises along the way. The acting and dubbing is far superior than most. The sets are good. The camera work is average or a little above. But the story is very good and interesting with many scenes that I do not want to give away. The black and white make it moody and pretty scary. There are some rather gory effects especially for the time. The monster is invisible for the most part yet you can really imagine it from some cool footprints and the blood curdling noise that it makes. You really worry for the people in this movie. It also has one of the most surprise endings that I have ever seen in a movie of this era.

Another reason that I can't understand why this movie is not out there is that it is Ingrid Pitt's first movie role. She is lovely as ever but looks a lot different than her 1970's roles.

This movie is a must for vintage horror fans.

I remember first seeing this film on television back in the 1970's. At that time I watched it in the middle of the night. It played right after Brides of Blood. At the time I didn't know what the film was called but years later I read about the title in a film book. Now I have been able to see the film again after nearly 30 years as it has become available on DVD (although a poor print). The film still has it's scary moments and is notable as being Ingrid Pitt's first film as well as featuring Soledad Miranda. I can't give the film a high rating as it is very slow overall but the sounds the creature makes as well as the death scenes are very well done for such a low budget film.

When a group of isolated people in the Greek mountains set off a cave explosion, they are menaced by an invisible shrieking dinosaur that had been buried for eons.

As it happens, director José Antonio Nieves Conde was fairly prolific from the 1940s through the 1970s. Unfortunately, he was mostly prolific in Spain, and therefore little known in the United States. I wonder what other gems he has to offer and how easy they would be to track down...

This film also features the debut of Ingrid Pitt, which has to be worth something. This is a cheap horror film (invisible dinosaurs are about as inexpensive as it gets), but having Pitt in there makes it quite important in retrospect...

Don't know why I'm bothering to compile this review as obviously no one is ever likely going to read it, seeing as how the film has to date attracted just ONE other review and no votes in all the years it must have been here!!

Let me tell you something...dubbed it may be, but for what was obviously an ultra low-budget entry in the horror film genre (I mean, how cheap can the fx for an invisible dinosaur be???) it delivers both suspense and horror, even in black and white, which strangely adds to, rather than detracts from, the events at hand.

Comparable I suppose (and not necessarily favorably) to the invisible monster from the Id in FORBIDDEN PLANET, this newly hatched dinosaur takes out, quite unpleasantly I may add, several of the would-be treasure hunters that disturb its cave somewhere in Greece. It also emits quite a chilling noise during its approach, giving rise to the title which in most countries outside its native Spain, was THE PREHISTORIC SOUND (not surprisingly).

Some really long lasting images here. The scientist who first has his face slashed to pieces as he enters the cave. The survivors plight as they surround their refuge with flour (or something similar) to give them at least some warning of the beast's proximity. This sequence is especially well-done and highly suspenseful. The concluding scenes I will not divulge but are, let me say, unexpected and a cut above the usual (no pun intended!)

Decent little movie folks - trust me, I'm a reviewer!

With this type of film there always seems to be a sentimental this-scared-me-as-a-kid review. And I supposed this one is no exception. I saw it once on TV as a kid. It scared me. I've never forgotten it. And I never saw it again until recently when I picked it up as a discount DVD.

As others have said this is a very low budget effort from Spain that employs a cheap gimmick to scare it's audience. It's monster is not seen, only heard. And what is heard is a particularly creepy series of sounds.

But the problem for the film's detractors is that this gimmick seems to work.

Like the famous swimming pool scene in the superior Cat People, it tricks the audience into imagining something more horrible than what could be shown.

The movie's greatest asset is that it's director seems to know how to scare his audience. For instance there are long, sustained shots in which very little happens. But this serves to create tension, causing us to wonder, "What is coming next?"

In watching it again, I kept thinking how well this would have worked as a radio play. The way it uses only sound and narrative to frighten the audience, it reminded me of Wyllis Cooper's classic The Thing on the Fourble Board.

For those who need vivid color, big stars and intrusive CGI effects, let them rent Anaconda.

And for those who have trouble suspending disbelief over the film's gimmick: Who's to say there weren't any invisible dinosaurs? How would we know?