Le retour des morts-vivants

A rural Portuguese village is preparing to celebrate the annual festival commemorating when their village overran and killed the Templar Knights who had been sacrificing its villagers. The mayor of the village on the advice of his fiancé Vivian, hires a fireworks expert Jack Marlowe, to ensure the festival is a hit, little knowing they have a past. Jack and Vivian immediately rekindle their passions in the ruins of the local abbey, where they are spied on by the village idiot, Murdo, he regales them with the gory history of the abbey and how the Templars had their eyes burned out in case they returned to avenge their deaths, which they swore they would. He tells them that the Templars will return tonight during the festival and he duly has a secret plan to sacrifice a local girl to ensure the curse of the Templars comes true. Sure enough the dead arise, and seek to avenge their deaths, they ride into town to kill all they encounter, Jack and Vivian along with the mayor and his cronies hide out in the village church and with the mayors pleas to the local authorities ignored, they must fight for their lives. Pretty decent follow up to de Ossorio's Tombs of the Blind dead, some striking Gothic visuals and just a little gore make this a sight to behold, things are also spiced up by a bevy of local beauties. The Blind Dead makeup and costumes are also very effective even if their pace is a tad slower than a comatose sloth.

I really enjoyed Tombs Of The Blind Dead (1972) it blew me away and left me really excited for the other three movies in the franchise.

Sadly I knew it was too good to be true as this second film is very underwhelming by comparison.

The first thing that struck me is the timeline. Is this a sequel? prequel? remake? Every potential answer to that has an valid argument against it so I was already more than a little frustrated.

The film does however have most of the strengths of the first film, the concept is great and the cast do a good job. Sadly the plot is hit and miss this time and honestly a great deal of mistakes were made in its creation.

Return Of The Evil Dead isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination it's just a let down after the outstanding Tombs Of The Blind Dead.

This time we see the blind dead raise from their graves to assault the near by village who are in the middle of annual festivities and ripe for the slaying.

Watchable second film but not the best start to carrying on a franchise.

The Good:

Most of the cast

The Bad:

Confusing timeline

The big "Battle" has to be one of the dullest fight scenes ever

Couple of the effects are really screwy

Weak ending

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Blind Dead zombies can walk around in a near skeletal form but die from being impaled

Asking a little girl to be blindfolded, telling her its a game, asking if she wants to play with you and telling her she's not allowed to make any noise has to be one of the most unintentionally uncomfortable scenes in movie history

Return of the Blind Dead aka The Return of the Evil Dead aka El ataque de los muertos sin ojos is a solid sequel to the first movie (Tombs of the Blind Dead, 1972). The dead Knights Templar walk again and crave for tender flesh and blood. The living scream and die - one of those fine pieces of oldschool horror that are spiced up with some trash and nudity, and are free from the slightes hint of p.c.-correctness. Yummy.

I first saw the English version of this in the late 80s on a vhs. It was titled Return of the Evil Dead back in the 80s n i thot tht this might be related to the Evil Dead film. Naive kid back then. Revisited the Spanish version of this part recently. Although this is the second part in the series, i havent yet seen its first part.

The movie has plenty of genuinely chilling moments and plenty of silly ones, too. The film has decent amt of gore, graphic stabbings, decapitation, heart removal scenes, eye burning, etc. The plot is a lil similar to Night of the living Dead about people taking shelter in one place to safeguard themselves from the zombies outside. The guy who played the mayor looked like Ron Jeremy. This movie may have its flaws, but Amando De Ossorio does a great job using slow-mo and an eerie score to intensify the film. The editing is shoddy. The skeletons attacking the village people n the aftermath fighting is tedious.

The Return of the Blind Dead is not so much a sequel as it is a retelling. The original writer/director, Amando de Ossorio, is back on board for this, in my opinion, superior outing. That's right, I said superior. It's got a better storyline and it's not boring once. The pacing is right on the money. Unlike the original, there's no part where the action is lagging and there are a couple of laughs even. Despite this, it's still not a good horror movie. I think they should have combined their efforts and put the two films together; the make-up and general style of the first, and the action and claustrophobia of the second. They could have made one decent horror flick instead of two mediocre ones.