The night of the riding corpses

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Movie
German title The night of the riding corpses
Original title La Noche del terror ciego
Country of production Spain , Portugal
original language Spanish
Publishing year 1971
length 97 min. (uncut) or 90 minutes
Age rating FSK SPIO / JK or FSK 18
Rod
Director Amando de Ossorio
script Amando de Ossorio
production José Antonio Pérez Giner
Salvadore Romero
music Antón García Abril
camera Pablo Ripoll
cut José Antonio Rojo
occupation

Tombs of the Blind Dead (Original: La Noche del terror ciego ) is a Spanish-Portuguese horror film from director Amando de Ossorio , who also wrote the screenplay.

The film is the beginning of a four-part horror film series that Amando de Ossorio directed between 1971 and 1975. What they all have in common is that they are about a mysterious order of the Knights Templar and the bloodthirsty beings are highlighted by the use of slow-motion scenes .

action

The members of a knightly secret society, the so-called Templars, are looking for a way to achieve immortality in medieval Portugal with all available means. The sect members use black magic, subscribe to Lucifer's cult and ritually drink the blood of sacrificed virgins. For these satanic offenses against the immaculate girls, they are later excommunicated , executed and cursed forever for worshiping the devil; their corpses are thrown to the crows, which peck out their eyes. However, they manage to discover “the secret of undeath”, so that they have since been condemned to get out of their graves every day after midnight and to drink human blood.

In the present, Virginia spends vacation with her boyfriend Roger on the Iberian Peninsula , where she happens to meet her former lesbian school friend Bella, with whom she was once a relationship. Roger invites the attractive Bella for a trip into the surrounding area, which Virginia reluctantly agrees to. However, the group has no inkling of the gruesome events that took place here in the mountain landscape of Berzano over 500 years ago. On the train ride, the single Bella flirts with Roger, and there is little jealousy, so that Virginia angrily leaves the moving train in the Portuguese hinterland and roams the wasteland alone. After a short hike, the young woman discovers a medieval abbey in whose courtyard Templars are buried. In the dwelling of the riding corpses, she unceremoniously sets up her night camp. At night the cursed, masked and partly mounted creatures rise from their graves, sense Virginia's presence and locate them with the help of their remaining senses. Then they greedily circle their defenseless victim and suck it out down to the last drop. The young woman dies, but later becomes a bloodthirsty creature herself.

The next day, Bella and Roger are asked by two police officers to identify Virginia's bloodless body. The two of them learn from the forensic doctor that their friend was bitten several times and may have been the victim of a ritual murder. They are pressing ahead with further research to clear up Virginia's mysterious death. From Nina, a local employee of Bellas, they learn of other mysterious deaths in the vicinity of the abbey, which the locals encounter with suspicion and fear. Allegedly the "blinded dead", who are said to have excellent hearing, are still supposed to unsettle the area. It is also Nina who, with a time delay, eliminates and burns Virginia, who has risen from the dead and mutated into bloodsuckers.

The police are in the dark in the Virginia murder case. The suspicion of state authority is initially directed against the smuggler Pedro and his gang operating in the vicinity, who allegedly spread the myth as a deterrent in order to pursue illegal business undisturbed. Bella and Roger manage to persuade the smuggler boss Pedro to spend the night in the abbey with them and Maria, Pedro's friend, in order to prove that the allegations against him are completely unfounded. But to their amazement, monsters wearing robes climb out of their graves after midnight , ride out on their horses, murder Pedro and Maria and mortally injure Roger. Only Bella manages to escape from her blind pursuers.

Her escape from the pack leads the frightened woman near a passing train, which stops and picks up the shocked woman. Her pursuers on horseback ambush the train and kill all passengers - except for the apathetic Bella. The next morning, the train rolls into the next station without a driver, where unsuspecting travelers discover the victims.

Reviews

"A bumpy staged horror film that tries to combine elements of the vampire film with motifs from the Iberian past, but does nothing more than a crazy sequence of various set pieces of the genre."

- Lexicon of international film

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Night of the Riding Corpses. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used