Tags
Barbara Rey, Blanca Estrada, Carlos Lemos, Classic Horror, El Buque Maldito, ghost ship, Horror of the Zombies, Jack Taylor, Knights Templar, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Manuel de Blas, Margarita Merino, Maria Perschy
This was the third installment in Amando de Ossorio’s “Blind Dead” series, and the first one of the series I’ve seen. Noemi (Barbara Rey) is looking for her girlfriend Kathy (Blanca Estrada) who disappeared several days ago after a mysterious call from their employer, modeling agent Lillian (Maria Perschy). Lillian takes Noemi to see Howard (Jack Taylor) who has sent Kathy and another model, Lorena (Margarita Merino) on a fools’ errand. After finding out that Howard makes boats, and he hired Kathy and Lorena to sit on a 15 foot motorboat for days waiting for someone to pick them up as some kind of stupid top secret publicity stunt, Noemi is held captive by Howard’s henchman Sergio (Manuel de Blas). When the girls report by radio that an old galleon has hit them, all these people I listed plus a scientist named Professor Gruber (Carlos Lemos as Guy Who Knows What’s Going On) go out to rescue them. Then some people get eaten, arms and legs and throats are torn off and there’s a stabbin’. No boobs though. Chicks in bikinis and high heels yes, but the only things nekkid are the bones of the satanic Knights Templar.
I’m giving this movie a very special award that I just made up right now: The Pythagoras Award For Making Sense. Just as you could count on the Pythagorean Theorem every time to tell you the length of any one side of a triangle given that you knew the two other sides’ lengths back in those dark days of college math post-algebra, you can count on Horror of the Zombies to have a beginning, a middle, an end, an explanation for who the zombies were and why they were there, lesbians who admit to being lesbians without any weird subtexts and a plot that is not open for interpretation or for starting arguments on the IMDB boards, Lord love ‘em.
That’s not to say that the characters’ motivations entirely make sense, because the premise is kind of a WTFer, but it gets us where we’re going. Onto a ghost ship filled with hungry, blind, dead, satanic, skeletal zombies, y’all! Fifteen zombies on a dead girl’s chest, yo ho ho motherscratchers!
One more thing, though. Why is it always in Spanish movies (another example being Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) that zombies can’t find you if you hold your breath? I wonder if it relates to the Hong Kong hopping vampire films.
Jon Walmsley said:
Horror of the Zombies (AKA The Ghost Galleon) is without a doubt the worst in the whole Blind Dead series. A toy boat floating in a pond is just so daft. The best part of this film is the rising from the coffin footage, but that was just recycled film from the first Blind Dead (and re-used again in the 2nd).
Why Ossario decided to part with the chilling formula established in the first 2 films and set this on a ghostly interdimentional ship is beyond me. The 1st film is a magnificent horror film, beautifully shot and with a great score. Something went weird on this outing though, and I’m glad Ossario ended his series with the Seagulls film and didn’t just finish with this rot.
Wednesday's Child said:
Well, it’s a good thing Netflix just emailed me and said Night of the
Seagulls is on the way. I don’t know why, though, I had to watch Horror of
the Zombies ’til the end..a really crap movie only gets 30 mins of my
attention.
Vicar of VHS said:
This was actually the first Blind Dead movie that I ever watched, which obviously was the WRONG place to start–however, while it is doubtless the lowest rung of the Blind Dead ladder (I assume–I’ve yet to watch Night of the Seagulls, but I hear from people whose opinions I respect that it’s pretty good), there were things about it I really liked. The model boat deserves its reputation as worst miniature galleon ever, but I found the sequence in which the Dead come up on deck to take the horrified bikini babe below, carrying her on their shoulders in silent menace while she screams helplessly, actually to be genuinely chilling. Also, over the course of the film I found myself a little in love with that same girl…however, as we all know, sometimes love is not enough.
I don’t know the explanation in “Let Sleeping Corpses Lie,” but I do know that the Blind Dead find their victims by their sense of hearing (for obvious reasons), which is why holding your breath can make you invisible. My brain is filled with useless horror knowledge…the BEST kind.