Horror Rises From the Tomb

Rating:
Summary: A low budget Spanish splatter flick that delivers the gore
Review: "Horror Rises From the Tomb" ("El Espanto surge de la tumba") begins with a prologue in 15th century France, when a knight is beheaded for being a warlock. Five hundred years later the head is dug up, comes back to life, starts possessing people, and uses them to do all sorts of horrible things like ritualistic sacrifices, not to mention searching for the rest of his body. This 1973 Spanish splatter flick comes from first-time director Carlos Aured, who does little besides point the camera in the right direction.

The gore level is certainly well above average, especially for the time period, especially in terms of decapitations and disembowelments, but that is pretty much all "Horror Rises From the Tomb" has to recommend itself. The only other attraction here is cult actor Paul Naschy (a.k.a. Jacinto Molina, Paul Mackey, so on and so forth) who plays not just Ulric du Marnac, but Hugo du Marnac and Armand du Marnac. Although he had bit parts in films like "King of Kings" and "55 Days at Peking,"

Naschy was more at home in cheap horror films such as "The Werewolf's Shadow" and "Curse of the Devil" (to limit the discussion to films still available). He certainly has more presence than anybody else in this film. The plot is negligible, but, gee, burying the warlock's head on the own estate seems like such a really big mistake now it pretty much mandates the bloodletting that follows. This film is dubbed into English and gets three stars because it does deliver on the gore you would expected from a low-budget European horror film.

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre Euro-horror for Naschy fans only
Review: A descendant of a medieval warlock (Paul Naschy) tries to locate his ancestor's grave, with predictably disastrous results. Slow moving and formulaic, this movie may be of special interest to Naschy fans, but most others will find it difficult to sit through.

One and a half stars out of five.

Rating:
Summary: Horror rises but doesn't do a heck of a lot
Review: This Spanish horror film from 1973 shows a lot of promise but fails to deliver the type of movie experience one would expect on the basis of its title. For a number of reasons, I was quite unable to really connect with the story and found myself rather bored at times as the movie progressed. There's just no atmosphere at all here; I don't care about the characters or what happens to them because they simply do not seem real. Our story begins in 15th century France with the execution of a warlock and his mistress. After being called every name in the book (warlock, demon, vampire, Satan worshipper, etc.), the warlock curses his killers just before his head is divorced from his body. His vow to return has to wait four centuries to be realized. Paul, Maurice, and their best girls attend a séance, and Paul asks the medium where he can find the reputed warlock's head and body (which are supposedly buried somewhere on his property). The four friends decide to test the medium's power by searching for the remains in the locations she indicates, so they journey deep into the woods to a remote chalet. The group somehow grows to six people at some point thereabouts, and some pretty bad things begin to happen after a buried chest is discovered. This chest, of course, contains the head of the long-dead warlock, and he soon begins resuming his old ways of making people do his bidding by starting intently at them. Zombies emerge from a swamp, and the housemates in the chalet begin to disappear or fall under the evil influence one by one. Once the warlock gets his feet back under him (literally), he starts popping up everywhere to seduce or kill people. Even though our list of heroes declines steadily over the course of the film, the whole thing gets rather tedious. The bad guys stare at people, and the resulting zombies shamble around aimlessly for the most part. The warlock just isn't evil enough for me to love to hate, and the characters are all pretty expendable in my book.

One serious problem I see with this movie is its annoying tendency to jump around constantly; a scene might start in one place and magically end in another. This allows for no flow whatsoever. Then you have the dubbing into English, which is flat, uninvolved, and thus a liability. There are also logical inconsistencies spread far and wide; the movie can tell you one thing and then disprove its own argument the next. It can't even decide what type of horror movie it wants to be; instead, it draws on any number of genres and themes and tries to force all of them together, hoping this will help make up for the warlock's boring ineffectiveness. There are a lot of little things that bugged me too; e.g., the group arrives at the chalet without enough gas to make their trip home and thus cannot run away when bad things start happening; the warlock magically pushes a door open and then materializes in the room, thereby making the act of his opening the door inane; and he also seems to forget he can dematerialize at will, an affliction that bodes an exceedingly tiresome doom.

But what about the gore this movie is reported to showcase? The goriness of Horror Rises From the Tomb is vastly overstated in my opinion; surely, a few people die at the hands of sharp implements, and several heads are lost in the process, but we don't see much blood at all. The disembodied heads also look quite unreal to my eyes. I would consider this movie rather tame indeed in the blood and guts department. In essence, this movie wanders around in circles, unsuccessfully trying to discover an identity for itself. As such, it never manages to draw the viewer into the story and thus winds up as yet another forgettable horror film from days gone by.