Spain is often underrated when it comes to the world of Horror Cinema. Everyone knows Italy's trash, Japan's ghost children and Korea's ghost children with different names. They neglect to consider the works of such men as Paul Naschy and Amando de Ossorio. The latter is the man who directed today's film...
The film begins with a scene so weird that you would swear that it was a dream sequence. It's all real, baby! A white woman is chased by native Africans through the jungle. No, this is not a Tarzan film. She is grabbed, tied to a tree and whipped. Thanks to movie magic, the lashes take of all her clothes. Satisfied, they bring her into a clearing, set her up on an altar and cut her head off. This rolls to the ground and her blood drains out.*
We cut to what I assume is present day. That whole thing feels more dream-like now, huh? Two couples show up to film a nature documentary, but there are problems. The natives are restless, the land is wild and, since these are foreign movie couples, they are all cheating on each other. They are warned like everyone in a horror movie is, but, naturally, ignore the logical warnings and stay the night. That is when the weird stuff starts to happen.*
The natives get a little freaky at night- drumming, dancing and inter-mingling. One of the young ladies wanders off in the direction of the drum sounds and is captured. She gets the same treatment as the lady in the prologue and dies. This all happens while one of the men is putting the spurs to his non-girlfriend. Needless to say, his cover story for missing his watch duty the next day is pretty weak. As day turns to night, we get the first of the movie's really strange sights: vampire women in leopard-skin bikinis. No, I am not kidding you. They run through the foliage in Baywatch-style slow-motion. I don't really know why, since the effect is not the same with them as it is with Pam Anderson.
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Being horror movie characters, our heroes find out the truth far too late. By that point, both young woman are now 'beach blanket Nosferatus' with a 'hunger.' The guys are pretty ineffectual, leaving only the audience to be strong-willed people. Despite being a European horror film, the ending is actually relatively-happy. The corpses are still corpses though. Only Gate II and Sodoma's Ghost had the gal to undo that.
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This is a fun film, but it is definitely not best to compare it to the Blind Dead films by Ossorio. Well, maybe part four (Night of the Seagulls). There are similar riffs here (humans becoming monsters, people running in slow-motion), but it is not nearly the same. The terror is gone at the sight of the amusing monsters. As far as Spanish horror films go, you can definitely do worse. Most foreign film fans will tell you that worse would be The Ghost Galleon. I tend to disagree, but, whatever.
Do you love plot twists in films? How about 500 or so? Stay tuned...
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