The Blind Dead

My first story will be up tomorrow but for now, let’s talk about a very grave topic, The Blind Dead.
 
Grave, geddit? Because they are dead you see and…. Aww never mind.

Anyway, if you have never seen it, The Blind Dead, is a series of horror films made in Spain in the 1970s. The first film (Tomb of the Blind Dead) has a group of people disturbing an old castle that used to house an order of Templars who were executed for various foul crimes and is supposed to be cursed. Of course it is, in fact, cursed and the undead templars kill everyone, no saving throw. The following three films are very much in the same vein, though there is no real continuity between them except for the presence of the aforementioned Blind Dead.
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The films look every bit like the low budget they were and the acting? Well, let’s just say that apparently if you were shooting a film on the cheap in Spain in 1972, you took what you could get in the way of actors. The Blind dead themselves often looked like someone took the fake skeleton from a science classroom, tacked on some fake cobwebs and ratyy clothing and moved the thing around on a string. Not the most impressive special effects by any means.

Still, it is one of my favorite horror series. It still manages to get a spooky atmosphere despite its shortcomings. Not sure how, either. I can’t explain it. But it does. And besides, it gets zombies right.
You see one problem I have so many modern zombie movies is that they try so hard to make such an implausible thing plausible. Usually it’s a virus. Viruses don’t work particularly fast (That flu you are coming down with…you probably contracted that a week ago and are only feeling it now) and they aren’t magic. They can’t make a body that has suffered damage or organ failure suddenly start walking around again. And why don’t zombies eat other zombies? And so on. I can suspend disbelief as much as the next guy, but an explanation is an attempt at making the idea plausible, so it should be…well…plausible. And it usually is not. Not by a long shot.

Night of the Living Dead got around the problem by just not explaining a goddam thing. The dead are just getting up, walking around and eating people. Ok? Now shut up and watch the movie. And that’s fine but is a bit of a cop out. In The Blind Dead it’s magic. It’s the result of a curse. And as far as I am concerned, magic is really the only thing that can explain a zombie. No other explanation really works. Yet so many zombie movies shy away from that explanation. The Blind Dead did not and that fact alone puts it miles ahead of Zombie Terrror Nightmare City VI: The Zombinating or whatever random zombie movie one finds on Netflix these days.

So in the end, what I am trying to say is this. Go find one of the Blind Dead films (doesn’t matter which, you can watch them in any order). If you like schlocky horror movies, you will be glad you did

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