Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971)

Tombs of the Blind Dead could very well have been renamed Tombs of the Idle Dead, or perhaps Tombs of the ‘Wait Around for Shit To Happen’ Dead. Jesus, even the spiders in Arachnophobia were more proactive than these cumbersome buffoons. Talk about a disinterest in stalking prey, the Blind Dead don’t hunt their victims, they lumber after them. Not that the alacrity (or lack thereof) of their pursuit matters since once it begins, the victims appear to lose all motor skills, as if their muscles immediately fall into a state of atrophy. Perhaps these are the unspoken powers of the Templar Knights – to subject their victims to spells of clumsiness comparable to their own. Seriously, there’s literally a scene where a woman falls down several times during a chase and actually gets her shoe caught in between two stairs but doesn’t possess the prudence or know-how to remove her shoe and continue her flight.

Nothing more of interest need be said concerning this film except for a very amusing story concerning its American distribution. It reached our shores at the height of the popularity of the Planet of the Apes films. In a rather dubious attempt to profit off these films, the distributors decided to change the title of this feature to Revenge from Planet Ape.

I know what you’re thinking – how do you relate Satanic Templar Knights who suck the blood of their victims to the talking apes of said films? Well, you add a contrived voice-over narration to the prologue explaining that man was once enslaved by a race of super-intelligent apes. I shit you not; this was actually a special feature on the DVD. The narration goes on to explain that after overthrowing our ape masters, we poked out their eyes and slaughtered them. Just before his death, however, the ape leader vowed that his race would return from the dead (as knights, I guess) and exact their revenge on the people of Earth. Thank God their efforts to eradicate humanity are confined to a small insubstantial village in Italy.

Dracula (1931)

Tod Browning’s Dracula, on the other hand, takes absurdity to a different extreme. Despite drawing upon a rich and, at this point, ubiquitous narrative in addition to representing perhaps the most iconic rendition of Bram Stoker’s famed novel (a place more rightfully reserved for Murnau’s superiorly creepy Nosferatu) the film falls victim to a number of goofy effects that work to undermine its integrity. Scenes involving rubber bats suspended from strings and Bela Lugosi’s painful overacting produce laughs rather than evoking fear or even providing mild entertainment, unless, of course, you appreciate a film for those characteristics. I obviously did not, since the final half of the film found me immersed in a mean game of Free Cell from which I’d only periodically glance up.

Honestly, this film pales in comparison to the more skillful of the Universal monster movies of the 30s and 40s, namely Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and the criminally under-appreciated The Invisible Man. It has a certain historical value that I cannot deny, but as for the purposes of telling a compelling tale of folkloric tradition, Nosferatu fills this role far more adequately.