Few of the silver screen’s monsters have been creepier than The Blind Dead. Dressed in ratty cloaks and decayed to the point of skeletal remains, these undead, sightless medieval zombie Templar Knights hunt their prey by sound, though even if you remain perfectly silent, they will still hear your heart beating and come after you anyway! Their popularity led to three sequels and a deserved cult following.

This is their first and best movie. It’s about Virginia and Elisabeth, two friends (and former lovers) who along with Virginia’s boyfriend Roger decide to take a trip to the country on a train. When Roger only has eyes for Elisabeth, the jealous Virginia jumps off the train at the mysterious, abandoned town of Berzano and spends the night in a decrepit church. That night, The Blind Dead rise from their graves and kill her by eating her flesh. Of course, since they bit her, she becomes a zombie too and attacks the coroner. Roger and Elisabeth start investigating Virginia’s murder and are puzzled when the locals keep mum on the subject of Berzano. One crazy old doctor tells them the secret of the town and of The Blind Dead. Through the miracle of flashback we get to see the Knights in their 13th century heyday sacrificing a virgin and drinking her blood during a satanic mass. Then we are told the Knights were captured, tried and publicly hung where crows pecked out their eyeballs. Roger and Elisabeth, along with a drunken smuggler and his whore stupidly camp out in the graveyard to see if the legend is true.

The last twenty minutes are pretty great as the scary, slow moving Knights picks the cast off one by one and massacre a trainload of people (including a juicy scene where a Knight takes a bite out of a mother holding her son as the blood splatters on the poor kid’s face). Director Amando de Ossorio favors suspense over gore, but unfortunately lets the pace drag here and there that prevents the film from really taking off. He also puts in one too many slow mo Knights on horseback scenes for my taste. These are minor quibbles however, and shouldn’t stop you from checking it out.

This was re-released under several titles (as were the sequels), the funniest being Revenge from Planet Ape, where a silly prologue (along with false advertising) made the audience think it was a Planet of the Apes sequel! Whoever the marketing genius behind that one deserves an award of some kind.

AKA: The Blind Dead. AKA: Crypt of the Blind Dead. AKA: Night of the Blind Dead. AKA: Mark of the Devil 4. AKA: Revenge from Planet Ape.

The first sequel in the Blind Dead series provides just about as much fun and scares as the original. It starts out with a chilling prologue where we see the evil Templar Knights get their eyes burned out by a lynch mob. As great as this scene is though, it totally contradicts the first film’s origin story! (In that film, their eyes were pecked out by crows.)

Anyway, on the 500th anniversary of the Templar Knights’ death, a crazy gravedigger sacrifices a virgin on their grave, which resurrects The Blind Dead. There happens to be a festival in town and The Knights crash it. Big Time. Soon we got sword slinging zombie Knights on horseback battling pitchfork packing villagers. What more do you want in a movie right? A handful of survivors hole up in an abandoned church to fend off the Dead, but soon double cross each other or wind up getting themselves killed. In the unsatisfying ending, the Knights just keel over at dawn.

Despite the letdown ending, the changing of the back story, not to mention the shift in tone mid-movie (The film switches gears from an all out battle on horseback, to a claustrophobic Night of the Living Dead situation.), returning director Amando de Ossorio ups the gore quota on this installment (the best gore scene is a flashback where the living Knights rip out a virgin’s heart and eat it) and sure as shit knows how to film Knights slashing the hell out people with swords. We’ll even forgive him for recycling the scenes of the Knights rising from their graves from the first movie, since they looked so cool the first time around.

AKA: Return of the Evil Dead. AKA: Attack of the Blind Dead. AKA: Mark of the Devil 5.

The Blind Dead return in their fourth and final film. A doctor and his wife come to a small town and discover that the locals still chain up virgins as an offering to the bloodthirsty Blind Dead. When the good doctor rescues a virgin, he incurs the wrath of the undead Knights. In the end, he smashes their idol, which causes them to all fall over while blood shoots out of their eye sockets. Which leads to the obvious question: If the Blind Dead are just shriveled up old skeletons with no eyes, how can blood come out of their eyes? (I guess you could argue it’s the blood of their victims, but if that’s the case, wouldn’t it come out of their mouths too?)

This is the least of the four films. It’s also the most low key and sluggish, but at least the prologue where the Knights (in their still living, fleshier incarnations) cut out a buxom babe’s heart, eat her flesh and feed what’s left of her to some oversized crabs is pretty awesome. There’s also more nudity and gore than in the last outing, Horror of the Zombies. Like all the others in the series, it was directed by Amando de Ossorio (who yet again reuses the same footage of the Knights coming out of their graves from the previous films).

AKA: Night of the Death Cult. AKA: Night of the Blood Cult. AKA: Terror Beach. AKA: Don’t Go Out at Night. AKA: The Blind Dead 4.

The third of Amando de Ossorio’s quartet of Blind Dead films lacks the panache of its predecessors, but it’s still kinda fun. Two cute models get lost adrift in the middle of the ocean and run afoul of a mysterious ghost ship. Of course, it’s filled with The Blind Dead, who arise from their coffins and attack them. A “sporting goods magnate”, a photographer and their concerned roommate go looking for them and also become victims.

It’s pretty slow going, but it’s worth the wait once the Dead show up and do their thing. The scene where the Blind Dead dismember a chick and eat her is the only gore set piece, but it’s a good one. The lame dialogue (“I have no time to entertain your fantasies!”) and worse dubbing provides some amusement as well, and the shot of the obvious model ship burning is pretty hilarious. The climax however is well done and atmospheric, with the final shot of The Dead rising up from the water actually predating the zombies in Shock Waves by three years.

AKA: The Ghost Galleon. AKA: Zombie Flesh Eaters. AKA: Ghost Ship of the Blind Dead. AKA: Ship of Zombies.