2hotFeature
one of my absolute favorites!
Beystiman
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Casey Duggan
It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny
Cristal
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Nigel P
It is an odd decision to have this film open up with scenes of how the Knights Templar became known as The Blind Dead, and then some way into the running time, have those scenes repeated as flashbacks as someone (in this case, 'village idiot' Murdo, played by José Canalejas) is relaying the story of their origin.However, this second film in the Blind Dead series sees Director Amando De Ossario once again making the titular creatures as revolting as cowled, decomposing skeletal zombies can be – although their withered, twig-like hands rarely look anything other than gnarled gardening forks held by the actors beneath the rotting robes and look particularly ineffective when trying to grab various victims. In fact, the cadaverous knights can be astonishingly inept here: usually their agonising slowness adds to their menace – here, a whole group of them completely fail to capture the terrified, screaming Monica (Loretta Tovar). It might be their most ineffectual scene and reduces their effect greatly. Later on, however, a horde of the Knights Templar storming the village present a far more persuasive presentation of their powers.This is another enjoyable instalment in the series. Each entry manages to be more than 'just another episode', however, due to Ossario's inspiring passion for the subject, and 'Return of the Evil Dead' is a substantial project in its own right. It perhaps lacks the atmospheric chill of 'Ghost Galleon' and 'Night of the Seagulls', but the Knights' relentless, statuesque vigil throughout the night awaiting the emergence of the last few survivors makes for a morbidly enthralling scenario.
Fella_shibby
I first saw the English version of this in the mid 80s on a VHS. The shopkeeper told me that there is a prequel n sequels but not available with him. Revisited the Spanish version recently on a DVD. The movie has plenty of genuinely chilling moments (and plenty of silly ones, too) and some effectively creepy zombies (skeletal caped figures wielding huge swords), Return of the Evil Dead is worth a watch if you dig this kind of thing. The film throws in some nifty splashes of gore including some graphic stabbings, decapitation, heart removal scenes, eye burning, etc. The plot is similar to Night of the living dead. Several people holed up in a church, each making various attempts to go it alone in order to escape the blind dead who have them surrounded. Ther is a very silly scene, two people trying to sneak out from a tunnel n when one of em is beheaded by the the evil Templar standing above the hole, the other person is still standing next to the hole. The guy who played the mayor looked like Ron Jeremy. This movie may have its flaws, but Amando De Ossorio does a great job using slow-mo and an eerie score to intensify the film. The editing was shoddy. The skeletons attacking the village people n the aftermath fighting was tedious. The ending however is a complete disappointment, there's no spectacular showdown, the zombie skeletons just killed by sunlight. The ending of the first part was much better than this.
melvelvit-1
The second in director Amando de Ossorio's "Blind Dead" series sees a horde of fifteenth-century Knight Templars rise from the dead to take revenge on the town that poked their eyes out and burned them alive centuries before... I saw Amando's first entry, TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD, on WOR-TV's "Fright Night" (Saturdays at 1am) as a teenager back in the '70s and even then I knew these films were most likely edited but I never expected the gore I got last night. My letterboxed DVD of RETURN (nice print, too) was English-dubbed but a couple of parts were subtitles only and it's interesting to see just what was excised for US television (and possibly drive-in release) at the time. The flashback where a Knight Templar sacrifices a woman by tearing her heart out and eating it would never fly on the tube back then and neither would the bare breasts. Speaking of WOR-TV in the "Me Decade", I also saw the ghost of SCTV- the fat mayor and the town hunchback reminded me of John Candy & Eugene Levy in "Dr. Tongue's 3D House Of Stewardesses" and another character was a lot like Levy's Ricardo Montalban impression. That said, the robed, rotting Templars galloping slo-mo in the misty moonlight was genuinely eerie. Undead fun, for sure.
lost-in-limbo
Writer / director Amando de Ossorio's garnished Gothic follow up to the original Spanish feature "Tombs of the Blind Dead" is to some extent an improvement with a much better pace, tautly constructed suspense (where those ominous chants throughout the score draw fear) and plenty of viciously hysterical bloodletting (stomach stabbing and blood dribbling) from the Templar knights. Still with that in mind, I wasn't terribly blown away by "Return of the Blind Dead" and the ending was a real letdown too.The formula (survivors held up in a church with the zombie templar knights waiting outside) had been bled dry and its repetitive nature to get a little tiresome. Only so much could happen and it shows, but it remained effectively atmospheric in its moody imagery (you can't tire of the haunting slow motion scenes of the templar knights on their horses) and surrounding decors. This time the focus is on the cursed townsfolk who are celebrating the 500th anniversary burning of the Eastern knights that practiced black magic, but soon the nightmare is relived when the knights return from beyond their graves for brutal revenge. There they knock on doors waiting to be invited in, until they realised they are unlocked so they make themselves welcomed to carry on the slaughter behind closed doors. Make-up FX still stands up rather well. The performances are respectable with the likes of Tony Kendall, Lone Fleming, Frank Brana and Fernando Sancho.