Spain, unlike its ideological brethren in Germany and Italy, managed to leave behind the rubble of World War II with its fascism intact. While Nazism was all about an antiseptic panacea for racial purists and Italian fascism combined a cult of personality with a healthy dose of the avant-garde, Spain’s own brand of reactionary authoritarianism was bound up in one man: General Francisco Franco, aka El Caudillo (The Leader). After his Nationalists won the Civil War, Franco set about eliminating both his Republican enemies on the left and his potential rivals on the Falangist right. Retaliatory violence and political suppression took care of the former, while the Eastern Front swallowed up a huge portion of the latter.
After the war, El Caudillo cemented his reign and solidified the enforcement of Spanish nationalism, Roman Catholicism, and a European brand of social conservatism. Then a funny thing happened in the 1950s. Pushed forward by liberal-minded technocrats and foreign investors, the so-called “Spanish Miracle” helped a former backwater to become an economic powerhouse on the Continent. Money was in the atmosphere, and the basic standard of living improved for most Spanish classes. Most importantly, a new, more vibrant Spanish middle class came to prominence, and it is was this class that not only raised Amando de Ossorio, but it was also the caste which made de Ossorio’s films possible.
Although he shared El Caudillo’s Galician background, de Ossorio would make his name by gleefully eviscerating much of what the Francoists held dear. Though his father wanted his son to pursue a career in banking, de Ossorio would eventually move to Madrid in the late 1940s in order to make films. His first film - “La Bandera Negra” (“The Black Flag”) - was an independent art film that criticized the institution of capital punishment. Because of this, it was heavily censored by the government. De Ossorio did not begin his career in moviemaking well, and this sense of bad luck would follow throughout him his whole career, especially when it came to budgets and time constraints.
After his inauspicious debut, de Ossorio refocused his energies on the horror genre. As General Franco’s health declined in the 1960s, a new wave of liberalization washed over the country. This was most apparent in the films that were made in Spain after 1965. Sex was for sale, along with other taboo topics, and many Spanish auteurs jumped at the chance of making salacious films for a mostly middle class and male audience. De Ossorio, along with other directors such as Paul Naschy, helped the socio-political process along by making sometimes gory, sometimes sleazy horror films during the late 1960s and early 1970s. And while Naschy relied on such well-known figures as werewolves and vampires, de Ossorio made the radical decision to create a new breed of monster - the blind, shambling dead.
Not just any dead, either. De Ossorio’s legendary “Blind Dead” series revolves around the Knights Templars - a real-life organization of warrior monks from the Middle Ages. While the historical Templars protected Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land and acted as some of the first international bankers, de Ossorio’s creations are pagan ghouls who do nothing but bring terror to the countryside with their blood rituals and their sadistic impulses. This is bluntly exposed in all four of de Ossorio’s “Blind Dead” films with varying degrees of success.
The first film in the series - 1971’s “Tombs of the Blind Dead” (“La Noche Del Terror Ciego”) - is an undisputed classic. That said, it is far from a “good” film. The acting is unprofessional, the plot is slipshod, and the whole thing reeks of being made fast and on the cheap. Still, despite these deep flaws, the story of the Templar-haunted village of Berzano is engrossing not only because of its relative originality, but also because of the ingenious depiction of the blind dead riders. Helped by the creepy music of Antón García Abril, the Blind Dead eerily ride across the Portuguese landscape almost as if they are out of time. This slow horsemanship and time/space displacement is part one of de Ossorio’s own synopsis of his creations, while the others are: “2) The Templars come out of their tombs every night to search for victims and blood, which makes them closely related to the vampires of myth. 3) The Templars have studied occult sciences and continue to sacrifice human victims to the cruel and bloodlusting beings that keep them alive. 4) The Templars are blind and guided by sound alone.”
De Ossorio’s outline of the undead Templars would lead one to believe that there is some sort of overarching narrative to all four films. Well, there’s is not. While the second film - 1973’s “Return of the Evil Dead” (“El Returno Del Terror Ciego”) - also takes place in Berzano, the background story of the Templars has been changed since “Tombs of the Blind Dead.” In the first film, Professor Cantal (played by Francisco Sanz) explains that the Templars were convicted of blasphemy and murder, and as such were punished by being hung from trees so that crows ate out their eyes. In “Return of the Evil Dead,” the film opens with a flashback in which enraged villagers burn out the eyes of the demonic knights. The head of the order swears that he and his men will have their revenge, and thus the plot of the film is set in motion.
After “Return of the Evil Dead,” which is probably the best film in the entire series, de Ossorio hit a real snag with his third film - “Horror of the Zombies” (El Buque Maldito, 1974). In this film, a whole cast of unlikable people get stranded on a ghost ship that is full of the blinded Templars. The film’s obvious connections to “The Flying Dutchmen” are further deepened when another one of de Ossorio’s eccentric professors (Carlos Lemos’ Professor Grüber) finds out the origins of the ship’s unearthly passengers. In “Horror of the Zombies,” the Militants, a sect of the Templars, were excommunicated for Devil worship, and thus they were forced to leave their homeland in a ship piloted by a mad Dutchman. This ship, which houses a treasure horde, just so happens to be the ship that the Professor and an unsavory group of fashion models and photographers stumble upon.
“Horror of the Zombies” is not only a stinker, but it is so cheap that it looks like it was filmed in de Ossorio’s bathtub. “Horror of the Zombies” is the type of film that would have ruined a lesser man’s career, but de Ossorio soldiered on and even managed to make one more Templar film.
1975’s “Night of the Seagulls” (“La Noche De Las Gaviotas”) is not only one of the best films in the entire series, but it is also the oddest. In this, the final installment of the entire “Blind Dead” run, the Templars must share their evil with a whole village, for “Night of the Seagulls” is more or less an updated version of the Perseus and Andromeda tale from Ancient Greece. In the Greek version, Andromeda, the daughter of the Aethiopian king, is chained to a rock by the ocean in order to stop the wrath of Cetus, a sea monster sent by Poseidon. The frightened villagers believe that if Cetus devours Andromeda and accepts her as a sacrifice, then both it and Poseidon would refrain from destroying their land. Luckily for Andromeda, Perseus, the Danaan hero who famously decapitated the Gorgon Medusa, kills Cetus and takes her to be his bride.
1. Nigel J. Burrell. “Knights of Terror: The Blind Dead Films of Amando de Ossorio.” Midnight Media: Huntingdon, U.K., 2005.
After this synopsis of Templar evil, “Night of the Seagulls” puts forth a basic, almost rudimentary plot. A new couple - Dr. Henry Stein (played by Victor Petit) and Joan Stein (played by Mari Kosti) - have moved into the strange village. They are greeted coldly, with furtive looks and outright hostility. Before long they begin to notice odd occurrences, which inevitably leads them to finding out about the Templar ritual. Along the way, the de Ossorio staples come into play: the barricaded house motif, the shunned village idiot (José Antonio Calvo’s Teddy), the music-laden and slow chase scenes, and the requisite blood and guts.
While on the surface “Night of the Seagulls” sounds like your basic potboiler, it contains numerous eccentricities that make it standout from the rest of the series. First of all, instead of Satan, these Templars worship a statue that bears a striking resemblance to H.P. Lovecraft’s squat god Tsathoggua. Beyond that, the poetic title of “Night of the Seagulls” (which seems to not know that seagulls don’t fly at night) hints at Lovecraft’s depictions of the soul-stealing whippoorwills in “The Dunwich Horror.” Finally, the plot of the film also bears some resemblance to Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” which deals with a Massachusetts seafaring community which has sold its proverbial soul malevolent sea gods.
Coupled with these Lovecraftian allusions and references, “Night of the Seagulls” also strives to accomplish some artistic flourishes, with intricate shots, soft lenses, and a color scheme that mostly uses green and dark blue palette. The film looks murky and foreboding, and it is certainly a testament to low-budget done right. And while it is interesting to note that de Ossorio decided to end his series with a film that bears little to no resemblance to the chronology of its predecessors, “Night of the Seagulls,” despite its awkward position within the de Ossorio mythology, might just be the most influential film out of the bunch.
This is especially true in the music world. From death metal to punk rock, “Night of the Seagulls” has been referenced and sampled by numerous bands in the musical underground. Obviously, most of these bands fall on the harder and heavier end of the spectrum. Considering that this movie ends with an elaborate and bloody melting of the Templars (which was undoubtably stolen from “Blacula,” which ends with Blacula [played by the Shakespearean actor William Marshall] slowing rotting in the sun on a Los Angeles rooftop), then it is no wonder that heavy metal bands have found inspiration in the film. The most obvious of them all is Finland’s Hooded Menace, who have built their entire identity and image around de Ossorio’s series. On their 2010 album “Never Cross the Dead,” the men of Hooded Menace pay tribute to “Night of the Seagulls” with a death/doom funeral march called “Night of the Deathcult” (which is one of the film’s alternative titles). “Night of the Deathcult” sounds like Eyehategod commingling with Thorr’s Hammer, and one would be hard pressed to find a better tribute to the memory of the Blind Dead.
The tributes don’t stop there either. Earlier, in 1995, British doom legends Cathedral included a track called “Night of the Seagulls” on their highly-praised “The Carnival Bizarre” LP. The song explicitly references the film, plus it includes moments that sound ripped from the pages of Abril’s original compositions. Not to be outdone, the New York oi band The Templars cut an entire E.P. called “La Noche De Los Gaviotas” in 1997. On the second and final track, beach and seagull noises initiate a folk-inspired punk rock song that details the exploits of the hooded and undead riders. The song just so happens to be called “Night of the Seagulls.”
As a standalone film, “Night of the Seagulls” is only slightly above average. But, when it is considered alongside the three other films in the “Blind Dead” series, it shines as one of de Ossorio’s most unique films. It is easy to see why musicians are captivated by “Night of the Seagulls,” what with its Lovecraft- and Greek-inspired storyline and its bloody take at making an exploitative art. No doomhead should miss this film, nor should any hessian bypass de Ossorio’s entire series. These are great popcorn flicks, and their decidedly Gothic character make them an easy pairing with mournful and melancholic tunes.
Words: Benjamin Welton