Director
Amando De Ossorio
Writer
Amando De Ossorio
Cast
María Arpón, César Burner, Lone Fleming, José Thelman
contact
Synapse Films, Inc.
Official website
While George A. Romero’s groundbreaking NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) opened new unhallowed ground for the undead on screen, it would take DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) to kickstart commercial interest in zombies for Eurocult film. As a result, the late ’70s and early ’80s saw a boom in the subgenre for Italian-made horror. A Spain-Portugal co-production, Armando De Ossorio’s TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD (1972) came several years before the contagion really took root. Not only this, but this Eurocult classic proves to be one of the most gloriously mythical, highly original zombie films ever made.
The film re-envisions medieval Catholic military order the Templar Knights as satanic monks living under an occult curse, forced to walk the earth as eyeless undead in need of human flesh. In an imaginative twist, given their blindness, they are able to track the living by listening for their heartbeats. The locals of Berzano know to stay away from the ruined church where frightful ghouls rise from their graves after dark. Nobody has told this to a group of unwitting travellers, Virginia (Maria Elena Arpon), Roger (Cesar Burner), and Betty (Lone Fleming), though. Trouble starts when Virginia storms off into the countryside alone. When she turns up dead, her body covered in vicious bites, her friends retrace her steps into the wilderness to find out what happened to her. As the sun sets, their nightmare begins.
Unbeaten for brooding Gothic atmosphere – the set piece of which is otherworldly zombie horseback riders travelling eerily in slow motion as they track their prey – the film is presented restored from the original camera negative and fully uncut. – Kat Ellinger
ABOUT THIS RESTORATION
This new restoration of TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD was created from a new high-definition scan of the original camera negative. Originally scanned, colour-corrected and restored in Germany, Synapse Films spent over a year doing additional fixes, colour correction and clean-up on the original scan files for this exclusive high-definition version.
The Spanish audio was digitized from the original Spanish language optical negative tracks and extensive mixing and audio restoration was done by Synapse Films and Pardon My French, LLC.
Restoration Supervisor: Don May Jr., Synapse Films, Inc. / Southfield, MI
Telecine Colourist: David Block, A+D Images / Burbank, CA
Audio Mixing/Restoration: Spencer Hall, Pardon My French, LLC. / Huntington Woods, MI
Showings
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