Rating: C
Dir: León Klimovsky
Star: Paul Naschy, Romy, Mirta Miller, Víctor Barrera
a.k.a. La rebelión de las muertas
Despite coming out four years after Night of the Living Dead, this one still means “zombies” in the old-school term, corpses reanimated by voodoo ritual to do their master’s bidding, rather than infected cannibalistic ghouls. It’s closer to something like Plague of the Zombies, which may be why this feels older than it is, despite the gratuitous nudity. Indian mystic Kantaka (Naschy) is bringing the dead back to life in order to take revenge for him. This is of grave concern (hohoho!) to his brother Krisna (also Naschy), also a mystic, but one who chooses to follow the path of spreading peace and enlightenment to places desperately in need of it. Which means Wales, apparently.
One of Krisna’s acolytes is Elvire Irving (Romy), whose family was just butchered by the vengeful zombies. She travels to his Welsh retreat for a bit of spiritual recuperation, despite the scepticism of her pal, Dr. Lawrence Radcliffe (Barrera). He’s an investigator into the paranormal who also works as an expert advisor to Scotland Yard. Conveniently, they are baffled by the recent wave of murders carried out by slow-moving, silent, whey-faced individuals. And I don’t mean mimes. Elvire and her apparently infinite collection of backless dresses, are barely off the train before the local station-master, Mr. Exposition, tells her the story of Krisna’s mansion, which was the site of a Satanic cult, driven out by a mob of the local villagers. What could possibly go wrong?
It’s all lightly entertaining, though mostly for the wrong reasons. For example, the composer of the score seems to have been told by the director, “Write the most inappropriate music for each scene you can.” Witness the funeral which appears, by the soundtrack, to be taking place inside a Las Vegas elevator. It is a lesson in the importance of this element – though only in a negative way, sapping far too many scenes of the intended effect. Elsewhere, a number of sequences have their moments, such as an occult ritual where the very Devil himself (also Naschy, albeit with horns glued to his head) turns up. Though I could probably have done without the sudden, very genuine beheading of a chicken.
The problem is, the film fails to get these to gel into a coherent whole, being only sporadically effective. It’ll appear to be taking a step forward, such as a sequence in a slaughterhouse which is genuinely unsettling. Then it’ll go two steps back, grinding to a halt with things such as Dr. Radcliffe’s unnecessarily lengthy explanation to the officers of Scotland Yard, which feels more like a tedious college lecture. An unexpected and well-staged decapitation? Sure, until it’s followed by a poorly choreographed fight between two people armed with pitchforks. Was kinda amused by the ending, where a representative from the Voodoo Oversight Committee shows up to rectify the situation, before Scotland Yard bursts in, late as usual. 999 is a joke…