I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

How sad is this?

Fresh and Exciting

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Less of a sequel, and more of a remake, this 2nd movie about the Blind Dead re- hashes the whole scenario including the "origin" story, and just remakes the first movie all over again with not very many new ideas.This time it's a whole village that is terrorised. Due to the actions of an imbecilic villager, the log dead Templars are fed with blood and come out of their graves to wreak more havoc. The village suffers an invasion during a night of celebrations, and many deaths occur before the Templars are defeated.The recycling of material from the first movie is very lazy. We have the same gory flashback to a sacrifice of a young girl (rubber boobs being cut up with a knife again), we have the slow motion clip-clopping horses, the moaning and clanking soundtrack and the macho fights over women by several boorish male villagers. Luckily the film benefits from very real settings of the village and ruined abbey/castle, and the look of the ghouls themselves still packs a punch. The effects are not very good. In the "crowd" scenes, it's very obvious that some of the zombies are just immobile skulls on sticks with a tatty robe thrown over them - especially when they are beaten down and collapse immediately like a pile of cardboard tubes and coat hangers. A few set pieces however really do work: firstly when the evil major uses a small child as bait (!) in order to selfishly escape from the monsters. This is a very effective sequence and the poor girl looks convincingly unhappy upon finding herself among the skeletal mob. Don't worry, the evil major pays heavily for this craven behaviour! The second effective sequence is the climax when the survivors attempt to creep past the blind dead as dawn breaks...this is great film making and works despite the rest of the films cheap effects.On the whole, though, it's only a remake of the original, which has so many original touches it was a hard act to follow. But follow it they did, and then again, two more times after this one!

In this superior sequel to "Tombs of the Blind Dead", the templars attack an entire village celebrating a festival commemorating their disposal hundreds of years ago. The body count is thus much greater than the first movie, which featured only a small band of heroes and anti-heroes against the skeletons on horses.The violence is also much increased. This version features an impaling, a limb being hacked off, and in one particularly memorable scene, a beheading. The festival-attack scene is nowhere near as violent as it could be. I guess it is harder to use those kinds of special effects the more people are on screen? Either way, it is not until the end that the movie turns really violent.It is also not until the end that the movie turns scary. If you watch a lot of horror movies, you know genuine fear is actually a rare emotion to feel during one's runtime. Like the original, Return of the Evil Dead manages genuine tension thanks to the impressive set up the movie ends with, and the minimalist, heart-pounding soundtrack. It is scarier than the original, and in my opinion, superior.It also features a moronic, monobrow-having halfwit who reminded me of Gotho from Paul Naschy's Hunchback of the Morgue. The scene where he sticks his head out, only to be beheaded, unbeknownst to the lady he is trying to save - until blood starts flowing down his arm - is a work of art.One thing that makes this movie more effective is its refusal to bow to the same old morality lessons Hollywood movies always feature (it is Spanish). Everyone knows that in mainstream American films, if a character acts brave, or puts themselves on the line for another, that character will survive the situation. In Return of the Evil Dead, they don't. This ups the tension, because you can see they're not playing by the same rules we're all familiar with, and you really don't know what's going to happen next.

The Return of the Evil Dead (1973) *** (out of 4)The second film in the series starts off by showing villagers taking the Templars and tying them up. Before killing them they burn their eyes out making sure that the Templars will never be able to find their village. Flash forward hundreds of years and the village is celebrating their win over the evil men but soon the dead Templars rise from the grave for revenge.The first second to TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD isn't a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but director Amando de Ossorio does a nice job at giving fans what they wanted. It seems that the director saw what was good in the original film, the Templar knights, and gave fans much more of them. Not only are the knights given a lot more screen time but they also make sure that there are many more victims to be slaughtered.The violence, which is missing in the American version of the film, is certainly one of the reasons to watch the film as there are some pretty graphic moments including a woman being sliced open and drained of her blood. It gets even gorier when a knight rips out her heart and eats it! There are several murders like this but along with the gore the director gives us that atmosphere that was so rich in the original movie.THE RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD also has its share of flaws including a rather dicey pacing, which drags the film at times but it's still very much worth watching.

Return of the Evil Dead is, in my opinion, a superior film to the acclaimed original Blind Dead movie. This time around, the body count rises tenfold and the galloping, sword-swinging Templars are multiplied by nearly as much. Watching armies of ghouls race across the countryside, waving their blades and wriggling their tiny skeletal arms, can be truly chill-inducing.This time around, a local celebration is invaded by the Templars, who take their vengeance on the townspeople - eventually chasing the mayor, a fireworks technician, his estranged lover, and a few horrified others to a nearby church. Barricaded inside, the survivors take it upon themselves not to stop the Templars, but simply to escape with their lives.The performances are uniformly decent, although numerous day-for-night shots are so jarring, they take away a large portion of the needed tension. The effects are all done well, with a bit more grue this time around... but still a relatively gore-less affair. There's some nudity, a bevy of hilarious characters, and a thrilling (albeit unsuccessful) escape through an underground passageway.Any way you look at it, this film is a step up from the thrilling original. If you're in the mood for some silly, creepy fun - look no further than this little gem. Return of the Evil Dead is an absolute blast.