Carlos Aured, 1973
Starring: Paul Naschy, Emma
Cohen, Víctor Alcázar
In the Middle Ages, a Satan-worshipping nobleman, Alaric
du Marnac, and his mistress, Mabille de Lancre, are executed for witchcraft,
cannibalism, human sacrifice, and more. Before being killed by his own brother,
Alaric curses the Marnac family, and then his head and body are buried
separately. Several hundred years in the future, Marnac’s ancestor Hugo is
spending time with his friend Maurice, a painter, and their two girlfriends, Paula
and Sylvia. After a night of drinking with Sylvia’s occult-obsessed friends, they
all agree to participate in a séance. They attempt to contact Alaric du Marnac
on Hugo’s whim, which has some disastrous results. Alaric materializes and
gives instructions on how to reunite his head with his body and later haunts
Maurice. Hugo insists that they all need a vacation, so they journey to his
family estate in the countryside, which – of course – allegedly conceals the
remains of Alaric du Marnac.
Hugo, Maurice, the reluctant butler, and some paid
workers search for a chest containing Marnac’s head, which they recover due to
some mysterious intuition on Maurice’s part. Unfortunately the hired laborers
want the treasure for themselves and unleash an evil upon the household. After
killing the butler, his daughters are killed and possessed by the spirits of
Marnac’s followers. As the reincarnated witches come closer to reviving Marnac,
the only thing that can save the survivors is an ancient, powerful amulet…
This is star and writer Paul Naschy’s first film loosely
about French historical figures Gilles de Rais. Rais was a wealthy,
aristocratic general and a companion of Joan of Arc, but he also allegedly
practiced black magic, was a pedophile, and murdered dozens (if not hundreds)
of children. Regular Naschy collaborator and director Carlos Aured does a solid
job here; he and Naschy also worked on Blue
Eyes of the Broken Doll and Vengeance
of the Zombies during the same period.
In terms of visuals, Horror
Rises from the Tomb feels far more like a Eurohorror film that most of
Naschy’s other work, with the possible exception of The Mark of the Wolfman, his first El Hombre Lobo film. The
lighting and sets are obviously influenced by European genre masters like Mario
Bava and Jess Franco. With some bold framing, candy-colored lighting, the
Gothic country estate set (allegedly filmed at Naschy’s country home), and plenty
of shots of women in ethereal, see-through nightgowns, this is pure Eurohorror.
Similar to the films of Jess Franco, this has a
nightmarish quality when it’s at its best, but makes no sense whatsoever when
it’s at its worst. It also has the trademark nudity and erotica, so unfortunately
absent from some of Naschy’s werewolf films. This also has the air of weirdness
that a lot of Eurohorror shares, which can be effectively creepy at times. Plot
elements include an evil, talking head that worships Satan, inexplicable
zombies, a search for treasure, witch executions, a séance, and much more.
Aured and Naschy are fortunately not afraid to use long
moments of silence, so this lacks a lot of the talking head scenes that plague
many of Naschy’s other films. The atmosphere is heavy and effective, emphasized
by bleeding paintings, disturbing nightmares, the séance, and an excellent
scene where Alaric and his mistress rise from their tombs, finally intact. The
zombies seem to come from nowhere and there’s a lot of other randomness
throughout the film. This is one of Naschy’s bloodiest films, including lots of
death-by-sickle and hearts cut out, but it is not particularly gory.
The film is full of lovely, scantily clad ladies,
including Emma Cohen (The Devil’s Cross),
Maria Jose Cantudo (Autopsy), Cristina
Suriani (Saga of Dracula), Betsabe
Sharon (The Werewolf vs the Vampire Woman),
Montserrat Julio (The Blood-Spattered
Bride), and the sublime Helga Liné (Nightmare Castle) as Alaric’s mistress
and satanic sidekick. There are also some familiar faces from other genre
films, such as Juan Cazalilla (A Bell
from Hell), Naschy regular Victor Alcazar (Vengeance of the Zombies), and Julio Peña (Horror Express).
Naschy himself is entertaining in two roles (technically
three: he plays Alaric’s brother, who makes a brief appearance at the start of
the film). He is far more watchable as the sinister Alaric and seemed to have a
ton of fun with the role. He actually followed this with The Marshall from Hell (1974) and Panic Beats (1983), two other films featuring Alaric de Marnac.
Horror Rises from
the Tomb is available
on DVD and comes highly recommended to other fans of Eurohorror, as well as
anyone who loves Naschy films. If you don’t like Eurohorror, you might not want
to give this a shot. On the other hand, if you have no clue what Eurohorror is,
this could be an interesting place to start.
No comments:
Post a Comment