El Ataque de los Muertos Sin Ojos (1972)

The second installment in writer/director Amando De Ossorio's Blind Dead quartet retains some of the strong atmospheric elements that made the original a cult horror hit, but the sequel's weak story and extremely low budget severely erodes its intensity. As with most sequels, this film suffers because of the constraints of the original. The influence of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead was apparent, but not obvious with Tombs. The follow-up is a much more blatant rip-off that finds the main characters barricaded in a building while the dead roam outside near a vehicle that presents the only mode of escape. De Ossorio also mistakenly makes an effort to reenact the scenes that made the first film so memorable, including a gratuitous attempted-rape and a flashback to the human Templars sacrificing a girl. The film works best during stalking sequences, as Antón Garcia Abril's chanting score, the chilling makeup design of the living dead, and the dark atmospheric sets all combine for scary fun. Things begin to stall as soon as the story traps the potential victims in one place. Logic is immediately thrown out the door, the film becomes tiresome and the cost-cutting measures become visible. Scenes of the corpses rising from their graves are actually shots lifted from the first film. The special makeup effects are primitive, but decent for the time and De Ossorio ups the body count significantly with a surprise beheading counting as the highlight. The dead are still unsettling to look at, but the film has one moment when they look like puppets on sticks. Performances are awful across the board with the actors only made worse by a horribly dubbed English soundtrack. ~ Patrick Legare, All Movie Guide