Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Vengeance of the Zombies (1973)

Okey, come on! Really! I read so many bad reviews of this movie, so I sat down with no expectations at all - and surprise, it's so far one of my favorite Naschy-movies ever! Once, on a Swedish forum, some retard started a petition to erase me from the earth, only because of my bad taste in movies (because I'm one of those that don't think that Kubricks The Shining is the best movie ever made). Maybe I have bad taste, but really... I don't give a fuck. So that's why I'm not ashamed to say that Vengeance of the Zombies is one of the best Naschy-movies I've seen - in it's own weird way.

The script is much more coherent than some people claim, though of course there's some big jumps in logic. Naschy plays Krisna, an indian guru with his base in London. There he have a little sect and lives a good life. But there's evil in the air, and a masked killer with a black cape and black gloves is killing people all over London! Sometime together with the resurrected body of a woman! Everytime he kills a woman, he makes zombies of them and uses them in his attacks.

Romy plays Elvire Irving, who's father and butler (?) get's murdered. She want's to calm down after this terrible incident and travels to the English countryside where Krisna has bought a house. But the murders continues, and something is lurking in the basement of the house... maybe a satanic sect worshipping the devil? Or the unknown killer? Or is Krisna hiding something?

Here we have 100 % entertainment. The script is a bit unfocused, but there's no problem understanding the storyline. A massive jazz score fits very good into the crazy story, and the use of slow-mo when the zombies arrives works very fine. There's more gore and blood in the latest couple of Naschy-movies I've seen and my favorite is a cool head-falling-of-body-scene that is a lot more effective than most of those I've seen so far.

What I love with Vengeance of the Zombies is the surreal and trippy feeling. There's slow-mo, dream-sequences, weird jazz, a truly strange scene where Naschy plays the devil, some quite not so surprising twists, the indian mumbojumbo, the blood and a stunning blu-ray release from BCI. I guess some people are missing the gothic feeling, but I felt this was a refreshing movie among the more slow-moving (but excellent) horror movies Naschy made before and after. The London-setting (which of course most of the time are stock footage) is nice and Naschy seem to have a lot of fun in three different roles.

Fantastic eurocult and something everybody should have in their collection!

No comments: