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Tomb of the Blind Dead

post #1 of 8
9/19/03 at 8:06am
Thread Starter 
Hey all. Just bought this thing sight unseen, mainly because it's the only horror movie I know that is co-produced by Portugal. Any opinions on it here?

The DVD itself is a limited edition uncut version (for sale only in Austria. I'm in Switzerland, go figure) with original and german sound and german subtitles only.
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post #2 of 8
9/19/03 at 9:09am
It is a slower paced movie, but it's very atmospheric! It's not easy to get either. There are actually 2 sequals to the movie as well.
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post #3 of 8
9/19/03 at 9:10am
It's a pretty cool flick. Very atmospheric. You could have done much worse with your pick. Also congratulate yourself that you bought the uncut version and not one of those insulting 16+ rated, cut-by-20-minutes DVDs that are flooding Germany and Austria at the moment. I hope that we will eventually see uncut DVD releases of the other 3 films as well.

PS: How did you like Wrong Turn?
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post #4 of 8
9/19/03 at 9:18am
Thread Starter 
OUCH. You're not kidding. IMDB has the US version at 86 minutes, this one has 97.

I ended up not seeing WT. It's only here German dubbed, which I would hate even if I spoke the language (I'm a Portuguese guy working in der Schweiz (programmer(as you can see by the love for nested parenthesis )))

hehehehehehehe: "Quite possibly the greatest blind zombie crusader on horseback film ever made!!!"

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post #5 of 8
9/21/03 at 6:49am
Thread Starter 
well, just finished watching it. Very cool indeed. While the dated effects are kinda obvious in places, I'm good at abstracting from that (must be the years of playing text-based games )

I swear I'll never understand censors, though. I mean *what* was there to censor? Hardly any nudity, and the only remotely "strong" scene would be the templar sacrifice. What was there that we had to be "protected" from? Anyone know what scenes they cut?

Also, I saw in the stills gallery that the lesbian scene went on at least a bit longer than what's in the movie, so maybe this version is not completely uncut. Either that or it was already like this in the first theatrical version.

All in all, a major thumbs up.
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post #6 of 8
9/21/03 at 1:47pm
I am sure it is not the longest version in existance. The problem is that when the film was released in German cinemas in the 70ies Catholics and other "moralists" threw hysterical fits and caused the film to be banned. Then cuts were made and the film was re-released. Then it got banned again. Then another version came out and so forth and so on. There are at least 3 different German versions that I know of and I am sure the DVD is based on one of them. Is there any info on the DVD what materials they used to master it? I kinda doubt they went into some archive in Spain and dug up original negatives like Anchor Bay sometimes does. It is much more likely that they simply used one of the German versions.

As to what the hell is supposed to be oh so shocking about the film ... I have no clue either! But the Catholic Church in Germany HATED the film because it has the Templar Knights (Warriors of God!!!) as - *gasp!* - zombies! The history of censorship in Germany is very interesting and has filled many highly recommended books, all of which are only available in German though. But let me tell you ... German censors hate nothing more than zombies! If a film had zombies in the 70ies or 80ies it would be banned immediately because the visual depiction of a zombie is considered a crime against humanity as far as they are concerned. No, I'm not kidding! Things have slightly relaxed in the last 5 years or so. So the combination of evil Templar Knights (=angry church) that are also undead zombies (=pissed off censors) ensured that all the BLIND DEAD films were severely cut. They not only removed all the gore and nudity but also whole dialogue scenes where the Templar Knights were discredited and made to look bad because, of course, that is BLASPHEMY!!! It would be quite funny if it weren't so sad and scary!
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post #7 of 8
9/21/03 at 1:50pm
Oh, and if you can read German - which I assume you can if you live in Switzerland - you can go to this site:

<a href="http://www.ofdb.de/view.php?page=film&fid=445" target="_blank">http://www.ofdb.de/view.php?page=film&fid=445</a>

They have information on the dozens of theatrical, VHS and DVD releases of the BLIND DEAD films in Germany as well as on cuts.
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post #8 of 8
9/21/03 at 2:01pm
Thread Starter 
I don't read German, but Google Language Tools is my friend

It appears to be one of the "good" versions. It's the Laser Paradise edition, though it doesn't come with the Templar figure. The only bigger version I could find was the ASTRO limited edition box, with an extra minute and a half.

Ah well. It'll do
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