Necrophagus

A Spanish movie that was (badly) dubbed into English and released here direct to TV. There's no nudity, sex or violence and there's very little blood so it's perfect for TV.

It deals with this handsome guy traveling to his ancestral home to see his wife (who died after giving birth to a still-born baby). But he can't get into the cemetery to view his wife's grave and everyone is VERY evasive on giving answers as to why.

The plot is all over the place with WAY too many people and situations to keep track of, the special effects are terrible and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. However this often played on a local TV station when I was in high school. It played from 11:30 at night to 1:30. I saw it and, back then, was scared silly! There's eerie organ music playing through most of the movie, the settings are atmospheric and the plot is so confusing that you have to play strict attention to follow it! Cool monster at the end too. Not a great or even good horror film but not a bomb either.

Firstly a warning: this film is a very aquired taste. If you like 'hip' new American Slasher films such as Wes Craven's "Scream", then this film is probably not for you (your head may explode!) But, if you are a devout fan early-70's Spanish horror films like me, this is very highly recommended. You may feel somewhat dis-orientated - but that is the film's intention, it does not want to you to have a clear idea of exavtly what is going on for the first 50 minutes! The director plays with the viewer by fragmenting the narrative in a jarring way backwards and forwards so the chronology can only be worked out at the end. The wintery locations and gothic imagery give the whole film a sense of unease and melancholy. There would be no point in me trying to explain the plot of this movie as it would ruin the dis-orientating experience. The title has become very mis-leading since Jorg Buttgereit unleashed "Nekromantik" upon the world: there is NO gore, NO nudity, NO graphic depictions of necrophilia. But it certainly IS as disturbing as Buttgereit's film because of all the dark undercurrents in the film's depictions of rural family life and the decay of heritage. However, it is advised that the movie be watched in the language it is shot in, Spanish, as the English dubbing in the American and Scandinavian video releases is truly appalling. Unfortuantely, the Spanish video release (Norma Video) is very very rare.

It's really strange and hard to find a movie like that: The plot is interesting, but the acting, the editing and camara are, at best, amateur.

Everything is there to be a great gothic story: Dead love A monster A spooky castle Unspoken hate and revenge A graveyard with a really creepy keeper But from the start, everything goes south, image, sound and acting. Scenes seams to have been match together without rhythm or reason. You could argue that the bad doubling in English doesn't help and makes things worst. But comparing to many other "international" horror movies of the 70's with same treatment (Spanish or Italian made doubled in English for International release), this one is not accomplished.

Too bad, the story is solid, the idea great, the resolution good... But the form is a mess.

A melancholy aura hangs over this confused, weak-kneed Spanish production that's crammed full of classic gothic horror elements. The eerie photography is excellent and the dusty, scuffed-up, neglected looking castle interiors make for a glum and gloomy experience. It's too bad the story is so badly told and the long-awaited appearance of the monster is a joke, because other than those major shortcomings this movie has a lot going for it. A moody young man arrives at the family castle in Scotland and is told his wife died in childbirth. The castle is occupied by several very odd women (good luck keeping the familial relationships straight) and the details of the wife's demise don't add up. The local doctors are sour, unpleasant old coots, so the grieving husband doesn't get much help. None of the other characters are sympathetic either, and the presence of so many one-dimensionally hostile, antagonistic, sleazy scoundrels tends to limit viewer involvement. The determined hero digs up the grave and finds his wife's coffin empty. A lot of the other graves in the cemetery turn out to be vacant too. He learns that his missing scientist brother, the Earl of Binbrook, was working on some kind of bizarre, never-adequately-explained experiments with severed heads at the time of his disappearance. The audience knows long before the protagonist does that the Earl inadvertantly turned himself into a zombielike monster who has to be kept buried in the earth during the day, sustained with some kind of intraveneous monster serum. At night he crawls up out of his makeshift grave and eats corpses. An evil doctor and the shifty local gravedigger are in on the plot. The movie looks great but the meandering story is dumped into the film (and into bewildered viewers' laps) as a jumbled pile of lengthy flashbacks and memories in a manner that soon becomes more annoying than intriguing. The alleged hero disappears from the movie for about a third of its running time, and the audience knows perfectly well that he's not dead but the other characters discuss his sudden absence and sometimes see him (or think they do) wandering around the periphery. At the end he simply strolls back into the plot and we never do find where he was all that time. Just out for a long walk, it would seem. The worst problem in terms of believability is the monstrous flesh-eating ghoul's appearance. With green hair and a lumpy face with an oversized cartoonish mouth full of shark-like teeth, he looks more like an overaged trick-or-treater than a serious threat. I don't know what the goal of his experiments was, but he proves to be just as easy to kill as any ordinary mortal so I guess the results were something short of miraculous. As hinted at above, the editing is pretty terrible. In one scene the monster crawls up out of a grave in front of his next victim. The terrified meal-to-be is looking down at the rupture in the ground when all of a sudden the ghoul seems to be up above him, jumping down to attack from some kind of ledge! The same melancholy piece of music (it reminded me of "On Top Of Old Smoky") is heard throughout the film. When it isn't playing on the soundtrack, people either hum or whistle it or play it on a harmonica. One girl even does an up-tempo "tra-la-la" version of it. Other peculiarities include a dead cat in a suitcase (why?) and in one shot it looks like a large log is lying in someone's bed. (I've heard of sleeping like a log, but really.) The thing that salvages this movie from the dustbin, other than the memorably decrepit scenery, is the inclusion of a few extremely creepy sequences. When the ghoul wakes up in his grave, a loud heartbeat is heard, the ground throbs and heaves, and green hands with sharp claws thrust out of the earth (classic stuff). And the maddened bloodcurdling scream of rage the monster belts out every time he's about to attack is one of the scariest monster noises I've ever heard. It ought to be included on Halloween sound effect records. Haunted house attractions could scare their patrons half to death with it. The bottom line is that GRAVEYARD OF HORROR (which was made as NECROPHAGUS but given a traditionally dumbed-down title by its American distributors) is a good-looking misfire that will only appeal to diehard gothic Euro-horror fanatics. The English dub calls one character "Skaife" as an in-joke reference to the anglicized name of the director on English language prints.

This movie has a lot of potential. The lighting is eerie, the sets are great, there's crumbling castles, dark cemeteries, shadowy forests, all the elements of an atmospheric horror gem which reminds me of a Hammer Film. Unfortunately, the attacking scenes are awkwardly acted and edited and there is no coherrent story that makes much sense or holds your interest. While it retains a melancholy mood and is worth a look for any big horror fan, the overall experience is tiring without any clear idea of what's happening or when it's going to end.

The DVD is usually overpriced from $16 to $20, however it's still worth it for some rare bonus trailers.