The People Who Own the Dark

Great title for a film, but just not this one. Over ambitious project inevitably leading to it becoming pretentious, silly and unforgivably, dull. It starts promisingly enough with a disparate group of dignitaries all masked at sat about a banqueting table as pretty girls in diaphanous gowns prepare to submit to their every whim in the name of the Marquis de Sade. Some of us will wish the film continued in this vein instead of lurching into post apocalyptic Twilight Zone territory, with blindness, zombieness and the threat of radiation and the end of the world. Paul Naschy is fine but looks a little more awkward than usual. I find he is usually better when working for himself.

This film might play as some kind of parable about the rich and the poor, or perhaps the Franco regime, or some crap like that. What we in the instant world of 2018 need to know is: are there plenty of boobs and gore in this film?

The answer of course is there's some boobs and not a lot of gore, but it's worth a watch anyway. It's got Paul Naschy in it. And he's plays a complete jerk.

He's a Baron or something of a huge villa where the rich go to play out weird sex games in the basement. We get to meet our elite first - a couple of doctors, a lawyer, the Madame who runs the plays, and we get to meet out hookers: the red-head, the blonde one, the black one and I think at least two were gay as well. I've got to admit the film does spend quite a bit of time establishing why we should this lot before the men all don weird masks and the women throw on see-through gowns and head to the cellar.

It's lucky for them that while they're down there a nuclear war breaks out and everyone 'up top' is blinded by the flash. Our rich folk/hooker team head back upstairs to find the help staggering about blind, and do what any rich enclave would do: Head into town to steal all the food from all the blind people that clearly need help while also killing a few of those blind folk and causing a huge siege situation back at the mansion. Remember those poor folks in Day of the Triffids? Well, imagine a really angry, violent version of them and you've got this film.

People compare this to Night of the Living Dead and Last Man on Earth and that's because it is basically those films, only with Paul Naschy and the priest guy from Horror Express in it. That doesn't mean it's a bad film though. It's good. I still haven't watched a Paul Naschy film I haven't liked, and this one seems to have a bigger budget than most. Who doesn't want to see a bunch of angry blind people get their own back on a bunch of jerks?

Well, don't get me wrong, this has a nice plot, the acting is better than most films of its type and the direction is nice. But that can't disguise the fact while the movie was good, the ending was just atrocious. I definetely would have given this movie three and a half stars, but due to the lame ending, gave this one only two.

Forget the reference books (including the IMDb) - PLANETA CIEGO was directed by Argentinian filmmaker Leon Klimovsky, also responsible for WEREWOLF VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMAN, VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES (both with Paul Naschy, who co-stars here, too) and THE VAMPIRE'S NIGHT ORGY. A group of prominent business and military men enjoying a weekend debauch in the cellar of a rural bordello are spared when a nuclear attack devastates Europe. Finding the locals blinded, and drawing hatred upon themselves for looting the village stores, the survivors board up the villa and prepare for an attack by night. PLANETA CIEGO, which is also known as THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK (a shortened version that played in America) and ULTIMO DESEO is an exciting and disturbing (if non-graphic) reworking of themes found in George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The cast includes Alberto deMendoza (HORROR EXPRESS) and Maria Perschy (also in Klimovsky's VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES). This film has for too long been attributed to Amando de Ossorio, probably because he directed the well-known "Blind Dead" films. Well worth seeking out.

The People Who Own the Dark (1976)

** (out of 4)

A group of people gather at a home where they enter an underground bunker to do a De Sade worship. After hearing a loud explosion they return to the surface and notice that something strange has happened. They don't realize how strange until they go to town for supplies and notice the title monsters, a group of people who have turned blind due to a nuclear holocaust. THE PEOPLE WHO OWNS THE DARK has a pretty good reputation among Spanish horror fans but I'll be the outsider and say that I was pretty disappointed in the film. People have compared it to a cross between NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, which is certainly true but I'd also add THE OMEGA MAN in there as another influence. I watched the American cut of the movie, which features twelve fewer minutes than the Spanish cut but apparently only some more detailed character development is missing. With that said, I thought there were some major issues with the screenplay including the fact that none of the characters are all that interesting. When you think about it, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD features a lot of dialogue scenes and more often than not the zombies aren't on the screen. That's the same here but the only problem with this film is that nothing being said is all that interesting and unlike the Romero film you really don't care about any of the characters here either. None of the characters really stood out from one another and outside of the familiar faces (Alberto DeMendoza and Paul Naschy) there's really no one to root for or care about. For the most part the performances seemed fine, although this is always a hard thing to judge when you're watching something with an English dubbing. I will say that the look of the film was quite nice but director Leon Klimovsky just doesn't add any flare to the subject and even at 82-minutes the film drags in spots. Again, I know I'm in the minority on this one but the film just didn't work nearly as well as it should have.