1975’s Night of the Seagulls is a zombie movie, which is a bit like if Hitchcock’s The Birds had been about zombies.
This is the final movie in a quadrilogy by Spanish director Amando de Ossorio where undead Knights Templar ritually sacrifice young women. Normal zombie at least have some sort of base motivation for killing, though it is debatable how their organs would be able to process what they consume. But these guys in Ossorio’s films seem to have a misguided commitment to a particular job. Since the real Knight Templars were a Catholic order during the Crusades, I believe these zombies are even confused at this mission, as they are sacrificing women to Satan.
Actually, they may be sacrificing to Pazuzu, as that is what an idol here most closely resembles. The sacrifices are made by stabbing a sword though the victim’s chest, then plucking the heart out and holding it aloft. I’m getting the strangest feeling that their order somehow was derived more from whatever cult is in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom than anything associated with the Catholics.
The series began with Tombs of the Blind Dead, a surprisingly effective horror picture, though it was marred by a pointlessly unpleasant aside where a character is raped. A key part of that title is “blind”, and I am bemused the zombie knights always tear open the blouses of their victims, as if they need to see more clearly where they should drive the sword.
I have only now seen three movies of the series, but they have followed roughly the same template so far. The worst of those three (The Ghost Galleon) was set about an abandoned ship adrift in the ocean. This one returns to land, and feels rather similar to Tombs. A key difference with Seagulls is an entire town is in on the conspiracy, offering for sacrifice seven comely young village women, one a night for seven nights. In this type of situation, I always wonder there are that many women at any time in such a small populace, especially when most of the residents appear to be of very advanced age. Slap a bundle of sticks on the back of any one of these peasants and they’re ready to appear on the cover of the fourth Led Zeppelin album.
The latest arrivals in town are Victor Petit and wife María Kosty. He is there to assume the practice of departing doctor Javier de Rivera, who tells them they should leave. Given this, I wondered how Petit knew about this job opening, as Rivera would have had to let somebody know there would be a vacancy. If he cared so much about the concern of new arrivals, then it would have made more sense for him to just sneak out of town without telling anybody.
Rivera also tells Petit not to ask any questions of the locals, which would make any administering any medical treatment to them a bit difficult. But that is moot, because the locals hate doctors and nobody will take advantage of the service. The villagers don’t want Petit there, so I was stunned the man doesn’t simply leave. Of course, there wouldn’t be a movie if he does that.
The villagers are also quite rude to Kosty, especially the woman behind the counter of the village store, who refuses to provide the items on Kosty’s shopping list. The sole helpful villager is Sandra Mozarowksy, a young woman who makes the shopkeeper provide those items. We know Mozarowsky is different because she is in the only resident not dressed head to toe in black. Also, she’s young, which can only mean she will eventually be in danger of being sacrificed.
Another rule Rivera passed on before pissing off was to not feed the Mogwai after midnight—I mean, don’t leave the house after midnight. This is when a procession of women leads the next girl to be sacrificed down to the beach, when the girl will be tied to a rock. The zombie knights then ride up on their horses, cut her loose and just take her somewhere else to stab her heart out. Seems to me the villagers might buy some additional goodwill by just delivering the girl to the temple of the Knight Templar. Maybe they start a new delivery service like Uber Sacrifice.
This is a bad movie, but still a rather enjoyable one. It will scare exactly zero viewers, and lacks the solid moments of suspense which nudged the first installment into the win column. The voice dubbing is especially bad, and subject to the kind of ridicule one usually reserves for kung fu movies of the 70’s.
Kosty, at least, is more sensibly written than most of the women in this kind of fare from that time and that part of the world. Alas, though she is initially the person who tells everybody else to do things like wait until daylight to flee the village, she will eventually start behaving as stupidly as everybody else. There is one bit towards the end where she is terrified to descend a roof, which it is revealed the drop from the edge of the roof is the exact height of the horseback she’ll mount once she successfully navigates her way down. I know people can get hurt falling any distance, but it is hard to sell the audience on the peril of falling the height of a horse.
Most of the performances here are simply bland, but José Antonio Calvo must be singled out as one whose is spectacularly bad. As the village idiot, he proves a maxim stated by Robert Downey, Jr., in Tropic Thunder, no matter how politically incorrect the line may be, and that is “never go full retard”. It is a performance so preposterous that it borders on farce. I found it odd he looks more than a bit like a young Nicholas Cage trying to be a vampire (even if Calvo’s character is not a bloodsucker), yet the doesn’t look like that actor as he did in Vampire’s Kiss.
The filmmaking curiously fluctuates becoming functionally competent and mildly incompetent. Shots are in focus and nary a boom mic is in sight, yet there are such odd moments as a supposedly day-for-night shot that pans down from a stretch of clear, unbroken, blue sky–something will communicates nothing but a bright, sunny day. More annoying to me was shots of the knights riding through the surf which broke the 180 rule. That is the guideline in filming which keeps things from seeming to come from one direction and then the other. By alternating which side of riders the ocean is beside, we’re left with the strange feeling they accidentally rode past the girl chained to a rock, did an unseen U-turn and then returned the way they came.
As for the titular birds in Night of the Seagulls, they are so inconsequential to the plot that they are barely acknowledged. Instead, crabs feature more prominently, as these are shown both in the present and centuries earlier as descending upon the corpse of the most recent sacrifice. I think the ultimate example of insult to injury is dying and then getting a horrible case of crabs.
Dir: Amando de Ossorio
Starring Victor Petit, María Kosty, Sandra Mozarowsky
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray