During medieval ages the Templar Knights were defenders of the lands and it’s people. Full of nobility and honor the Templars were a force for good. But after returning from a crusade to Egypt they became obsessed with the pursuit of eternal life and began to turn their backs to the light. Practicing dark occult rituals and sacrificing the people they once protected to their new gods, the Templars became feared throughout the land and eventually were killed for their horrible acts of cruelty and sacrilege. Lynched and left to hang from trees until their eyes were pecked out, the Templars were buried in the ruins of their burned down castle. True evil never rests and as night falls the fallen knights raise from their graves to feast on human blood once again.

Tombs of the Blind Dead has a great back story, ample blood flow and some very creepy visuals, but unfortunately that’s about it.

It’s written and directed by Amando de Ossorzo, who creates a great backdrop for his story and lush history that is very believable and the flashback sequences in the film are very well done, it’s just everything that happens in the present day, that being the early 70’s, that is disappointing.

The Templars themselves, in their risen dead incarnations, are actually quite cool looking as they seem to float across the screen from time to time dressed in their worn and faded robes covering skeletal bodies that hunger for human blood and blood they shall have! The red stuff flows pretty well in this one and sometimes it pours, when it’s there it’s really there. The Knights looked like they belong in a Peter Jackson movie about a certain ring and there is a horse chase sequence that looks like it was lifted directly into The Fellowship of the Ring when Arwen is being chased by the Ringwraiths, call me crazy but it looks damn near identical.

What brings this movie down is how they tie it into present day. A couple of friends on a train trip had some kind of brief lesbian relationship in the past, this muff diving experience has some strange kind of repressed memory effect on one of them that causes her to hop of the train and go and spend the night in some creepy isolated ruins that all of the local villagers avoid like the plague after the sun goes down.

Before you know it she’s half naked and zombiefied knights are rising all around her to have a bite to eat. After a couple of days, when she doesn’t show up her friend and her quasi-boyfriend head off to an old library for some reason where they learn about the Knights. Well, a rescue mission gets underway and they recruit a gang of pirates to help go back and look for her. Yeah, I said pirates.

Then, as you can imagine, they find bits and pieces of their friend right as night begins to fall and then we get the standard zombie chase flick with a rape or two thrown in for good measure. Don’t ask me, its an Italian horror thing, I guess.

I really liked the back story for this one and hoped it was going to go somewhere, but it doesn’t. There are long scenes of just characters walking around and way to many slow motion scenes of horses galloping about, speaking of which where in the hell did the Templars get their horses from? Maybe they hung them too, who knows.

Tombs of the Blind Dead is worth watching, I guess, and at times has some very cool imagery, some gore and even a little T&A but that’s about as far as I’m going to go with it. Worth a look if you’re a fan of foreign horror films and the like.

4 of 10 for the back story only.