La Noche de las Gaviotas, or Night of the Seagulls as it's more commonly known amongst English speaking audiences along with other lesser alternate titles like Don't Go Out at Night, Night of the Blood Cult, Night of the Death Cult & The Blind Dead 4, starts during the Middle Ages in a small European coastal village where a weary traveller & his wife have become lost. It's not long before the (still human at this point) Knight Templars show up, kill the guy & kidnap his missus. They take her back to a sacrificial tomb where they cut her heart out & offer it to their god... Jump to 'The Present' & the very same village as the new rural GP Dr. Henry Stein (Victor Petit) & his wife Joan (Maria Kosti) have just arrived in. They encounter very unfriendly locals but decide they must stick it out, they bid the current Doctor (Javier de Rivera) farewell & try to settle in to their new home. Unfortunately the sinister locals don't make things easy, the Stein's witness a young woman named Tilda (Julia Saly) taken away against her will, they hear ringing every night & have to care for the local retard Teddy (Jose Antonio Calvo) whom they beat up. The Stein's hire a young girl named Lucy (Sandra Mozarowsky) whom is also taken & tied to a rock as a sacrificial offering to the Knight Templars who rise from their graves for seven nights every seven years in search of fresh female blood...
This Spanish production was written & directed by Amando de Ossorio & is the fourth, & thus far final, entry in the Blind Dead series of films. La Noche de las Graviotas is yet another film that has been saved from obscurity by a wonderful DVD presentation that it doesn't deserve. The script by Ossorio is totally useless, it's full of the dumbest character's you can imagine, it's repetitive, dull, silly, lacks any sort of exploitation & does nothing to enhance the series. I hate the character's for starters, what's with the retarded guy? When Joan ask's Lucy if she can hear the bells ringing & Lucy says no when they clearly were would that not seem strange to Joan? What about the villagers reaction to the Stein's? I simply don't see any plausible motives for anything or anyone in La Noche de las Graviotas. The seagull thing with the souls of the victims was quite a nice idea but nothing was made of it. People act stupidly & it really started to irritate me, I know it's only a film but a film like La Noche de las Graviotas needs to be at least based in some sort of reality to have any sort of impact & feature even vaguely believable character's. The climax also frustrates with a rushed feel to it, if it was so easy to destroy the Templars why didn't any of the villagers figure it out over the 100's of years they had been sacrificing girls, it only took the Stein's 5 minutes. If thought about the film makes little sense & has limited entertainment value, very disappointing.
Director Ossorio again annoys in the director's chair by constantly using the awful day-for-night process which makes the film look uneven & basically makes nighttime set sequences look like a daytime scene with the brightness turned down. The slow motion & the rotting Knight Templars are still there but they were present in the original Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971) so it's nothing new or radical & proves, to some extent, how samey & unoriginal La Noche de las Graviotas is. Having said that there is a nice atmosphere running throughout the film helped by the great moody locations. The blood & gore is none existent, forget about any great sounding DVD artwork that promise 'uncut' & 'uncensored' & assume this will be gory because this is a very tame film, there is one brief sacrifice at the start, one off screen sacrifice half way through & when the Templars die blood gushes out of their eye sockets, that really is all the gore in La Noche de las Graviotas so don't expect a blood bath. There are a a couple of brief scenes of nudity too but not much.
Technically the film is OK but nothing to shout about, the best thing about it are the locations used. The acting & dubbing are both as poor as each other & that guy who plays the retard, just check the dumb distorted expression out on his face!
La Noche de las Graviotas is a poor film except for some nice atmosphere & one or two decent scenes, nowhere near enough to compensate for the lameness of the rest of it though. For die hard Blind Dead fans only, very disappointing after hearing such good things about it. However, I still can't decide if this is the worst entry in the series or whether that dubious honour goes to The Ghost Galleon (1974).
This Spanish production was written & directed by Amando de Ossorio & is the fourth, & thus far final, entry in the Blind Dead series of films. La Noche de las Graviotas is yet another film that has been saved from obscurity by a wonderful DVD presentation that it doesn't deserve. The script by Ossorio is totally useless, it's full of the dumbest character's you can imagine, it's repetitive, dull, silly, lacks any sort of exploitation & does nothing to enhance the series. I hate the character's for starters, what's with the retarded guy? When Joan ask's Lucy if she can hear the bells ringing & Lucy says no when they clearly were would that not seem strange to Joan? What about the villagers reaction to the Stein's? I simply don't see any plausible motives for anything or anyone in La Noche de las Graviotas. The seagull thing with the souls of the victims was quite a nice idea but nothing was made of it. People act stupidly & it really started to irritate me, I know it's only a film but a film like La Noche de las Graviotas needs to be at least based in some sort of reality to have any sort of impact & feature even vaguely believable character's. The climax also frustrates with a rushed feel to it, if it was so easy to destroy the Templars why didn't any of the villagers figure it out over the 100's of years they had been sacrificing girls, it only took the Stein's 5 minutes. If thought about the film makes little sense & has limited entertainment value, very disappointing.
Director Ossorio again annoys in the director's chair by constantly using the awful day-for-night process which makes the film look uneven & basically makes nighttime set sequences look like a daytime scene with the brightness turned down. The slow motion & the rotting Knight Templars are still there but they were present in the original Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971) so it's nothing new or radical & proves, to some extent, how samey & unoriginal La Noche de las Graviotas is. Having said that there is a nice atmosphere running throughout the film helped by the great moody locations. The blood & gore is none existent, forget about any great sounding DVD artwork that promise 'uncut' & 'uncensored' & assume this will be gory because this is a very tame film, there is one brief sacrifice at the start, one off screen sacrifice half way through & when the Templars die blood gushes out of their eye sockets, that really is all the gore in La Noche de las Graviotas so don't expect a blood bath. There are a a couple of brief scenes of nudity too but not much.
Technically the film is OK but nothing to shout about, the best thing about it are the locations used. The acting & dubbing are both as poor as each other & that guy who plays the retard, just check the dumb distorted expression out on his face!
La Noche de las Graviotas is a poor film except for some nice atmosphere & one or two decent scenes, nowhere near enough to compensate for the lameness of the rest of it though. For die hard Blind Dead fans only, very disappointing after hearing such good things about it. However, I still can't decide if this is the worst entry in the series or whether that dubious honour goes to The Ghost Galleon (1974).