This is a decent horror film--thanks mostly to some amazingly scary monsters. However, you should note that in the original Portuguese-Spanish production, the skeletons were NOT from the Knights Templar but from some weird little Satanic coven. This makes MUCH more sense than the English-dubbed version where they are described as from the Knights Templar. Despite the Knights being popular in fiction (such as from the Dan Brown stories), they were not Satanic nor did they have any weird codes--they were just an order of knights wiped out by a greedy French king who wanted their wealth...period. Also, they couldn't have been from the Knights Templar because the symbol on their outfit was all wrong--a red ankh (from ancient Egypt) was used in the film instead of a red cross (which is a Christian symbol).
This is a film that I found the plot a lot less important than the monsters. That's because the plot had a few problems--though none made it a bad film. The film begins with two ladies meeting after many years apart. The boyfriend of one of the ladies invites the other to accompany them on a camp out--but, oddly, his girlfriend is not at all pleased. She becomes very jealous of him and stupidly stomps off the world's slowest moving train while they are headed for their camp out. Not surprisingly, she wanders into the ruins of an old abbey and soon she is killed by very cool looking zombie skeletons. While the skeletons' hands are kind of cheesy, the rest of the character design is really neat--and very scary. And, through the rest of the film, these resurrected demonic skeletons do VERY bad things! And, interestingly, the film does NOT have an ending that I had anticipated in the least--and I appreciated that.
By the way, what's up with that morgue?! The attendant was MEGA-creepy and why would anyone keep a bird and a frog there?! Also, the jammed door lock in the mannequin shop was a bit of a cheesy cliché in an otherwise decent film.
By the way, the DVD for this is GREAT. It had the dubbed AND original version of the film. It also has the intro to the little-known drive-in version where they stuck a very confusing and stupid prologue onto it to try, believe it or not, to capitalize on the Planet of the Apes films--and they retitled it "Revenge From Planet Ape".
This is a film that I found the plot a lot less important than the monsters. That's because the plot had a few problems--though none made it a bad film. The film begins with two ladies meeting after many years apart. The boyfriend of one of the ladies invites the other to accompany them on a camp out--but, oddly, his girlfriend is not at all pleased. She becomes very jealous of him and stupidly stomps off the world's slowest moving train while they are headed for their camp out. Not surprisingly, she wanders into the ruins of an old abbey and soon she is killed by very cool looking zombie skeletons. While the skeletons' hands are kind of cheesy, the rest of the character design is really neat--and very scary. And, through the rest of the film, these resurrected demonic skeletons do VERY bad things! And, interestingly, the film does NOT have an ending that I had anticipated in the least--and I appreciated that.
By the way, what's up with that morgue?! The attendant was MEGA-creepy and why would anyone keep a bird and a frog there?! Also, the jammed door lock in the mannequin shop was a bit of a cheesy cliché in an otherwise decent film.
By the way, the DVD for this is GREAT. It had the dubbed AND original version of the film. It also has the intro to the little-known drive-in version where they stuck a very confusing and stupid prologue onto it to try, believe it or not, to capitalize on the Planet of the Apes films--and they retitled it "Revenge From Planet Ape".