Director: Amando de Ossorio
Writers: Amando de Ossorio
Stars: Tony Kendall, Fernando Sancho, Esperanza Roy
1 Hour, 31 Minutes
Amazon has it at: https://amzn.to/2UkcjZV
We begin with a flashback to the evil Templars sacrificing a girl and drinking her blood. The villagers storm the monastery and burn the place up. Then they burn out the Templar’s eyes and hang them. It’s not reused footage from the first film, but it is a reshoot of a scene that we’ve seen before.
Credits Roll
We jump to the present where the kids are tormenting the local hunchback. The mayor brings in Jack, a fireworks specialist, to help them celebrate the anniversary of the victory over the Templars. Jack used to have a relationship with Vivian, the mayor’s secretary. They have a long and drawn-out conversation and kiss-fest that is observed by the hunchback. The hunchback interrupts them and tells them about the legend that the Templars promised to return…tonight.
Later that night, the festival begins, and Jack’s fireworks are a hit. Jack and Vivian dance while the Mayor fumes at them. Meanwhile, up at the monastery, the headstones start to wobble. It’s time to reuse some footage, since it’s been a whole year since the first movie. The hunchback is standing there watching the dead rise.
In town, they burn effigies of the Templars as the fireworks blast. In the cemetery, the dead assemble on their horses.
Juan and Monica are having an affair and don’t want anyone to find out. The dead find their little getaway house and people finding out about them is the least of their problems. Juan’s killed instantly, but Monica grabs a dead horse and tries to ride away. She tells Mr. Matthews at the train station, who calls town, but no one answers the phone.
Jack’s getting beaten up by the Mayor’s goons, but they stop when the mayor gets a call about a problem at the train station. Jack and Vivian drive away from town, but come across Monica, who is in shock. They have to drive back to town to find a doctor. The mayor’s goons see them too and warn the mayor to evacuate the town. The mayor calls the governor in the middle of the night, but the governor doesn’t believe him.
The dead get to town eventually, and they make a great entrance, cutting off all the exits from the town square. They stay on their horses, draw their swords, and advance on the partying crowd. Hundreds are killed.
Some of the townspeople manage to escape, and all the characters that we know board a jeep and head out of town, with the dead in pursuit. They get cornered and hole up in a big church where the hunchback is already hiding.
Monica and the hunchback try to dig a tunnel in the cellar, while the mayor weasels his way into an escape plan that gets one of his men killed.He then tries the same plan with the dead man’s little daughter. This time, the mayor gets what’s coming to him. Things go just as badly for Monica and the hunchback.
And then there were four. Howard decides that since they’re all going to die anyway, that he can rape Vivian. Jack and Howard fight, and Howard gets impaled on a spear that happened to be laying there in the church.
Dawn comes and goes, and the dead are still out there. Finally, they blindfold the child and all three of them quietly walk through the crowd of dead. The child peeks and screams, but the dead don’t react. They’ve gone dormant in the daylight. They all slowly start falling over.
Commentary
There are two versions of the film. We watched the shorter, dubbed version, but the Spanish version has an additional four minutes of gore shots. In the longer version, Murdo the hunchback sacrifices a girl to initiate the Templar’s return.
This one moves really fast, and the dead rise just a few minutes into the film. There was just enough reused footage to be noticeable, but the dead have plenty of new tricks up their shrouds. The battle scenes go on and on, but are only mildly entertaining as it’s mostly just shots of random people fighting the dead, not characters we know.
The drama between the mayor and Jack over Vivian is a little too melodramatic to even try to take seriously. The things that worked in the first film still work here, but the story itself is a little weak.