Return of the Evil Dead is, in my opinion, a superior film to the acclaimed original Blind Dead movie. This time around, the body count rises tenfold and the galloping, sword-swinging Templars are multiplied by nearly as much. Watching armies of ghouls race across the countryside, waving their blades and wriggling their tiny skeletal arms, can be truly chill-inducing.

This time around, a local celebration is invaded by the Templars, who take their vengeance on the townspeople - eventually chasing the mayor, a fireworks technician, his estranged lover, and a few horrified others to a nearby church. Barricaded inside, the survivors take it upon themselves not to stop the Templars, but simply to escape with their lives.

The performances are uniformly decent, although numerous day-for-night shots are so jarring, they take away a large portion of the needed tension. The effects are all done well, with a bit more grue this time around... but still a relatively gore-less affair. There's some nudity, a bevy of hilarious characters, and a thrilling (albeit unsuccessful) escape through an underground passageway.

Any way you look at it, this film is a step up from the thrilling original. If you're in the mood for some silly, creepy fun - look no further than this little gem. Return of the Evil Dead is an absolute blast.

The Templars are back in action, this time terrorizing a local village. And while I found a lot to enjoy, the movie suffers because it is a sequel. I suppose selecting a favorite depends on which Blind Dead movie you see first. I happened to see Tombs of the Blind Dead (the first in the series) before I saw Return of the Evil Dead. As a result, a lot of the suspense and mystery surrounding the Templars is lost in this movie. I already knew what the Templars were all about and wasn't as shocked as I was with the first movie.

That's not to say there aren't moments of horror gold to be found in Return of the Evil Dead. Once again, the Templars rising from the grave is very well done. The scene where the villagers are trapped in the Plaza by the Templars on horseback is one of the best of first two movies. And Return of the Evil Dead has characters that are easier to care about. Add to that the requisite amount of violence, blood, and general creepiness and you've got a very solid horror movie.

Forget the naysayers - RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD is everything you could want from a cool Spanish horror movie. An attractive cast, fun dialogue, a smattering of gore, fast pacing and exceptional photography highlight Amando de Ossorio's own follow-up to TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD, as well as the fact that the film is actually scary! Yes, the undead Knights Templar are back in another separate story and with lots of screen time to their credit they're just as terrifying as before - especially when Ossorio dubs them in with weird supernatural cries and creaking noises. Okay, so the story is familiar and the film holds few surprises for the horror fan, but everything is done so efficiently you don't mind the clichéd feel.

The opening is a superb mini-movie in itself, as we witness the Knights Templar cutting open the breast of a captive girl and draining her bright red blood into a bowl, from which they then drink. They're interrupted by the classic group of torch-wielding villagers, who actually put their torches to good use this time by burning out the eyes of the Templars in an extremely graphic fashion! The evil knights are then burned alive for good measure just as the credits begin to play.

What follows is familiar stuff: the Templars return from their graves (only fifteen minutes into the film, so no waiting around!),and attack an isolated house inhabited only by a man and a girl. He is throttled, she narrowly escapes by stealing one of the undead horses in an exceptionally thrilling - and frightening - scene, in which the space she has to escape keeps getting less and less until she's forced to jump out of the window onto a nearby horse. She escapes to the town square, where party revellers are enjoy plenty of booze and fireworks. Minutes later the Templars arrive and slaughter half of the townsfolk in an excellent-shot massacre in which you can almost smell the blood and steel, as it puts you right in the thick of the action.

After the actions of a brave few who put up a fight, the rest of the townsfolk escape into the countryside (later on, in another solemn and horrific shot, we see a field littered with the bodies of the dead, exemplifying the hopelessness of the situations our characters are in). A group of survivors escape on their jeep only to be pursued by the Templars on horseback through the streets of the village (an excellent chase sequence which was ripped off in JURASSIC PARK, with a Tyrannosaur replacing the zombies). They escape into the refuge of a church, and the film enters familiar NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD territory as the zombies surround the place and attempt to get in.

This is a pretty mean spirited film. For instance, one sub plot shows two characters painfully unblocking a tunnel for what seems like an age, and finally escaping into a remote graveyard only to be instantly killed by the waiting Templars for all their hard work. Loads of cast members are brutally murdered in graphically gory scenes which have been excised from the UK print (not sure why, as they're gory for the time but not THAT gory these days) for maximum impact. The interesting, twist ending (with more than a nod to THE BIRDS) has the Templars being caught in the rays of sunlight and literally disintegrating before the eyes of our heroes.

The group of survivors holed up in the church are an interesting bunch. Firstly, we have the hero as played by Italian star Tony Kendall, more at home in European spy and adventure flicks, who supplies the film with much-needed masculine energy and heroism. He's supported by a trio of Spanish beauties who inevitably end up being menaced by the zombies. Other folks include the village idiot, Muerto, an exceptionally creepy guy with one dead arm who spies on people making love; an ill-fated family; the selfish and cowardly mayor, who causes others to die in his own attempts to escape; and the mayor's right-hand, who has a change of heart and helps our heroes, before his sexual desires get the better of him and he attempts to rape the heroine.

The gory effects are cheap but hit home, thanks to a good use of shocking music at the right time. There's an excruciating hand-lopping sequence, a surprise decapitation, an impaling, and lots of dripping blood and other splattery stuff to enjoy. The effects of the Knights Templars, on the other hand, are excellent (with the exception of the two "guards" who are blown up by fireworks, and just look like scarecrows),and once again Ossorio uses slow-motion to capture and highlight the eeriness of his zombies as they rise from their graves with their skeletal hands and ride through the countryside on horseback. RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD is a fine Spanish horror yarn, a good example of the genre and matching the best that Britain and America had to offer at the same time. Lots of action, lots of fun, and a jolly good viewing experience.