Don't listen to the negative reviews

Crappy film

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

I first saw the English version of this in the mid 80s on a VHS. The shopkeeper told me that there is a prequel n sequels but not available with him. Revisited the Spanish version recently on a DVD. The movie has plenty of genuinely chilling moments (and plenty of silly ones, too) and some effectively creepy zombies (skeletal caped figures wielding huge swords), Return of the Evil Dead is worth a watch if you dig this kind of thing. The film throws in some nifty splashes of gore including some graphic stabbings, decapitation, heart removal scenes, eye burning, etc. The plot is similar to Night of the living dead. Several people holed up in a church, each making various attempts to go it alone in order to escape the blind dead who have them surrounded. Ther is a very silly scene, two people trying to sneak out from a tunnel n when one of em is beheaded by the the evil Templar standing above the hole, the other person is still standing next to the hole. The guy who played the mayor looked like Ron Jeremy. This movie may have its flaws, but Amando De Ossorio does a great job using slow-mo and an eerie score to intensify the film. The editing was shoddy. The skeletons attacking the village people n the aftermath fighting was tedious. The ending however is a complete disappointment, there's no spectacular showdown, the zombie skeletons just killed by sunlight. The ending of the first part was much better than this.

The Return of the Evil Dead (1973) *** (out of 4)The second film in the series starts off by showing villagers taking the Templars and tying them up. Before killing them they burn their eyes out making sure that the Templars will never be able to find their village. Flash forward hundreds of years and the village is celebrating their win over the evil men but soon the dead Templars rise from the grave for revenge.The first second to TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD isn't a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but director Amando de Ossorio does a nice job at giving fans what they wanted. It seems that the director saw what was good in the original film, the Templar knights, and gave fans much more of them. Not only are the knights given a lot more screen time but they also make sure that there are many more victims to be slaughtered.The violence, which is missing in the American version of the film, is certainly one of the reasons to watch the film as there are some pretty graphic moments including a woman being sliced open and drained of her blood. It gets even gorier when a knight rips out her heart and eats it! There are several murders like this but along with the gore the director gives us that atmosphere that was so rich in the original movie.THE RETURN OF THE EVIL DEAD also has its share of flaws including a rather dicey pacing, which drags the film at times but it's still very much worth watching.

Writer / director Amando de Ossorio's garnished Gothic follow up to the original Spanish feature "Tombs of the Blind Dead" is to some extent an improvement with a much better pace, tautly constructed suspense (where those ominous chants throughout the score draw fear) and plenty of viciously hysterical bloodletting (stomach stabbing and blood dribbling) from the Templar knights. Still with that in mind, I wasn't terribly blown away by "Return of the Blind Dead" and the ending was a real letdown too.The formula (survivors held up in a church with the zombie templar knights waiting outside) had been bled dry and its repetitive nature to get a little tiresome. Only so much could happen and it shows, but it remained effectively atmospheric in its moody imagery (you can't tire of the haunting slow motion scenes of the templar knights on their horses) and surrounding decors. This time the focus is on the cursed townsfolk who are celebrating the 500th anniversary burning of the Eastern knights that practiced black magic, but soon the nightmare is relived when the knights return from beyond their graves for brutal revenge. There they knock on doors waiting to be invited in, until they realised they are unlocked so they make themselves welcomed to carry on the slaughter behind closed doors. Make-up FX still stands up rather well. The performances are respectable with the likes of Tony Kendall, Lone Fleming, Frank Brana and Fernando Sancho.

This is only the second film in the series and already they are changing the story. The knights got their eyes plucked out by birds in the first, and now they are burned out before they are burned alive. Well, which is it? It is slow in the beginning, but picks up after the dead return.About 20 hole up in a church, but some are trying to get out on their own. The Mayor (Fernando Sancho) uses one to try and get away, and when that doesn't work, he uses the man's daughter to distract the knights while he escapes. He gets his just desserts.The ending was anti-climatic.