User Reviews

Centuries ago, Aleric du Marnac (Paul Naschy) and his female companion were put to death for a variety of crimes including consorting with Satan. The pair vowed to get their revenge on the descendants of those responsible for their deaths. du Marnac was beheaded and his body and head were buried separately. Switch to the present day (1973) where Hugo du Marnac (also Paul Nashcy) and his friends discover a buried chest containing the head of Aleric du Marnac – a head that wants to be reunited with the rest of its body. Through possession and blood sacrifice, du Marnac is determined to make his body whole.

What Works:

• The Last Act. I have yet to see a Paul Naschy film that I can wholeheartedly endorse, but Horror Rises from the Tomb comes as close as I've yet seen. The final third of the movie is a nice slice of Euro-horror. It's loaded with lots of juicy horror elements - a reanimated head, a sickle-welding maniac, zombies, a magical talisman, and more. If only the first two-thirds of the movie could have been this good. It's not that the first part of the movie is bad, it's just not as good as the final half hour.

• The Head-in-a-Box. Horror Rises from the Tomb certainly isn't the first film of its type to have a reanimated head, but its definitely handled better than most. Through some nice editing and some tricky camera placements, du Marnac's head comes to life. In fact, most of the special effects (the zombies rising from the swamp or the heart being ripped from the chest are two more examples) are as good as anything I've seen form an early 70s Spanish horror movie.

• Helga Line. du Marnac's twisted, blood-thirsty female companion is played to perfection by Helga Line.

What Doesn't Work:

• Paul Naschy. I've written this before, but I just don't understand Nashcy's status as a cult icon. He's one of the most unappealing actors I've ever seen. As the descendant Hugo, Nashcy lacks anything approaching charisma.

• Dialogue. This may have as much to do with the dubbing as anything else, but some of the dialogue had me going back to see if I had heard things correctly. The best example goes something like this (I don't have the exact quote, but this is close): "Two people have been murdered and we've just dumped their bodies in the lake. We've got to get out of here. We don't want to get involved." Huh?

I've come to realize that Naschy's brand of horror may not be for me. I'll still watch his films in hopes that one day I'll see in him what so many other horror fans have seen. Horror Rises from the Tomb may not be Naschy's breakthrough with me, but it's a movie that I enjoyed and will revisit in the future.

The version of this film I saw was titled 'Horror Rises from the Tomb'. The horror in question is a wicked Medieval magician played by Spanish horror legend Paul Naschy looking like he's playing Abanazer in a church hall panto. He rises from his tomb when a stupid descendant (I think he's a descendant, as he's also played by Naschy)returns to his ancestral home and reunites the magician's head and body, which had been separated by by the witchfinders who executed him, in an attempt to stop him, er, rising from the tomb.

Obviously, once head and body are back together all hell breaks loose and lots of people die. Like all good magicians, Abanazer here has a lovely assistant. This one's played by another Spanish horror great, the beautiful Helga Line. Like practically every other woman in the film Line periodically gets her kit off. There's a LOT of nudity in this film, and not just female - we even get to see Naschy's paunchy body, which isn't a pretty sight, I can tell you. Most of the film's sex angle is laughably gratuitous. There's one particularly funny scene where Naschy and Line discuss their evil plans and then suddenly decide to both have a grope of the nubile young blonde they've possessed.

It's also pretty gory in places - notably a Herschell Gordon Lewis-esquire moment where Line plunges her hands into a man's chest to remove his heart.

The best part of the film is the pretty effective zombies who turn up towards the end. They're quickly scared off by a fire though, and don't bother coming back. Which is a shame. The scene where the zombies rise, however, is the film's most ludicrously inept moment. It all happens in long shot, and we haven't really got a clue what's happening until we see some figures shambling on from the distance. There are several rubbish moments like this, thanks largely to poor editing. When a labourer falls under the hypnotic spell of Naschy's head there's a big close up of his face that seems to last forever and serves no purpose whatsoever.

All in all, not a great horror film, but entertaining enough. Of course, the version I saw was a dubbed American version that had probably been chopped to pieces. For all I know, the original Spanish version could be a masterpiece...

Well, if you are interested in the idea of a severed head with hypnotic power to order others around to his his bidding, Helga Line ripping open the chests of victims to snatch out their hearts, and corpses of those who are victimized by the evil sorcerers on the rampage then Horror Rises from the Tomb is an ideal way to spend 90 minutes. Shot in Madrid, you get a phenomenal setting for your Gothic horror, and the castle is ideally placed in the midst of a cold, gray mountainous area where the Satanic sorcerers have free reign to cause grisly mischief.

Paul Naschy's script it chock full of deranged ideas. We see, at the opening, executioners sentencing two sorcerers for practicing witchcraft and Satanism, for murdering many innocents to supply them sacrifices for their lord. Both, Alaric de Marnac(Naschy)and Mabille De Lancré(Helga Liné) condemn those punishing them and their bloodline to a curse, and then are executed for their atrocities. This was mid-15th Century in France. Move to contemporary early 70's, and descendant Hugo(also Naschy), a cynical, rich playboy scoffs at the ravings of an aristocratic couple regarding spiritualism. Along with pal, artist Maurice(Víctor Alcázar), his lover Sylvia(Betsabé Ruiz), and Maurice's girlfriend Paula(Cristina Suriani), after attending a séance, the four head for Hugo's palatial castle located just ahead a peasant village where the cemetery containing the decapitated head of Alaric, along with his separated body and the corpse of Mabille are said to located. When Alaric's head is discovered, in a treasure chest, two criminals open it hoping for jewels. His head now free to command others with weaker minds, Alaric orders the one thief to slash the other's throat with a sickle, while also murdering an intruding Gastone(Juan Cazalilla), Hugo's manservant. Soon Alaric gains command of Maurice, by kidnapping Paula, with the thief also available to order around, the goal to resurrect Mabille and to restore his head to his body. Once this is taken care of, Alaric focuses on the Astral Convergence which will occur at the end of ten full moons. To remain vital and alive, Mabille and Alaric will prey upon villagers, removing their hearts as sustenance. As the body count rises, with Hugo and Elvira(Emma Cohen), Gastone's daughter, seemingly on their own as Maurice captured Sylvia to be sacrificed for Mabille's reemergence, little hope for their survival remains. Their only weapon against the powers of darkness is a talisman(..whose emblem is the power of Thor)and silver dagger, with a book to train them on how to use their limited resources to combat such evil.

Crazy premise, innit it? Lots of gorgeous naked bodies and plenty of blood-letting, occurring in a fantastic setting, within a castle, cemetery, and woods of Madrid. A head is taken off, re-applied, soon detaching yet again, bouncing down a series of steps! Helga Liné has a memorable scene where she she slashes the back of a villager, rips the chest open(..burying her hand inside, pulling out the heart)of another, and slices the throat of a female victim just for the hell of it. Naschy not only gives himself the hero's role(..well for a certain amount of time anyway), but also the part of the dangerous, sadistic sorcerer. You can see that Naschy(..and Liné)relishes his role as the devious Alaric de Marnac. Nearly every member of the female cast are naked at some point, often victimized while under the power of the sorcerers. For the first part of the film, a sickle is used as the primary tool to kill hapless victims who have no where to turn. I gotta say that the sequence where Alaric's head is re-attached to his body is rather impressive, particularly for their budget and the time when this was made. Emma Cohen and Helga Liné are simply goddesses and I enjoyed their times on screen, both's beauty effectively used. There's plenty of atmosphere and gore to compliment the Gothic trappings. I personally loved how deranged and ridiculous the plot is, and the film provides all kinds of aspects I look for in horror movies. Probably my favorite Naschy movie, that I have seen, because it goes for broke, not to mention it is gratuitous and blood-thirsty. Actually, while not benefited by many of the things Universal had in the 30's and 40's, Naschy could apply blood, gore, and tits along with the gothica, an advantage in my mind.

Multi-talented Paul Naschy writes the script here (under his real name, Jacinto Molina) and also performs a dual (triple?) role in yet another film that tells his oft-visited tale of individuals executed for witchcraft visiting a curse on the descendants of their accusers. Naschy in his heyday was known for creative 'recycling' of the same plot, and the variation here is that instead of a case of werewolf-ism, we have a pair of re-animated corpses, one of them beheaded, who summon a minor zombie invasion at one point in the story.

Tortured and executed for practicing the 'black arts', Aleric du Marnac and his wicked mistress, Mabille De Lancré, vow to seek vengeance from beyond the grave. It takes a few centuries, but eventually they manage to get some revenge going when Aleric's decapitated head is unearthed from its burial place. The head, which has held up extremely well after all these years, wills its finders into reuniting it with Aleric's body. Supernatural surgery takes care of the rest, and pretty soon Aleric is whole again, in all of his diabolical glory. Mabille is resurrected too, courtesy of a human sacrifice, and at this point, the lurid promise of the title has been fulfilled. Horror has definitely risen from the tomb.

Horror also rises from the swamp as well, as the plot places the modern-day descendants of both du Marnac and his executioners in a remote villa. When supernaturally-influenced persons commit murder and are murdered, the solution that the survivors come up with is to dispose of the bodies in the swamp and get out of there as soon as possible, so as not to become "involved" (?). Their plans are complicated when the bodies rise later as water-logged zombies and descend on the house "Night of the Living Dead"-style, in one of the movie's best sequences.

The film is very typical of Naschy's films in that the situations are improbable and seem to have been invented on the spot. Indeed, if you explore the production notes you will find that Naschy wrote the script in about 48 hours. Considering that, this movie ain't too bad.

What's important about Naschy and his genre is how it represents a bridge between the Gothic horrors of the classic monster movies and the modern sensibility of realistic violence and gore. Although it relies on a lot of clichés that have been around since the early days of film, "Horror Rises From the Tomb" also has plenty of blood, and if the special effects are sometimes less than convincing, the brutal tone of the violence makes up for it. Although the villains dress in period costumes worthy of a cheap thriller from the 40s, the characters suffer cruel and violent deaths all around, much more shocking than in any Universal film. The Euro sensibility also allows for gratuitous nudity, both male and female, and Naschy himself isn't shy about disrobing.

Those expecting a standard zombie outing will be disappointed, since many of the film's home video marketing makes it out to be something along the lines of Fulci or Romero. It's not that, but if you have an appreciation for European-style exploitation films, you'll probably like this one a lot.

This movie is probably the epitome of what a bad horror movie should be. The plot of this movie is bad, so the writer at least pleased the male fans by having nearly every female character go naked at least once. The movie itself is interesting in terms of concept, but the cheesy 70's style gore wasn't enough to save it from being terrible. If you're looking to kill 2 hours and watch naked women, this is the movie for you. The version I have is dubbed so I can't really bash the dialogue and acting because its not their fault. I do wonder why they built up one of the male characters to be a survivor type then kill him off with about 20 minutes left. Then again, I was paying more attention to the females anyway.

5 out of 10

Somehow that summary line spoken by Alaric de Marnac (Paul Naschy) doesn't quite carry the resonance that it had when uttered by Arnold in "The Terminator". Nor unfortunately does the story, which when all is said and done, seemed like a good excuse to put a host of good looking women in short skirts, flimsy nightgowns and skimpy underwear. You probably wouldn't expect that from a title like "Horror Rises From the Tomb" but it's there alright. The aforementioned Alaric opens the story in the Fifteenth Century by casting a curse on the descendants of authorities putting him to death for witchcraft, and it's a quick jump to the Seventies that finds his severed head reunited with his body to exact his revenge. This might not have been too bad if done effectively, but the film suffers from poor editing with one disjointed scene after another challenging story continuity. As a result, movies like this always seem much longer than their actual run time because of the patience required to sit through them. Why do I do it? Well, as I write this, the country is in the grip of the corona virus outbreak, and with no cable or local library access, I'm delving into pictures that are part of video collections that I've avoided in the past. If there's a time and a place for everything, I guess this is it. I can't believe how many more clunkers there are in the stack I'm looking at.

Horrible sound effects accompany this miserable and bloody gore-fest that starts off interesting enough but resorts to extremely disgusting visuals to move the story forward. Starting off in the 15th century, the back plot has a warlock and his wife being executed for their crimes against God, and five centuries later they are back thanks to the discovery of the warlock's head that forces modern day people into zombies and to turn to dismembering others for their hearts which ultimately brings back the original warlock to life. Bizarre modern subplots including the presence of a cult of demons hanging people in the middle of the road don't seem to be related and seem present more for shock value than of any use to the plot.

Excessively bloody and deeply disturbing, this is almost unbearable to watch. I say that not as someone who is against anything satanic in nature in movies, but through the way that this is presented. I had a headache half an hour into the film because of the annoyingly awful sound, and after the 4th or 5th gory murder which follows with people literally having their hearts cut out with a machete then others set on fire, I just was plainly annoyed. This is just impossible to watch. I have seen many of these late 1960s and early 1970s Eurotrash horror films that combine sex and degradation with a satanic plot, and a few of them are mildly enjoyable. Of course, the gratuitous sex scene ends up being pointless, more sadomasochistic than arousing. This one other than some interesting art direction and of course the historical setting up left me wanting it to end long before it did.