Customer Reviews

Graveyard of Horror

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I remember this film from my creature feature days in the 70's. The plot is horrible, but there are so many great lines and cheesy facial expressions which make this dvd a keeper. You have to see it to believe it. Are these things happening or is it someone's imagination??? The ending is also suppose to be a shock!! OH MY! I loved when one of the two trampy daughters tells the lead character she is going to take a bath in perfume!! She tries to be so coy and alluring! She's about as sexy as a headcold. This is worth the price of the dvd alone!! Or the two grave robbers dressed in capes and plastic Halloween masks from ... They try to be so mysterious, but they keep showing the lead woman's shoes, so you know who it is. This is what makes this dvd endearing. Oh yeah, the dubbing from Spanish to English is equally horrible too!

If you can overlook the bad plot and see it as a comedy, it works on so many levels! Graveyard of Horror makes a great party film with some friends and lots of pizza and beer. And there are extras! Loaded with trailers from other films which are even worse. C'mon, this isn't a film from the Actor's Studio. It's pure fun!!!

Sure this is a big sloppy mess of a film, but it also has moments of pure surrealism that rival those of any desirable Jess Franco title. The snowy graveyard landscapes, erratic cuts, and pulsing music score also help contribute to the delerium. Graveyard Of Horrors is one of those offbeat one-of-a-kind Euro-horror's that was perfectly designed for those 3:00 AM viewings. I loved it.

"Graveyard of Horror" (also known as "Necrophagus" and "The Butcher of Binbrook") is a confusing, plodding, mess of a film from Spain. It has great gothic horror atmosphere and 1970's European sensibility (which were solely responsible for my two star rating) but little else to recommend it. Many people have been baffled by the plot, which is loosely constructed at best, but I expected that as soon as I saw the "Independent-International" logo at the opening of the film. Unfortunately, unlike "Danger on Tiki Island," John Ashley isn't around to salvage the movie this time.

The film opens with a brief narrated tour of the ugliest castle in memory, and plods on to the omnipresent tune of an irritating theme song which is played by any variety of instruments (especially the harmonica) and as a special bonus is whistled at great length almost constantly throughout the movie. I cannot even tell you how much I hated this musical device by the end of the film. As an aside, is it ever a good sign when a stranger gets into a tiny train compartment with you for a long rail journey and immediately pulls out a harmonica and starts playing? Unfortunately, that's only a foreshadowing of the things to come in this film.

Michael Sherrington (Bill Curran) is some kind of scientist who has married into a family of crazy, manipulative women. (He also loves the harmonica.) He takes a train to see his pregnant wife, who died during labor. There's lots of pointless and tawdry drama surrounding her death, but it's clear that all is not what it seems. Dr. Lexter (Frank Braña) is an evil scientist who dabbles in extortion, and is bleeding the family dry financially while having an affair with Anne (Catherine Ellison,) whose husband Robert was a brilliant scientist allied with Lexter. (Got all that?) They were researching the transformation of human cells (the plot summary on the DVD case makes Michael's role in all this more puzzling.) Robert has disappeared while researching, and it's later revealed that he is the monster doing the skulking and murder. (As far as I can understand it.)

The very confusing plot shows the monster living in a peat moss bog of some sort in the castle. Feeding the monster's lust for blood is Lexter and Mr. Fowles (Víctor Israel,) the town gravedigger who comes across as an almost perfect cross between Marty Feldman and Peter Lorre. While the whole "what happened to Michael and Robert?" bit is going on, we have numerous intercut scenes of the family of Michael's wife. It turns out that they are all a despicable lot, with the mother being perhaps the crabbiest woman ever on film. The sisters of Michael's wife also love Michael, putting him in one corner of a very unfortunate love parallelogram. The evilest sister, Pamela (Marisa Shiero,) has the distinction of starring in the worst scene in the film in which she tries to seduce poor Michael in flashback. Speaking of flashbacks, prepare yourself for a lot of them: most of them are totally unnecessary and simply show earlier scenes again (like they weren't bad enough the first time around,) though some are new and advance the story. While I'm on the subject of bad cinematic technique in this film, prepare yourself for seemingly endless footage of pallbearers carrying a coffin across snow.

Despite the lurid title, what the film does not have is graphic gore. I am not a gore fan, so that's fine with me in principle, but be advised that what is supposed to be scary here is more laughable than anything. (The scenes of the women bickering are much more terrifying.) In the end we finally get to see a few continuous seconds of the monster marauding in the cemetery. The monster resembles a cross between a large gecko and an elm tree, and inspires far more glee than horror. The monster tangles briefly with authorities, and the audience is treated to a very long, preachy, and ponderous bit of narration from Robert (the lizard-shrub monster) about how he was a willing guinea pig in the human cell transformation experiments, and how he wants to have his wife, Anne, kill him. (Things never seem to go in Robert's favor.) The film closes with a refrain of the dreaded music, and despite the alleged death-defying struggle in the graveyard, for my money watching the women quarrel is still much scarier than any of the monster-related nefariousness.

The DVD includes several fairly boring trailers for your entertainment. The DVD case explains that "Scientist Michael Sharrington conducts strange experiments on the transmutation of human cells...." That confused more than clarified, because even after deliberating on that very point, I didn't get that out of the film. Michael's brother in law Robert indeed does tamper in this domain, and gets turned into a lizard-vegetable of some sort as payback. I could have easily misunderstood something in the extraordinarily disjointed plot, but one thing's for sure: I'm not going to watch it again to find out.

Michael Sherrington returns home after a long absence to discover that his wife Elizabeth has died in childbirth. And his older brother, Robert, has disappeared as well. Michael attempts to explore both mysteries, only to meet with evasion and hostility from Anne, Robert's wife; from Dr. Lexter, the family physician; and from Lillian and Pamela, Elizabeth's sisters.

A frustrated Michael decides to exhume Elizabeth in an attempt to learn something about her death from the condition of the body. But strange, furtive shapes are lurking in the cemetery near the Sherrington estate. Michael follows them to a hidden crypt and is overcome by shock at the sight of some horrible creature. . . .

So now Michael is missing along with Robert. Margaret, their niece (presumably the child of a third Sherrington sibling, though this is not made clear) tries to learn what has happened to her "favorite" uncle. (Margaret's affection for Michael may not be entirely innocent; he seems to have a rare ability to arouse passion in every woman he meets. Both of Elizabeth's sisters are erotically obsessed by him as well.)

Anyway, Margaret manages to stumble into the cemetery at one point and get herself captured by masked and robed figures there. She's taken to the crypt and left there to feed the unnatural appetites of the monster of the graveyard--none other than Robert Sherrington, whose arcane researches into cellular transformation have led to his mutation into a ghastly, reptilian beast of cannibalistic tendencies. His wife Anne and Dr. Lexter have been bringing him victims on a regular basis, including Michael's wife Elizabeth.

But before Robert can turn Margaret into another one of his midnight snacks, an injured but still living Michael returns, along with the police. Despite his formidable appearance, Robert proves to be quite vulnerable to gunfire. The film ends as Michael takes Margaret away from the tragedy-haunted ancestral estate.

At least, that's what I think happened! "Graveyard of Horror" is one of the the more incoherent releases in Image's "Euro-Shock" series. It appears to start about 15 mintues into the story, with character relationships poorly explained, if explained at all. There is very little pay-off at the end, with the revelation about Robert's monstrous persona treated almost as an afterthought. I know they can't all be classics, but this one doesn't even approach the level of "workmanlike".

Folks, If you're looking for insightful dialogue, great acting skills, production values or adequate continuity with this film... well... you're still looking.
Having said that, this brings back memories of the Friday night frights of Sammy Terry (get it? Ceme tery?) on Channel 4 in Indianapolis. Where they dug these movies up is worthy of a term paper in college classes. To me, the film was disjointed, nonsensical, lame eroticism filled. I loved it! It had one redeeming value... a haunting tune that the director obviously fell in love with.. it's spliced into the film piecemeal, but I still remember it today. They played it on an organ, whistled it, and in one small segment, had a decent attempt of a small orchestral version of it. THAT is reason enough to buy the movie.
Ive looked for this movie for 3 decades, erroniously believing it was directed by Mario Bava or His brother. The search is over, thanks to Amazon. Enjoy!

Graveyard of Horror (Miguel Madrid, 1971)

For once, I'm not even going to attempt to give a plot summary for a movie; after I finished watching Graveyard of Horror, I still had no idea what was going on. I know it involved a number of empty coffins, a mentally unstable chap throwing a picture into a fireplace, some women of varying levels of attractiveness (one of whom was married to said mentally unstable chap), and some people in very odd masks. Other than that, you're on your own trying to figure out what's going on here. Kenneth Anger films make more sense.

One thing the movie does have going for it is its atmosphere, which in the right hands could have been phenomenal. Madrid obviously reveres the horror films on the forties and fifties, and tries to duplicate the atmosphere here; big, drafty castles, creepy graveyards, people jumping at every sound. And as a purely atmospheric piece, it does work on some level. Unfortunately, someone told the actors to open their mouths at various points. I'm sure there's supposed to be a plot in here somewhere; the first twenty minutes or so set it up. Then comes the rest of the movie (until the final scene, where a voice-over tells you what's been going on, kinda). In short, it's awful, and I wouldn't wish it on a dead man. *

This movie is very similiar to some of jess francos output from the same era. It's disjointed and it's filled with lots of images of disconnected scenes. It has strange pulsating music and the monster makes a strange howling noise while people fall in front of the camera. However it's still entertaining even if the whole movie is rather deranged. There is a general plot in this movie but you really have to pay attention to it to understand what's happening throughout the procedings. There is little actual violence in the movie but it's still fun for lovers of bad euro horror anyways. My main beef is with image the company that released this ,they made little attempts to clean up the scratches and dirt smudges. They have done the same thing with other fun but cheesy older horror movies as well. This is why I am going to email them and ask them to please clean up a movie before they sling it out to us. Alot of companies are taking the time to do this and so should they.

I'm sure this film was a great "make-out" movie when it was first imported to the drive-ins HERE, but, when you NOW sit...on the sofa...confined...facing the TV...well, the only thing to say is, that a bottle of sedatives would be more "cost-effective."
The only glint of excitement, was that the Cemetery Caretaker played by "whatz-iz-name" is the same actor who played the luggage Caretaker in "HORROR EXPRESS" (Victor Israel, for you videophiles LIKE ME).