Tombs of the Blind Dead

Tombs of the Blind Dead is a 1972 Spanish-Portuguese horror film written and directed by Amando de Ossorio. Its original Spanish title is La noche del terror ciego ( English: The Night of the Blind Terror). The film was the first in Ossorio's "Blind Dead" series, spawning three official sequels: Return of the Blind Dead (1973), The Ghost Galleon (1974) and Night of the Seagulls (1975). Its success helped kickstart the Spanish horror film boom of the early 1970s. Ossorio has stated that Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's Gothic horror legend El monte de las ánimas (1862) and George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) both influenced the creation of his film. Plot Legend has it that in the abandoned medieval town of Berzano, at the border between Spain and Portugal, the Knights Templar (a fictionalized version of the real-life order that was dissolved in the 14th century following charges of witchcraft and heresy) leave their tombs at night and come back from the dead as revenants. The reanimated corpses are blind, because their eyes were pecked out by birds while their hanged bodies rotted on the gallows.