Okay, so we've covered Spanish devil worshipper movies, and we snuck in one of Paul Naschy's werewolf movies. What's next? Oh, I know. How about one of those jungle movies where white folks are menaced by the undead locals? You know, I really love that things like that are plentiful enough to become actual genres unto themselves. So let us turn our attentions to such a film, and consequently, to one of the other pillars of Spanish horror: Amando de Ossorio and Night of the Sorcerers.

de Ossorio is best known for his Blind Dead films, in which the mummified corpses of a group of murdered Templars return to menace the Spanish countryside with slow-motion lurking and galloping about. Although the films vary wildly in quality -- sometimes in the same film -- the Blind Dead themselves remain one of the most effectively eerie monsters in monster movie history. de Ossorio's dancing zombie witch doctors? Considerably less so. I mean, they're not unscary, but they're hardly iconic. Like most everything in this movie, they achieve a sort of acceptable mediocrity -- acceptable mediocrity being, perhaps, the best general description of European horror film in general (which may or may not place them above American horror films -- I haven't done the math).

Night of the Sorcerers opens in deepest, darkest Africa circa 1910, as a lone white woman is being prepared for sacrifice. If you think this preparation involves anything less than removing all her clothes by bullwhipping them off, then you're obviously new to the world of European horror. So far, every Spanish horror film I've watched manages to cram in a bunch of full frontal nudity before the credits even begin, and as you know, this is always the sign of a good movie. A ritual ensues which involves some rather disappointing dancing -- these people could learn a thing or two from the wild flailing and rampant jazz hands of voodoo trance dancing, though they're still livelier than the average monotonic, droning Satanist. The ritual culminates in the beheading of the white woman, just as a band of fearless British troops track down the cultists. They're a little late to save the woman, but they blast away at the tribe just for good measure. Satisfied with a job well done, they set about mopping up the place, only to discover that the woman's disembodied head has sprouted fangs and she just won't stop shrieking.

Okay, so not a bad way to kick things off. You've got your nudity and you got your head chopping. You got your topless woman dancing with a machete, and you've got background dancers who are clothed one second, then topless the next time they're shown, then clothed again. You've got ritual dancing and screaming and guys in pith helmets. Unfortunately, it takes a strong movie not to go downhill from such a decent opener, and Night of the Sorcerers isn't that strong.

We flash forward to 1974, same place, where -- accompanied by a breezy cocktail lounge score -- a group of researchers, photographers, and the one woman who's just there because are traveling through Africa to make a record of some vanishing species. As fate would have it, they happen upon the exact same clearing that was used for those nasty blood rituals so many decades before, and it ain't but a few hours before, in between wild lovemaking, the group finds themselves preyed upon by a vampiric woman in a leopard-print bikini, who begins taking the female members of the group out to get beheaded by the now living dead tribespeople, thus creating more vampiric women in leopard-print bikinis. Exactly where they spontaneously generate these bikinis from is anyone's guess. Africa is dark and full of mystery -- who are you to question the ways of its macabre rituals?

Night of the Sorcerers does some things right, and as usual it's enough to convince me to give it satisfactory marks. The opening is both energetic and chilling, though unfortunately the film can't sustain that level of suspense except in tiny fits that string together dull scenes that would be called character development if the characters developed any during them. But we have what seems to be the standard collection of Spanish horror film figures: not as grating as their Italian counterparts, but hardly the sort of characters that pull you in or get you interested. They're not unlikable enough to actually be unlikable, but that's bout the best that can be said for them. The men are non-entities, there only to sit in chairs with guns, take their shirts off and splash water from the wash basin on their faces, and take the occasional roll with one of the women.

The women have more developed characters, but only because they subscribe to generic expectations. There's the bitchy one, the slightly less bitchy one, and the one who gets killed quick enough so that you can't tell much about her other than she's a photographer since she carries a camera around al the time. The actors fill the rolls just fine, but the script demands very little of them.

Scripts, of course, are the bane of European horror films, and devoted Euro-horror fans roll their eyes any time someone brings up things like logic or quality storytelling. European horror films, they will remind you, are films of images, surreal and atmospheric creations that value mood and dreamlike qualities over character development or coherent storytelling. I'm willing to accept this, as I like quite a few European horror films despite their logical flaws -- you can't exactly call them "storytelling" flaws, because the entire idea is that they tell the story in a different way (dream style) and thus demand a separate frame of reference from American films, which are (or were) often very clinical and A-to-B in their approach. However, Night of the Sorcerers' script problems don't stem from a lack of logic; all things considered, this is a pretty logical film, within the relative world of a horror film where zombie witch doctors send forth vampire leopard women to feed 'pon the living.

No, the problems stems mainly from the fact that the script is just poorly constructed and haphazardly paced. The film never quite clicks, and in the end, as is often the case, you are left with several very cool pieces that just miss being assembled into an equally cool whole. de Ossorio manages a few quality surreal images, but the film is, by and large, too grounded in a realistic approach to successfully create that nightmare-scape mood that makes it easier to excuse other flaws. He relies once again on shooting his monsters in slow motion, except apparently someone forgot to undercrank the camera. We saw the "slow-motion floating" style of filming vampire women in Naschy's Werewolf Shadow, and it was used with considerable effectiveness. Unfortunately, de Ossorio's method is to film at regular speed, and then have his actresses pretend to be moving in slow motion. It, umm, well, it doesn't really work, you know?

On the other hand, de Ossorio manages to avoid many of the pitfalls associated with jungle films, particularly the jungle films of Italian cinema. For instance, there's no stock footage of real animals being butchered or attacking one another. And while there's never been a b-grade jungle exploitation movie made that could resist stock footage of elephants, he does keep it down to a minimum. Also, I don't think anyone is menaced by a snake, which may also be a first. Unfortunately, he counters his temperance in terms of stock footage with unedited glee when it comes to some really mundane tasks. When one of the characters announces that it's time to set up camp, you assume you're not going to watch the entire, unabridged process of them setting up camp. Your assumption would, of course, be wrong. That he sets it all to a breezy lounge tune doesn't excuse it.

Once again, we have a Spanish horror film that should satisfy people who have already reconciled with themselves with the peculiarities and short-comings of European horror films, but it's not strong enough to win over any new converts. De Ossorio fails to conjure up the creeping horror of his first two Blind Dead films, but he also manages to throw in enough beheading, nudity, cocktail music, and ritual dancing to keep the film staggering along despite some drawn-out periods of boredom.

Labels: Horror: Creepy Cults, Horror: Vampires