Horror rises from the tomb (1973)

I've started to notice a pattern in my reviews - mostly the fact that I tend to judge a movie by the amounts of gratitious nudity and violence they contain. Since this might be a bad thing based on someone elses morals I thought I would do a review where I am not focusing on just that. What movie would be better to practice this than with the Paul Naschy vehicle Horror rises from the tomb?

Back in the old days the black magician Alaric De Marnac (Played by Naschy)and his mistress Mabille De Lancre were executed for their horrible deeds, with De Marnacs head separated from his body so that he never would return to have revenge. A couple of hundred years later his descendant Hugo De Marnac (Naschy again) and a couple of friends travel to his old estate where Alaric used to rumble. Yes, before we can say Exploitation, Alaric De Marnac is reunited with his mistress (The lovely Helga Line) and since they are evil, they roam the countryside to kill nude people for their blood while Hugo and his friends succumb to their powers one by one.

What Naschy and his fellow filmmakers are trying to say with this piece of celluloid is that you should stay away from the powers of darkness, and let Christ into your hearts. Only your devotion to him can stop the... Ok,. who am I kidding? Horror rises from the tomb is a slapdash horrormovie with great amounts of nudity and gore. Just about every woman in the movie has several nudescenes which in this case is a very good thing since we are talking about women like Helga Line and Emma Cohen, two of european exploitations finest females. The gorescenes come at regular intervals and are graphic and very satisfying. The problem with the movie is the script with basically jumps from scene to scene, without a particularily strong narrative. The scenes in between are mostly well shot and fun to watch, especially the sequence with the zombies and all the attacks on innocent people by the villains. Lots of sex and violence. As a bonus we get a weird organscore which seems highly inappropriate but works just fine in that odd Eurogore way.

And that is what movie is about. Paul Naschy and his fellow actors do a decent job with the patchwork story and the gore/sex quota is high. Any movie with Emma Cohens boobs is a good movie. Not the best Naschymovie out there but Carlos Aured did a good job shooting it and it is one of the most entertaining.


The lovely Emma Cohen. I want one of those warningpages that the cool people have.