I first saw Horror
Rises from the Tomb many years ago (around 2003) as part of a four movie
bargain set of zombie movies, and my initial thoughts were, “too slow and not
enough zombies.” I had no idea who Spanish filmmaker Paul Naschy was at the time, nor would I have probably cared. I was
disappointed I didn’t get the zombie movie the misleading box cover promised. I
then cast it aside as an irrelevant film that was best forgotten. (Boy is
adult-me really annoyed at teenage-me right now.)
In the midst of my giallo
collecting craze around 2008, I eventually came upon a Naschy thriller called Blue
Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974). Needless to say, I dug it and finally
became interested in director/writer/actor Paul
Naschy. My next Naschy film was Human Beasts (1980), which to me was an
even greater experience. Then, after having fun with a couple of Naschy’s werewolf movies, I thought,
despite my disconcerting memories of the film, I’d give Horror Rises from the Tomb another go with a new perspective as a Naschy fan and without my zombie film
bias.
"The sun shining in my dreams / The light is getting hot / Saved by eternity / I have seen death so close / Away, awhile the angels crossed the sky / But I'm condemned to stay here." -- Heavenly
In his memoirs, Paul
Naschy said he had referred Argentine film directing stalwart Leon Klimovsky to be director of his
seminal Spanish horror classic La noche
de Walpurgis, AKA The Werewolf
Versus the Vampire Woman (1971), because one of the film’s financers wanted
a quick and reliable director.
It would seem that Klimovsky was known for his fast shooting and workmanlike skills,
and yet he managed to direct some real atmospheric classics of Spanish horror, often on
low budgets and high pressured shooting schedules, and he introduced an oft-imitated
technique of filming vampires and zombies in slow-motion, capturing a uniquely
nightmarish plane of existence in the process.
Klimovsky’s vampire films are exceptional and interestingly varied,
and they belong alongside the best of Jess
Franco and Jean Rollin. The
aforementioned The Werewolf Versus the
Vampire Woman was a record breaking box office success that revived the
Spanish horror fantasy genre. The other Klimovsky
directed vampire films that followed were the epic The Dracula Saga (1973), the more grindhouse flavored The Vampires’ Night Orgy (1974), and the
romantic, adventurous, and somewhat eclectic Night of the Walking Dead / The Strange Love of the Vampires, the topic for tonight
Jess
Franco could film movies faster than I can write reviews for
them. His films can sometimes have an overwhelming low quality feel to them,
making them difficult to digest for the majority. The natural location shots,
haunting tone, memorable and well-chosen female actors (Franco definitely had an eye for female leads that just seemed to
resonate with the camera lens), and Franco’s
brand of bizarre surrealism and eroticism don’t seem to be enough to save the
films for many, but they are nonetheless a huge hit for others. Al otro lado del espejo contains all of
the aforementioned elements and yet has a higher-than-usual quality feel to it,
most likely due to the terrific acting and screen presence from its leading lady (Emma Cohen of Horror Rises from the Tomb and Night
of the Walking Dead) and a believable tragic story.
Jazz pianist/singer Ana (Cohen) is profoundly affected by her
father’s (Howard Vernon) suicide
shortly after her engagement. After calling off the wedding, Ana leaves her
homeland on Madeira Island only to undergo several failed relations when she
intermittently becomes hypnotically driven to kill any man that becomes close
to her.
It isn’t just enough to say that Ana is haunted by images of her dead
father in the mirror. She doesn’t just see him, but she finds herself at times in
the mirror, in Franco’s looking glass
world. It can also be viewed as Ana’s mental reflection on her emotional trauma.
The memory of her father’s suicide driven by his stubborn disapproval of her marrying and
leaving him is intertwined with Ana’s psyche, manifesting itself when she
murders any man that shows any sexual interest in her. Ana’s traumatization,
spurned the moment of her outcry into the mirror, yields a malediction that
could either be viewed as some sort of curse or spell from her father’s ghost
or played off as the result of a kind of posttraumatic stress disorder. If
taken at face value, the goose bumps inducing ending, made more dramatic with
church bells signifying the wedding that never was, reveals which one happens
to be the case.
