The People Who Own the Dark (Spain, 1976)

I finally watched León Klimovsky's THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK last night. I'd kept off buying the Code Red DVD till the very last minute and, like, 7 seconds after I clicked the "buy now" button the DVD was sold out. Right on time I'd say. Som på et kussehår, haha. A group of upper-class deadbeats have gone to the countryside to revel in a weekend of sexual depravity and pigsty behaviour. But before anyone can say oink a nuclear bomb of some sort goes off and everyone else is hit by the blast - but not our main characters as they were oinking around in the basement.

Too bad for the survivors the people hit by nuclear blast weren't killed like in the old days but are blinded and become revengeful killer zombies. Or some such. When I watched the film I remember thinking, "Hmm, this being a Spanish horror movie I bet it's gonna end in a bad way". I wasn't disappointed. Read Fred's review here if you must know more.

trailer:


If you've bought into the whole grindhouse style thang you're gonna love Code Red's print as it's an old beat up 35mm print which is scratched beyond belief. Heaps of frames are missing everywhere. The audio track is hissing away. An entire bird shooting scene is missing at the beginning. It's easy to know what's missing as Bill Olsen was so nice as to include the old NTSC VHS version in the extras (not just a few scenes mind you but the entire film).

The VHS version looks good enough to watch (I plan on watching that version at the re-visit), the picture is fullscreen (the 35mm presentation is letterboxed) but the tape master was sourced from an unscratched print. There's no other extras apart from a few trailers. No Spanish audio, only the English dub. Highly recommended.

EDIT: How could I forget to mention El Hombre Lobo, Paul Naschy, is in the film as well!!