Electric Sheep presents Tombs of the Blind Dead at EEFF

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Masonic Temple at Andaz Hotel Liverpool Street

Tombs of the Blind Dead

Screening date: Saturday 29 June 2013

Time: 8:45pm

Venue: Masonic Temple, Andaz Hotel Liverpool Street, London

Part of the East End Film Festival, 25 June – 10 July 2013
Director: Amando de Ossorio

Writers: Jes&#250s Navarro Carri&#243n, Amando de Ossorio

Original title: La noche del terror ciego

Cast: Lone Fleming, C&#233sar Burner, Mar&#237a Elena Ar&#243n

Spain 1972

86 mins

East End Film Festival website

Evil Knights Templar rising from their graves, riding skeletal horses in pursuit of tourists gone astray, ruined monasteries and deserted villages: Amando de Ossorio’s creepy, atmospheric Tombs of the Blind Dead has some of the most memorable imagery of the Spanish horror boom of the 1970s. Influenced by George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, de Ossorio nevertheless makes the returning dead his own: having had their eyes pecked out by crows after being hanged for their wicked ways, the Knights rely on sounds to hunt their preys. Released in the final years of Franco’s dictatorship, Tombs of the Blind Dead is not only a terrific eerie chiller, but also a subversive allegory for corrupt military and religious power oppressing and persecuting ordinary people. Tombs of the Blind Dead was followed by another three films on the blood-sucking Knights, all directed by the prolific de Ossorio.

Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor are proud to present a rare screening of Tombs of the Bind Dead at the Masonic Temple, Andaz Hotel Liverpool Street, London, on Saturday 29 June, as part of the East End Film Festival. Jim Harper, author of ‘The New Regime: Spanish horror in the 1970s and the end of the dictatorship’, published in The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology (Strange Attractor Press), will introduce the screening.

The screening ends a whole day of cult classics around the theme of secret societies at the Masonic Temple starting from 2pm: Sherlock Holmes hunts Jack the Ripper in British classic Murder By Decree, introduced by critic and novelist Kim Newman; a woman begins seeing strange apparitions in 1970’s giallo The Perfume of the Lady in Black; Jodorowsky’s Mexican circus grotesque Santa Sangre is introduced by its composer Simon Boswell; and finally, we descend into the Tombs of the Blind Dead.

Schedule:

2.00pm | Murder By Decree | Dir. Bob Clark
4:30pm | The Perfume of the Lady in Black | Dir. Francesco Barilli
6:15pm | Santa Sangre | Dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky
8:45pm | Tombs of the Blind Dead | Dir. Amando de Ossorio

In association with Titan Books, Cigarette Burns Cinema, Electric Sheep Magazine and Strange Attractor Press.

£3.50 per film | £10 for the day

Tickets available from See Tickets.

In May 2011, Electric Sheep took part in the East End Film Festival’s first celebration of Secret Societies at the Masonic Temple. Read our feature on the Freemasons and their connection to Jack the Ripper and listen to a podcast of our radio show on Jack the Ripper, the Freemasons in cinema and the links between crime and the occult with guests Strange Attractor Press publisher Mark Pilkington and Electric Sheep and Strange Attractor contributor Richard Bancroft. You can also listen to a podcast of a panel discussion on Jack the Ripper, witches’ covens and religious cults in film recorded at the Masonic Lodge. Speakers include Electric Sheep editor Virginie S&#233lavy, assistant editor Alex Fitch, Nollywood scholar Nicola Woodham, filmmaker and horror specialist Jennifer Eiss, and Jim Harper, author of Flowers From Hell: The Modern Japanese Horror Film. Includes clips from Murder by Decree, Season of the Witch, The Wicker Man and Rosemary’s Baby.

Kristinia Buozyte on Vanishing Waves

Vanishing Waves
Vanishing Waves

audio In an interview recorded at Sci-Fi-London earlier this month, Lithuanian director Kristina Buozyte talks to Virginie S&#233lavy about her film Vanishing Waves, a hypnotic, sensual sci-fi experience in which a scientist connects with the brain of a comatose patient with whom he has increasingly intense neural encounters, which gradually reveal what happened to her.

For more information on Vanishing Waves, please visit the Facebook page.

First broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM on Friday 17 May 2013.