THE HANGING WOMAN

THIS DVD WAS IN GOOD WORKING CONDITION AND THE PRICE WAS FAIR AS WELL.

After some delays, I received this much awaited movie. However, my enthusiasmturned into disappointment because of the poor transfer of the movie into DVD.There were several minutes of no sound and picture.

Orgy of the Dead (José Luis Merino, 1973)Oh, my, what insanity came out of the Spanish horror mills in the 1970s. Orgy of the Dead (known alternately as The Return of the Zombies or The Hanging Woman in various parts of the world), one of Merino's final potboilers before his semi-retirement in 1974, is about as derivative as they come, roping in various pieces of Spanish, British, and Italian low-budget horror flicks (most notably de Ossorio's Tombs of the Blind Dead, from 1971) and adding in a few touches to make it just different enough that the rubes would pay to see it all again. If you take away the zombies (who really only show up in the final twenty or so minutes of the film), you're left with a pretty standard murder mystery; Serge (Stelvio Rosi in his final screen appearance) has just inherited his uncle's rural estate. On the way there, when he's forced to walk because no one in the village will take him out the cemetery road at night, he spies a body hanging in the cemetery itself. When he gets to the estate, he finds that the body was that of his niece, and that he's suddenly become the prime suspect in her murder. Added to this is the cast of odd characters who already inhabit the house, including an imperious butler, a mad scientist and his lovely daughter, a black magician, and, of course, cult actor Paul Naschy as the gravedigger. (The film is, these days, only remembered because Naschy, who will be recognizable to Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie fans from his recent turn in Rottweiler, is in it.)But, of course, you can't take away the zombies, with their incredibly bad make-up jobs and wooden acting (that's actually better than some of the supposedly more sentient members of the cast). Once you've got zombies, you've gone from below-average giallo knockoff to really, really bad horror movie. If you thought that no-talent horror movies were the product of cheap video cameras, think again; someone actually gave Merino a budget for this mess. Still, it's fascinating, in a train-wreck sort of way. **

AH, YES. BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS SINCE 1993! SCOTLAND HAS A SPOOKY PROBLEM: ZOMBIES...AND A CRAZY GRAVEDIGGER...AND SPOOKY WOMEN...A MAD DOCTOR...HAUNTED CEMETARY...THIS EARLY 1970'S GOTHIC B-MOVIE IS FILLED WITH CREEPY MOMENTS OF HORROR! ALSO KNOWN AS "RETURN OF THE ZOMBIES", IT'S JUST WHAT YOU NEED ON A DARK AND MOODY EVENING. (SCENES OF NUDITY ARE SPRINKLED AROUND-NOTHING TOO STRONG, BUT ANNOYING) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED EURO-GOTHIC HORROR IN FULL COLOR!