After the disappointment of The Ghost Galleon, I was a little concerned that director Amando De Ossorio was not sure what to do with his beloved visually challenged Templar Knights. Thankfully, in this final entry in the series, he decided to bring them back to land where they belong and spend time on the characters and a decent plot. The result was what I thought to be the best of the sequels.

A flashback opening sequence that features the living Templars ripping out a woman's heart gets us interested in the first few minutes. After this, the film quickly jumps to present day where we meet a doctor (Victor Petit) and his wife (Maria Kosti) who have arrived in a small seaside town where he is to set up his new practice. Our couple are not made to feel welcome by the strange townspeople who keep to themselves and will barely acknowledge the presence of the newcomers. This is partially due to the fact that at night, the locals are sacrificing women to the zombie Templars in a ritual that requires one woman per night for seven nights. After taking in the town idiot (who looks like the lovechild of Peter Lorre and Pee Wee Herman) and a young girl who offers to work for them, the young couple learn about what is happening in the strange nightly rituals. In a chilling explanation, they also discover why the seagulls scream so loud at night.

The Blind Dead movies are not known for being filmmaking masterpieces but have been De Ossorio's way of making his mark on the horror cinema world with some extremely cool looking zombies. After the initial impact of the first film, De Ossorio began modifying the plot and sticking a pile of victims in some confined locations so that the monsters could do their damage in the various sequels. This film elaborated on the formula as De Ossorio also created some tension between the heroes and the townspeople in addition to the zombies. The result played out something like a Blind Dead version of The Wicker Man. I was very pleased with the story in this movie as I felt that it addressed was what was missing from the other sequels which sometimes felt like quickie movies made without a lot of thought put into the script. In this one, you felt that De Ossorio was really trying to give us a tale that we would remember and he also tried to give us some explanations into why the zombies were rising, why there were nightly sacrifices, and why the seagulls were flying around and screeching in the middle of the night.

The usual recycled footage from the first film made an appearance during the initial scene of the zombies rising from their coffins but after that, we were given all new footage of the zombies. One thing that I was very happy about was that they were back on their horses and riding in slow motion. This was a signature image from the first two movies and something that was sadly lacking from the third. This effect looked especially cool when the horses were galloping along the beach to reach their nightly offering. We also got quite a bit of poorly masked day-for-night footage during the sacrifice scenes. As a fan of the series, I was used to this and didn't mind because you can see the creepy skeleton faces of the Templars much better in this light. Exploitation fans will enjoy a few moments of gore and the fact that a few of the victims are dressed in see-through white gowns. There are also a number of close-ups of big crabs crawling on the corpses of the dead girls. These shots reminded me of some of Lucio Fulci's more disgusting moments although the crabs never penetrated the flesh like they would in a Fulci flick.

De Ossorio only made a couple of movies after Night of the Seagulls came out but he will always have a place in genre history from his quartet of Blind Dead movies. Sandra Mozarowsky who played the housekeeper Lucy was only sixteen when this film was made and died of an apparent suicide only three years later after making a few other films. She had a perpetually sad look on her face that reminded me a bit of Daphne Zuniga from The Initiation and The Fly II. The redhead victim, Tilda, was played by Julia Saly who went on to appear in some Paul Nachy movies. (Josh Pasnak, 12/14/06)

Directed By: Amando De Ossorio.
Written By: Amando De Ossorio.

Starring: Victor Petit, Maria Kosti, Sandra Mozarowski, Jose Antonio Calvo.