Amando de Ossorio brings his undead templars out of retirement once again for this third entry in his BLIND DEAD series. This time, the hooded terrors stalk a ghostly galleon, existing in what appears to be a parallel dimension. Two fashion models, Cathy and Lorena, encounter the ship while promoting a new line of speedboats for Howard Tucker (NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS’ Jack Taylor), a prolific businessman. Back at the safety of the fashion studio, a fellow model, Noami, fears for Cathy and Lorena’s lives. Begrudgingly, Tucker, Noami and his crew travel to the site of the mythical vessel, but the templars prevent a smooth transaction.

The weakest link in the series, HORROR OF THE ZOMBIES suffers from an intriguing, but flawed, premise: the bottling of the templars in a confined space (the galleon). This spatial downsizing certainly has its merits. For one, the all-important sense of terror and claustrophobia is magnified considerably; the various trespassers are trapped both by a physical plane (the sea) and by a more nebulous one (the so-called "other dimension" the ship finds itself in). Furthermore, the ship itself is graced by de Ossorio’s impeccable touch for surreal set design. De Ossorio lends his eye for unconventional detail to the vessel, re-inventing the tired "haunted house" set-up. The templars have quite a playground to let loose in, cluttered with stained glass, creaky floorboards, and hidden chambers concealing their ghostly plunder.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, however, one realizes that such a closed setting limits the range of possible shocks, not to mention robbing the film of some of its most powerful imagery. In this entry the templars are without their horses, and the film seems almost naked without at least one somnolent sequence of the rotting cavalry riding across the Spanish countryside. In fact, the templars are given very little to do here other than stalk various nubile victims and imbibe their blood.

Most worrisome of all is the relatively small amount of screentime de Ossorio allots for his creatures. Nearly thirty-five minutes roll by before a single templar rises from its pine grave. The initial half-hour is needlessly drawn-out and only reinforces one’s feelings that de Ossorio is simply biding time before the inevitable templar attack. Additionally, the first sizable block of the film sets an unsettlingly misogynistic tone, as the fashion photographer often barks out degrading remarks (often calling her subjects "imbeciles") and this dialogue grows cloying.

And even if the essential templar mayhem is astonishing (and it often is), de Ossorio has a knack for adhering to the practice of on again, off again tension. Without fail, once a scene of horror and spectacle has passed, de Ossorio switches to the monotony of the rescue team’s myriad plans of action and meaningless character development, which disturbs the film’s rhythm. Certainly there has to be a "down time" to allow a break for the audience, but it soon becomes apparent that de Ossorio isn’t quite aware of his pacing (and perhaps doesn’t even know his audience that well). This technique of stop and go pacing isn’t unique to just this entry, but it is all the more apparent because of the boiled down situation this time around.

While the spatial plane and premise is boiled down to bare essentials this time around, HORROR OF THE ZOMBIES still boils over with dumb logic and extraneous history concerning the galleon. The very premise itself (a group of fashion models stranded at sea only to promote a new line of sport boat) is contrived to even the most forgiving of Euro-horror fans, and there is no shortage of awkward dialogue (in one scene Cathy radios back to the crew: "Looks to me like a ghostship that’s big and appeared out of nowhere"). Furthermore, a fair amount of screen time is gobbled up by needless speculation as to where the ship came from. A professor offers up many half-baked and tentative theories of the ship’s history, none of which is very interesting and rarely supplements our limited, initial knowledge of the vessel. The speculation runs a long course throughout the film, culminating in a hokey, extemporaneous exorcism (with a burning cross, no less). The film also works in some needless padding in the form of a useless flashback sequence where Noami remembers her relationship with Cathy (de Ossorio was quite fond of this "flashback" practice, as it pops up in his NIGHT OF THE SORCERERS and the original TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD). De Ossorio unfortunately bears most of the blame for this, as he also wrote the film and fabricated the story.

Somehow, though, the film just works. The sequences with the blind dead are worth their screentime in gold, and Anton Garcia Abril’s eerie score is as effective as ever. Few horror films can lay claim to being chilling, beautiful, and surreal (many times in the same scene) as effortlessly as HORROR OF THE ZOMBIES (and the entire series, for that matter). The familiar blind dead sequences are given a contemporary touch up, as well. This entry in the series follows a logical progression of violence, and the killings are more graphic (one killing involves the severing of limbs). De Ossorio never allows the mayhem to plummet into the depths of exploitation, however; the violence is usually tastefully restrained, in keeping with the series. And the lasting images hold up to the final sequence, where the waterlogged blind dead emerge from their watery graves (having been thrown overboard) to terrorize the two survivors on the beach. A spectacularly poetic image, and one of the best of the entire BLIND DEAD series.