Night of the Seagulls (1975)

A doctor and his wife move to a small inhospitable fishing village where he plans to start a practice only to discover that for seven nights every seven years, the undead demon-worshiping Templar Knights rise to seek sacrificial offerings in return for the safety of the townspeople.

REVIEW: Night of the Seagulls is the 4th and final movie in the classic Blind Dead saga (Tombs of the Blind Dead, Return of the Evil Dead, and The Ghost Galleon). This one is, at the very least, a step up from the previous movie. This one has a pretty interesting story to it that never reached the levels of boredom or pointlessness that the previous movie did, and it has likable lead characters, so it at least has that going for it.

Unfortunately, this movie is not made well, at all. Most of the movie takes place during night time scenes...except for every night time scene in the movie, the director used Day-for-Night, so even though it's supposed to be midnight, it looks no different than any bright daytime scene in the movie, which begs the question as to why even bother with having it take place at night? Just have it all take place in the middle of the afternoon and wash your hands of it. Not to mention doing things this way utterly ruins any tension or atmosphere. 

In addition, the Blind Dead themselves don't look nearly as good here as in the previous movies, although it really is hard to tell since there are hardly ever any close-ups of them, with almost all their shots being at a distance, and most of the rare couple close-ups are just done via stock footage from the previous movies in the series (which is also the source of the only actual dark night time scene).

The first two movies in this franchise can definitely be regarded as horror classics for fans of foreign horror cinema, but I would just steer clear of the second two movies. The fact that all four are written and directed by the same guy just makes it all the more boggling to me the heavy drop in filmmaking quality between the first two and these last two.

4/10 rooms in the Psych Ward