REVIEW: Severin’s ‘Danza Macabra: Volume Three’ features strange ‘Necrophagous’
Image courtesy of Severin Films / Provided by Foundry Comm. with permission.
Severin Films’ summer sale is coming to a close, and one of the offerings this year is the company’s new box set, entitled Danza Macabra: Volume Three: The Spanish Gothic Collection, featuring four tasty horror treats. First up is Necrophagous, alternately known as The Butcher of Binbrook and Graveyard of Horror. Then, there’s Cake of Blood, a horror anthology with deadly shorts like Tarot, Victor Frankenstein, Terror Among Christians and The Dance, or Emotional Survivals. The final two entries are Cross of the Devil, written by Jacinto Molina (the legendary Paul Naschy) and Juan Jose Porto, and directed by John Gilling, of The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile fame; and The Night of the Walking Dead, directed by León Klimovsky.
Each of these horror films has been fully restored, and Severin has thrown in more than eight hours of special features. Although this reviewer still has to enjoy the full breadth of these genre favorites, Necrophagous jumped out as a logical first step into Danza Macabra. And what a strange step, indeed.
This somewhat incomprehensible film is billed as “misunderstood” on the back cover of the Blu-ray, which is a generous adjective. At first, the plot makes sense, following the dramatic story of Michael Sherrington (Bill Curran), who has been away for a long time, but now has returned to his castle home, only to learn that his wife has died while giving birth to their stillborn child. Michael begins an investigation to figure out what went wrong, and he quickly realizes that his wife is not actually buried in the local graveyard. In fact, there seems to be a lot of empty coffins in this morbid place.
That summary is a fairly solid outline for a horror movie, but unfortunately the Michael Sherrington storyline quickly loses steam. Michael Skaife’s confusing screenplay decides to keep adding tertiary characters to the plot, so many in fact that everything and everyone becomes befuddled, and it’s difficult to figure out what’s going on. There’s no sense of coherent mythology to the so-called “graveyard of horror,” and there are no well-earned character arcs. Skaife, sometimes billed as Miguel Madrid, is also the director, and he becomes lost in his own script.
Some genre actors appear, and they do their best with the difficult material. Co-starring in the film are Catharine Ellison, Frank Baña, Victor Israel and Beatriz Elorrieta (receiving an “introducing” credit and billed as Beatriz Lacy). There’s also a killer score from A. Santisteban, and some of the scares are not too bad. In fact, there’s a marvelous creepiness involving a monster figure whose eyes and scaly skin are wonderfully lensed (take a look at the box set’s front cover for an approximation of this nasty being); there are also masked villains who shroud the story in atmospheric mystery and reminded this reviewer of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
Special features include an audio commentary with Andy Marshall-Roberts, host of The Nasty Pasty podcast; an appreciation documentary by Ángel Sala, head of programming at the Sitges Film Festival; and a remembrance documentary by Maria Pilar Rafáles, daughter of Sitges founder Antonio Rafáles.
One wants to enjoy Necrophagous, but there’s a palpable sense that the cast and crew have little idea of what’s propelling their plot. The convoluted nature of the story is also not aided by harsh edits and sudden changes to the cinematic rhythm. This one is an oddity, to be sure, and perhaps for Spanish horror purists who want to check it off the list, it’s a welcome watch. But for others, the head-scratching begins almost immediately.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Necrophagous (1971). Written and directed by Michael Skaife. Starring Bill Curran, Catharine Ellison, John Clark, Yocasta Grey, Marisa Shiero, Titania Clement, Frank Braña, Victor Isarel and Beatriz Lacy. Running time: 87 minutes. In English and Spanish. Part of Severin’s Danza Macabra: Volume Three: The Spanish Gothic Collection. Movie: Rating: 
. Box Set: Rating: Click here for more information.
