Shelley O'Brien and Martin Carter
Sheffield Hallam University
Looking for the Blind Dead: The Application of History and Myth in Amando De Ossorio's Horror Quartet
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The Knights Templar have generated a range of studies that include both academic histories and sensational exposés. The current resurgence of interest in all things Templar has been fuelled by, for example, the recent republication of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (M. Baiget, R. Leigh and H. Lincoln) and the enormous popularity of The DaVinci Code. With this in mind it seems appropriate to explore the relationship between these histories, the various myths and legends that surround the Knights Templar and how these are manifested in the quartet of Blind Dead films directed by Amando De Ossorio between 1971 and 1975. Therefore, the intention of this paper is to consider how the actual history of the Templars feeds into Ossorio's memorably horrific but totally fictional creations; a heady combination of mummy, zombie and vampire.
The depiction of the undead Templars across all four films - Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971), Return of the Evil Dead (1973), The Ghost Galleon (1974) and Night of the Seagulls (1975) – in many ways reflects the inconsistencies that surround the history of The Knights Templar and its supposed links with the occult. This paper will further seek to posit a link between the Templars as monstrous figures and other established generic icons such as Dracula, Frankenstein's monster and the living dead. A detailed analysis of each film will illustrate how Ossorio employs discrete elements of Templar folklore to extend the fictional mythology of his own monsters, continually changing their origins, rituals and how they might or might not be vanquished.
We shall also show how Ossorio used established conventions of the horror genre in order to construct a monster unique in its physiognomy and which conforms to its own particular rules of space and time.
