Reviews

Can a movie, that actually consists scenes from two mexican monsterthrillers plus additional scenes from US for commersial interests, be successful? - Yes! This is a dreamlike and incoherently edited oddity that tells a story of a centralamerican mummy found at the excur- sions of a pyramid. Also there is a mad scientist who in his experiments with revivification, succeeds in waking the mummy. And there´s a thunderstorm! The mummy is transformed into a werewolf played by Lon Chaney jnr! Its wild, suspenseful, trancendental, poetic in its "silents" looks and pace and there is a musical number of exotica style too, with an Yma Sumaclike vocalist in a "flashback" Aztec ritual scene! I was overwhelmed of the total impact of this movie as seen through the eyes of someone who value uniqueness and improvised quality in lowbudgetfantasy that really works as avantgarde poetry. The images and atmosphere of Ancient Civilisation, Pyramids, detectiveworks, a scary rotten walking mummy, a terrifying werewolf,terrified womens faces and all these mysterios cuts between scenes from one film to another creates a nightmare with no other logic than the dream´s own. I recommend this for all who has a vivid imagination and for all of you who believe that insanity can be genial!

Gosh! There are over 200 comments on this film! What can I say? Who will read this? Anyway after have been reading almost all comments, some very excellent and full of insight, on a late night cruising on the internet I felt very much to see this my favorite movie once again. When I was about 18, I- a solitare searcher, entered a huge cinema here in stockholm to experience this feature which had managed to been repeatedly shown once a year since `68. "-The movie that became a religion" said the taglines. When the lights was turned on again I was simply illuminated. At last I have seen a film by someone that spoke to me directly as in a wordless language from mind to mind. This was for me. And I laughed, because I "understood" it completely. From the Dawn-prologue to the Great Transformation in the end. I was turned on, high from this journey of infinite information and poetry, not on any psychedelics. I suddenly turned my sight to the rest of the audience. Surprise! Most of the faces around me looked bitter and disappointed. They didnt seem to have an idea of what they have been witnessed. Then I felt that I was someone special. Everytime I have seen it I have encountered new thoughts in my head, new implications. The strangest thing about the film is, besides that it ever was alloud to be made, that it wasnt banned officially. But its too open for different explanations, religios and ateistic, to be seen as a threat itself. Because I know now, as I have understood who Kubrick was, that 2001 IS the Monolith! Kubrick knew that in this world called Earth, there is something very enigmatic about Our Evolution. Something weird about the whole thing which both links us with the rest of Life here AND seperates Us from it. We are the monsters but can also be the Gods. And the closer we come to the fearsome answer the more we start suppressing it. Our harmonic relationship with the environment in our early evolutionary stages was interrupted by flashes of sudden information that created Culture but also confusion and Fear. Fear creates aggression and violence. The evolution of Culture is never explored by Kubrick because he wanted to focus on the story on the technical advancement opposite the nonprogressive Mind of Man. Those guys in space never seem to understand anything about themself until they meet the next Monolith. This is the story of the most forbidden source of information and tool for progression of Understanding about the Loss of Fear to gain Peace between Us and Everything else in the Universe. And technics alone - without Enlightment, as the tool HAL never need to inherit moral codes of A Humans Spirit, always leads to selfdestruction directly or indirectly. Bowmans subjective journey through the wonders of the universe, his Lifeend and finally his transformation to a new elevated Entity was the result of his going through the Big Trip - all the way. The forbidden Apple was not exactly an apple in reality but where it came from and how it got here is the next questions to find out about. Well, this was my oppinion about this mindaltering film which is much more than a film. Its a statement, philosophical and poetic and I how can I thank the Late Mr Kubrick enough for letting me experience the void of space, the birth of stars and nebulas and the Great Beginning of Our Own Future? Where else can we go, if not to destroy everything that has existed here for 5 billions of years? The most Optimistic and Visionary film ever concieved. Thanks for reading this, my friend.

This movie has apparently been turned down by other commentators, but I guess I have a totally different approach.

Accepting the typical romantic flavour of spanish culture I find this movie one of the greatest of Spanish horrors, with all its blood, violence, romance,strings etc . Of course its low budget and looks a bit trashy, but the atmosphere is there.

The psychedelic soundtrack helps building up this dreamy story towards the climax as one of the two girl students visiting the home of Valdemar becomes vampirized. The scenes of the two vampires moving about in slow motion is stunningly beautiful. The whole film reminds me in mood and imagination of some of the great horror comics of Warrens Eerie and Creepy (late 60s) and is actually one of my favorites among surreal monster flicks, and one of the most enjoyable werewolf movies. The short opening where the transformed and snarling Valdemar attacks a local woman in the woods is truly fantastic and nightmarishly raw. I recommend this title for all of you who still have your youths imagination free from over rationalism and technocratic thinking.

This is surely a unique film. Although I possess only the US-version with the added scenes where 4 kids are visiting the Museum of Natural History and as they wander through the halls of giant prehistoric skeletons one of the boys stops by a "model" of a native indian and starts dreaming the very journey the original Czechian film is about.

With a boat they find by the shore of a river they journey downstream and to their astonishment they find that the wildlife on the fastland is prehistoric. The longer they travel the more ancient the animals. Its a kind of an educational kiddie movie without any melodramatic plot,but the whole business is fascinating as the kids who are trapped on the "river of evolution" must from time to time seek shelter on land. They confront a mammoth and a lurking caveman. From the Tertiarian Age they are attacked by a Diatryma bird and see a living prehistoric world exhibited in a way very unusual from other prehistoric adventures. The special effects are invented by the director himself, and works very well and the atmosphere of living prehistory is still unsurpassed, I think.

As they travel further down the river they meet dinosaurs and pterosaurs and finally they are forced to cross a Carbonian swampland infested by amphibians and insects until they reach the end or should I say, the Beginning: An endless Ocean where Life started. This plot was reprised in the british film Land That Time Forgot (`74).

A warm and educational movie (although we know more about Evolution today), I can recommend to everyone with that timegazing eye.