Are You Kidding About How These Characters Act?

Let's talk about the idiotic way these characters act in the face of extreme supernatural danger.

Helen's friend Virginia is obviously one of those people who acts irrationally upon their strongest emotion at the moment. After getting into some bizarre hissy fit with her best friend, Virginia is dead set (no pun intended) on getting off the train no matter where but it has to be immediately. So she jumps off the train in the middle of the countryside. Then she goes wandering into a creepy desolate ruins and sets up camp for the night, oblivious to the creepy going-ons there. Let me tell you that I wouldn't spend the night in those dangerous ruins even in the company of other guys and even if I was armed.

At the end of the movie, Helen has twisted her ankle but somehow almost makes it to a passing train which stops when the train engineer's son takes compassion on this woman in distress. The son jumps off the train and tries to help Helen, who suddenly seems to have lost the ability to walk, stumble or crawl and instead somehow becomes a ton of dead weight for the engineer's son who can't even pull her to safety. He doesn't think to hoist the woman on his shoulders. Helen's crying and struggles only make it harder for the young man to muscle her back to the train and they lose valuable time. All the while, the young man's father, the train engineer is too frightened to help but keeps yelling for them to hurry all the while the spectral Knights Templars zombies reach the train, dismount their ghostly horses and and even slowly walking, make it onto the train to slaughter everyone on board. The young man seems to have the strength of a 6-year old child while Helen looks as if she must weigh a ton because the young man can't even pull her onto the train. Her struggles only slow them down more.

I thought to myself, "This is absolutely ridiculous." But I remember, this is a 1971 Euro-sleaze horror movie. It was the prototype of the Euro-horror films to come. The blood and gore were minimal and there was no nudity. It could have actually be released on television, which it was later shown on late night movies. The rape scene of Helen by Pedro is not graphically shown. He grabs her and the scene later cuts to her smoothing back down her clothes. Her reaction to her own rape is unusual in the movie, very subdued and introspective as if she was contemplating the sexual intercourse she just experienced. Despite all my criticism, I have to agree with others who felt the Europeans were successful at generating suspense and terror with lots of dark atmosphere and dread. Oddly, "Tombs of the Blind Dead" does indeed do that. The Europeans have the advantage of centuries of history behind them in which to pull up spooky legends and myths to fabricate scary tales, ala Kolchak: The Night Stalker-style. Hammer Films of Great Britain was famous for the historical horror genre.