I remembered to finish this series after watching A Quiet Place (2018), because those monsters also hunted by sound.
You know a movie is promising when the title card has two mistakes.
This is the DVD menu screen.
And this is the title card.
They added a "The" at the beginning and a space between "Sea" and "Gulls." Is this level to which the series has fallen?
Also, nice font choice. Especially since the red words span across a bright flame and a dark background.
The frog statue is probably a new backstory for the Templars.
The chilling music worked a lot better in the dark Templar castles in the first two movies than at a beach.
It starts with a man and a woman traveling at night. I've forgotten the quality of the dialogue in this series.
Woman
Are we lost? Where are we?
Man
I'm afraid we are. Later
Man
It appears there's a house. You wait here
Woman
Don't go, please.
Man
Don't worry, dear.
Remember how the women in the last movie spent basically the entire movie in bikinis? This movie is a bit more classy and just has the woman wear a comically low-cut shirt.
She notices the Templars ride under a bridge. The man reaches the house and knocks.
The Templars ride back to the house and approach the man creepily. Then they stab him.
The Templars find his wife and grab her. Amando de Ossorio's expert auteur vision focuses the camera down her blouse.
They bring the women to the frog statue and the leader tears her blouse open.
Imagine Amando de Ossorio constructing the rules of this world.
Amando de Ossorio
They have to stab the women in their chests to extract their hearts, because the Templars feed on the hearts.
Someone Else
Are you sure that's not just so you can have the Templars expose the women's breasts in your movie?
Amando de Ossorio
No, they need their hearts. It's symbolic.
Someone Else
Are you sure-
Amando de Ossorio
You don't understand auteur theory.In this movie, they feed the heart to this statue. The Templar lore keeps changing. At least the series is consistently inconsistent.
Crabs move towards the corpse.
The world building in this series is incredibly confusing.
Flash forward to present day of 1976
Joan and her husband, Henry drive to a village. Through some Blind Dead style exposition, we learn that Henry is a rural doctor and this is his first assignment
Henry expresses surprise that the village isn't as primitive as he expected. Is The Blind Dead IV: Night of the Seagulls really going to attempt social commentary?
Joan and Henry enters a general store. Henry asks where the doctor's house is but the villagers are clearly reluctant to answer. So he grabs a man by the collar.
This is the rural doctor.
The man tells Henry that the doctor lives on a cliff by the sea.
It's like they realized it was difficult to make a seaside cliff ominous. Much more difficult than temple ruins, a dark house, and a ghost ship. When you can't show, tell.
I can't believe that they are putting in even less effort than the last movie.
Henry Stein knocks on the door and the doctor opens it. He is leaving.
Wait, so they are switching places? The doctor advises them to leave because the townspeople don't like doctors. (?)
The only two in this movie have been fairly despicible.
Henry walks the doctor to his car.
It takes twenty seconds for them to walk from one side of the screen to the other. Given the amount of time the third movie devoted to dark shots of the women on the ship, it's tolerable.
Joan lights a candle, folds sheets. washes dishes. These movies somehow always get the women to be alone before the Blind Dead attack.
But I think all of them so far have passed the Bechdel test (not sure about two). So they aren't misogynistic.
I think this is the most clothes a woman in one of these movies has worn.
The music really over-compensates for the complete lack of creepy visuals. A man appears in the window.
Now, the first three movies don't exactly generate Hitchcockian suspense. But at least there is some build-up. Some subtlety. This is like elementary school Halloween fair haunted house level horror.
Joan spots the face and screams. Then she hears Henry's car approach. The door starts to open.
Well, that lock was worthless.
This is Teddy.
A cynical viewer may assume that Teddy is a reuse of the character of Murdo from The Blind Dead II: Return of the Evil Dead,
Teddy claims he is especially afraid tonight. The audience knows that it is the Night of the Seagulls. Joan takes him in and patches him up.
the old doctor gets on his horse and warns Henry to leave as soon as possible because It Comes At Night (2017)
Okay, I have two movies that disagree with you, but this series doesn't have any continuity.
Maybe the twist is that this movie takes place at the same time as the third movie? I mean, it ended with the Templars washing up on the shore. Is this a Saw IV (2007)/Saw III (2006) deal?
Henry and Joan sleep next to each other. Joan can't sleep. Henry blames Teddy, whom she hid in the attic.
You know what would have been an interesting scene? Joan hiding Teddy in the attic.
You know what else would have been an interesting scene? Joan telling Henry about Teddy.
Just because the dead are blind and hunt by sound doesn't mean you can "tell, don't show".
They hear a bell from the sea. Henry claims that ships ring the bell on foggy nights.
THIS TAKES PLACE AT THE SAME TIME AS THE THIRD MOVIE. CONTINUITY!
The Templars awaken. In the first three movies, they at least eastablished that the graves existed before the Templars awoke.
Remember how in The Blind Dead II: Return of the Evil Dead, Murdo had to kill a woman and let her blood drip onto the graves of the Templars on the anniversary of their deaths? Whereas in The Blind Dead I: Tombs of the Blind Dead, the Templars awoke because Betty played a radio station? Now it's just because it's The Night of the Seagulls
The world-building in The Blind Dead Collection is lack-luster.
They don't even have a jump scare chord here:
. The fourth movie has just given up,
The logical thing for Henry and Joan to do is get up and go to the beach.
 |
| "We sacrifice women differently here" |
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Sacrifice a woman to undead Templars, and you get a lackluster conclusion to a Night of the Living Dead rip-off series.
The Templars get on their horses...
I hate to beat an undead horse, but where did the horses come from?
The people in black are the woman of the village and this scene is super important because it passes the Bechdel Test.
 |
| Christian Symbolism? |
Now that it is night, the atmosphere should be creepier, but instead it's just fuzzy,
The undead Templars approach the woman and she screams. Joan wakes up.
Hold on, Henry and Joan wake up, go the beach, see women in black leading a woman in white to the sea, shrug, and go back to sleep?
Joan thinks she hears a woman scream, but Henry assures her it is just the seagull. Joan retorts that it is night time. Joan has been clothed this entire movie and now she has won an argument against her husband. Is The Blind Dead IV: Night of the Seagulls finally a feminist movie?
Spoiler: No
Cut to a lion statue
Frogs, crabs, seagulls, and lions. The mythology of this world is bizzare.
Joan attempts to buy something from the general store, but the owner resists and helps Lucy, the woman behind her.
Bechdel Test Pass #2
Joan shoots back that the villagers have strange customs such as being rude to people. beating up a defenseless idiot, and singing at the beach at night.
The writing in the fourth movie has really gone downhill. If they wanted the list to be dramatic, they should have escalated in this order:
1. Being rude.
2. Singing at the beach at night
3. Beating up a defenseless idiot.
Or bring the real issue up
1. Being rude
2. Beating up a defenseless idiot
3. Singing at the beach at night while tying a woman to a rock.
Or, if they wanted to be funny, they could have subverted the final one.
1. Beating up a defenseless idiot.
2. Singing at the beach at night while tying a woman to a rock.
3. Being rude.
Joan buys some food and Lucy helps her carry it home. Lucy offers to help Joan and Henry with the doctor's house in exchange for money. Joan accepts and also asks if she was part of the sacrificial ceremonies last night.
Lucy denies that they exist and this is the worst job interview I've seen.
Lucy goes to the doctor's home, Henry posits that the villagers don't see him because they still see a witch doctor.
Remember, The Blind Dead IV: Night of the Seagulls is still going for social commentary.
The bells ring. Lucy denies that she hears them. Teddy says he is scared of the bells and wants to sleep in the attic. Henry claims that the bell is for fog.
There's a knock on the door, and Henry asks Lucy to get it. She resists. Henry opens it instead.
Okay, calling it right now, Lucy is a traitor who wants Joan to be sacrificed.
A woman named Tilda comes in and sobs that they are going to take her away. Henry gives her a sedative.
A man and a woman come to pick up Tilda, and are angry that the doctor treated her.
Yeah, wasting a sedative on someone about to be sacrificed.
Just a thought, but how did the villagers think putting the doctors right beside the sacrificial spot and not informing them about the sacrifices would work?
This is two nights in a row. I thought it was the Night of the Seagulls. How quickly do they burn through women to sacrifice?
The undead Templars approach and this one turns his head side to side.
Tilda screams and he fixates on her.
A subtle way to indicate that the undead are blind. But if they hunt by sound, why do they go near the rushing water? Haven't they seen A Quiet Place (2018)?
The Templars cut her ropes and carry her through some temple. I'm glad we're getting to the Templars halfway through this movie.
If they are blind, why would they bother lighting torches. I thought fire destroyed them?
Wait, that was just the first movie. This series has no continuity.
A Templar lays her down and rips open her top.
Amando de Ossorio
They have to open her gown to stab her in the right place to extract her heart.
Someone Else
The knife can pierce through a woman's chest, but not her light gown?
Amando de Ossorio
Of course not, but they have to see where to stab.
Someone Else
I though the gimmick of this series was that the undead were blind.
Amando de Ossorio
Are you questioning my auteur vision?
The Frog statue is still important.
The Templar stabs her and the movie doesn't show the moment of piercing. Has the Blind Dead Series cut down on strawberry syrup?
Crabs come towards Tilda's corpse. What do the crabs mean?
Joan and Henry go to the village. and ask the shopkeeper about Tilda.
You're describing most women of this series.
Teddy, who now feels comfortable being outside, knows where Tilda Flanagan lives. He claims that "they" always beat him and points to a building were Tilda "used to live."
Also, he claims that "they" are evil and have taken Tilda away.
Joan and Henry leave and the villagers run to attack Teddy for giving away the secret.
Joan and Henry go to Tilda's house, THERE ARE ONLY TWO PIECES OF CLOTH ON THE CLOTHESLINE!
Tilda's parents refuse to Henry in and say that she went to the city.
Some condescending rural doctor stuff there.
Teddy stumbles around the cliffs. The movie is over halfway over. The villagers come to attack. They push him off the cliff and he dies.
....I did not see that coming.
Lucy serves dinner. There's a knock on the door and the camera zooms in on her eye
Maybe the movie is trying to make the audience think that Teddy is now undead?
Lucy goes to open the door and the music is over-compensating for the lack of suspense here.
52:16
God damn it, it's the Jehovah's Witnesses.
So they are sacrificing women each night or else the village will be destroyed? Doesn't seem sustainable.
Teddy isn't dead, he just fell off a cliff and hit his head. I must have assumed.
Lucy is fairly upset that she has to be sacrificed now. Henry is upset because she might not come back like the Flanagan girl. The seagulls fly by again, so they decide to leave town.
Yes, seagulls flying at night is the final straw.
The women lead Lucy down to the sea. The music is two eerie chords over and over and over again.
Henry decides to leave and go to the police like some first-world savior.
A knock at the door. Henry assumes it must be Lucy, which means it isn't.
Seriously, every single time a character asserts that a knock on the door is someone, it turns out to be someone else.
Who verbally asserts who they think is at the door anyway?
It's Teddy!
The women lead Lucy to the sacrificial rock. Do they have to dressed the chosen one in a white gown or something?
Teddy claims that the dead rise up and take one girl every night for seven nights. Also, the cries of the seagulls are the souls of the sacrificed girls.
Woah, there.
That is some bizzare world-building to throw in 11/12 of the way through a horror series.
And that still doesn't make seagulls at night creepy.
The seagulls stop crying, which means that something is going to happen (?) Henry goes to save Lucy
The blind dead approach on horses
I hate to beat an undead horse, but where did the horses come from?
The women try to prevent Henry from stopping the sacrifice, but then just shrug and let him go.
It would be funny if ths was all a huge joke they played on the new doctors.
Henry unties Lucy as the Blind Dead approach with swords. They duck and the swords hit the rocks.
By the way, the booklet that came with the Blind Dead Collection box called these some of the most effective monsters in horror history,
Henry, Joan, and Lucy escape back to the house. They plan to leave once Teddy is better, but Lucy has to stay to be sacrificed. She gives a history lesson about Templars.
I hate it when these series give the villains sympathetic backstories in the final moments!
Every seven years, the village must sacrifice seven girls for seven nights or the knights will raze the village.
I'm just wondering how people figured this out. Like, did they observe that every seven years, knights came from the sea and destroyed the village? And then kept trying different things to stop it? How long did it take them to realize they had to sacrifice seven girls on seven nights on that specific rock? Did they tie up an eighth girl and then, when she lived, go "Oh, guess it's just seven"?
Henry decides to be the one to prevent this sacrifice and potentially doom the town
This is some offensive first-world savior storytelling here.
This has been going on for who knows how long. You would think someone would think "Maybe it's possible to defeat these slow, blind knights. We have seven years to figure it out,"
Henry thinks he hears the car and opens the door.
...I went back in the movie and looked for when they sent someone out to get the car. I couldn't find it. I don't know why they car isn't right outside. I don't know who they would send to get the car.
It doesn't matter, because whenever a characters thinks someone is at the door, it turns out to be someone else. In this case, it is nobody.
Henry boards up the house. Joan and Lucy break up the furniture to get more boards. The undead Templars struggle to hack through.
Seven nights every seven years for hundreds of years and nobody has thought to board up their house?
A hand reaches through a gap in the planks. Joan gives Henry a piece of wood and he hits the hand.
Even the first movie was slightly more empower to women than this.
Also, the movie using the "scare chord" when Henry hits the hand rather than when the hand appears
Henry decides that the back door is sufficiently reinforced despite a hand going through the planks and moves Teddy to the front door.
The blind dead go through the back door easily. By the way, neither this movie nor the previous one has mentioned them being blind.
Joan grabs a torch and wards off the Templars. Henry grabs a candle and sets a Templar on fire.
WOW.
Centuries and nobody has figured out to use fire.
The Templars approach Teddy and Lucy. Being in a poor, rural area, they...haven't discovered fire. (?)
They carry teddy off to a corner. Why would they take Teddy instead of Lucy, the sacrifice.
Joan, Lucy, and Henry watch the Templars kill Teddy. I assume that Henry and Joan discarded the candle and torch because....
They escape through the attic window to get on the horses.
I hate to beat an undead horse, but where did the horses come from?
Lucy tries to preven them from getting on the horses, but Henry insists. Lucy only has known about the Templars her entire life, why would she know what to do?
Turns out that the evil Templars' horses don't obey them and head towards the castle.
Eight minutes left.
Lucy falls off the horse into the sea. The Templars kill her.
Joan and Henry reach the castle and get inside.
Why would the castle of the blind undead have torches? Just saying. Also, using one board to block the door?
Henry claims that it's Joan, not Lucy that the undead want, because Lucy broke the rules...
This is supposed to be a twist, but how does Henry know this?
Henry finds the frog statue and asserts that destroying it will end the ritual.
How. Does. He. Know. This?
Why has nobody else in the village, all of whom know the story, figured this out?
A few Templars come out of the coffins. Rather than taking the torches, Henry and Joan get behind the statue and...push.
I would hope that the statue that has lasted hundreds of years is reinforced into the ground.
Instead, the statue easily tumbles off and breaks.
This obvious causes all the Templars to fall over and blood to spill out of their eyes. Does this affect all the Templars in the Blind Dead cinematic universe, or just the ones in this movie?
BEST TO WORST
1. Blind Dead II: Return of the Evil Dead
2. Blind Dead I: Tombs of the Blind Dead
3. Blind Dead IV: Night of the Seagulls/ The Night of the Sea Gulls
4. Blind Dead III: The Ghost Galleon
And I made it through the entire synopsis without making a "Night of the Can't-See Gulls" joke,
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