SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Micitype Pretty Good

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Bezenby Upon visiting Greece, I'd imagine most folk would expect Mediterranean charm, olives, very hairy men, white buildings and loads of islands. What you probably wouldn't expect is to be attacked by an invisible screaming dinosaur, I'd imagine. This is what happens to Antonio Casas and his group when they think they've located a stash of hidden gold in the hills of Greece. Antonio and his two ex-war buddies are refreshingly honest and honourable with each other despite the stash being worth millions, and everyone here involved seems to be genuinely nice people, including Antonio's daughter Soleded Miranda, and some other guy's girl Ingrid Pitt. The only person slightly off mood wise is the maid of the house they are staying at, who is all doom and gloom about the cave they think the gold is in.Very soon the team discover an ancient mummy, and two seemingly petrified eggs. One egg breaks open in the case (and what's inside vanishes) while the other, rather unwisely, is left on a mantelpiece above a roaring fire. Not the best idea that. While most of the group are at the house eating dinner or whatever, something very loud and invisible carves up the guy studying the mummy. People soon twig very quickly to what's going on (except the maid, strangely), so soon we have a situation where the house is under siege from an unseen deadly foe. How do you take on something you can't see? The group here, for the most part, actually don't act that stupid for a horror film and are really supportive with each other. There's no back stabbing or double crossing about the gold either which makes the characters more likeable.It's slow to get going, but there's a lot of atmosphere in the first half of the film as the maid goes on about the cursed cave and we see locals standing at the top of hills way off in the distance, too scared to come any closer. You do get some rough special effects but this is a cheap Euro horror film, but then again the ending seem to me to be more like something out of the eighties. Future tragic Jess Franco star Soledad Miranda does a bit of Greek dancing for the lads too, and Ingrid Pitt does some sixties dancing, which leads one of the older men to remark about how it's good that the young can be free and happy, when they in their youth were 'dancing around bullets'. What's with the mature, likeable characters?

Leofwine_draca With its title a parody of a well-known Julie Andrews musical, SOUND OF HORROR is an engaging film – and an odd one too. There's just some combination between Spain and monster flicks that make for distinctly distinctive movies; see, for instance, later '70s fare like THE LORELEY'S GRASP for another example. SOUND OF HORROR recalls the classic '50s monster movies popular around the world and it reminded me of BEAST FROM HOLLOW MOUNTAIN, although there's no obvious similarity between the two flicks.The cast is an engaging bunch and for a change the dubbing doesn't affect the performances too badly. The male characters are typically stern and bluff, but the focus is on the two female characters, played by Soledad Miranda and Ingrid Pitt. Both found fame in the 1970s, the former in Jess Franco skinflicks and the latter in Hammer horror skinflicks, and both lend equal glamour to the proceedings. They seem to spend an inordinate amount of time either dancing, wandering around in loose-fitting nightwear, or sunbathing, which I guess is the point.Of course, the main gimmick of this flick is that the monster is invisible. This is an effective idea; not only does it cut down on the budget, it also makes things that little bit creepier, as there's no rubber-suited or back-projected menace to date the film; instead, the viewer's imagination supplies the effects. The monster's cries are seriously spooky, although they do sound a little like a guy suffering from stomach pains on occasion; they had a shiver or two going up my spine. The script, written by an American, is better than most and focuses on stuff the viewers want to see, i.e. conflict between the group and encounters with the sinister terror. Director Jose Antonio Nieves Conde never really worked on any famous productions but he does an admirable job here, keeping things tight and never letting the pace flag too much.A spooky soundtrack adds to the atmosphere and the film's also surprisingly gory for its age – we see victims slashed to pieces by the monster. Perhaps they got away with it because it's black and white, but even so these moments are mildly shocking today. The climax, a variation on the classic house-under-attack format seen in THE BIRDS as well as about a hundred other horror movies, is effective, utilising clever scenes with flour and floating hatchets, and there's a good ending involving a twist with the car. Sure, SOUND OF HORROR is a B-movie through and through, but it's an effective, mildly scary one that's both well-made and well-directed.

MartinHafer I cannot think of a single reason to watch "Sound of Horror". It is terrible but not terrible enough to be of any use to a bad movie buff. And, when I try to think of anything good about it, I am stumped. To make it worse, the print which is available through Alpha Video is absolutely terrible--though I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind wanting to restore the film! "Sound of Horror" is a cheap Spanish horror film. And, like most horror films of the day, it's been sloppily dubbed into English. Because it is so cheap, they cannot afford nice costumes or sets, so they have come up with an amazing gimmick to hide the cheapness of the film. Instead of creating some ridiculous monster out of rubber, pipe cleaners and toilet paper roles (or the like), they avoid the problem altogether by having the monster be invisible! This is awfully funny but dumb. So, instead of seeing the creature, you hear horrible screaming every time this monster attacks a group of treasure hunters. Now that I describe it, this does sound a bit interesting. Trust me, however...they manage to keep it from being the least bit entertaining! Talky, dull and never the least bit good.

winner55 The producers of "night of the Demon" have long been blasted for inserting the image of the monster at the end of that film, thus deflating some of its rich suspense. Yet the makers of the present film have been equally blasted for not providing more than a few brief glimpses of the monster from the cave on the Greek island explored here. Ya jus' can't win.Noramally, I would also be upset with the lack of visual monster, but here, it is quite clear that insisting on the monster's visibility misses the whole point of the movie. First the movie is about the people trapped by the monster, and is really a suspense film, not a monster movie. Second the whole gist of the movie is that the origins of the monster are unclear - it is not really a 'dinosaur,' as critics claim, but a residual creature from the mythic period of ancient Greece. If the audience doesn't catch that, the movie is lost - yet, it is hard to see how this could be missed - the archaeologists are not searching for remnants of the past or simply gold, they seek the stolen treasure of Troy - cursed since first buried.Granting this premise lifts the film considerably. There are gaffes along the way, to be sure, and it's never more than a B-movie - but taken on its own terms, its an OK B-movie, and certainly one of the best to be produced by the Spanish cinema of its day.