Serge Chekov (Stelvio Rosi) arrives in a small village where he uncle, Count Minajli, recently passed away. With no transportation to his uncle’s house, Serge walks, passing the cemetery, to the Count’s estate. On the way he finds a woman hanging from a tree. Serge races to the nearest house for help. No one will answer his calls until he reaches a house where his pleading is finally answered by a rude and overbearing butler, Ivan (Carlos Quiney). The home happens to be his uncle’s house and that of his aunt, Countess Nadia Minajli (Maria Pia Conte). He then learns that the hanging woman is her stepdaughter, Mary (Aurora de Alba).
Also residing in the house is Professor Leon Droila (Gerard Tichy) and his daughter, Doris (Dyanik Zurakowska). The Professor works in the Counts Laboratory on experiments having to do with reanimation. When the count’s will is read the household finds that the estate was left to Mary and that the Countess receives basically nothing. With Mary dead, the estate now goes to Serge. The Countess is furious about being left out and, being a dabbler in the occult, she uses trickery and seduces Serge. Serge decides he is more interested in the mild-mannered Doris.
While the police inspector (Pasquale Basile) stumbles around trying to solve Mary’s murder, more people start dying. Then the corpse of the Count goes missing. The Inspector first hones in on a squirrely gravedigger named Igor (Paul Naschy) and then Ivan the ex-butler until he eventually believes that Serge is behind all the strange happenings. When the dead begin rising from their graves, everyone is in danger.
“The Hanging Woman” AKA “La orgía de los muertoswas” AKA “Beyond the Living Dead” AKA “Return of the Zombies” AKA “Bracula: Terror of the Living Dead” was released in 1973 and was directed by Joe Luis Merino. It is a Spanish Italian horror movie.
Naschy has a smaller role in this movie than he usually does. There are two schools of thought on why. According to some sources he was busy filming another film at the time and couldn’t devote a lot of his time on this one. The other is that Merino begged him to play the part of the gravedigger and only agreed when Merino allowed him to rework the script and juicy up the part. This secondary role ended up being the most interesting of the movie. Naschy plays Igor, an insane grave robbing necrophiliac gravedigger zombie. What more could you want.
Although the movie is a little ponderous at times, there are still some good points to be made. The zombies are a plus; however, they don’t really show up until the end of the film. Naschy’s character is another item that adds a little ick to the film. Also, the ending has a slight but unexpected little twist to it that I found interesting. There is also some nice gothic atmosphere. Altogether it was better than I expected.