Night of The Seagulls - Release - Home Video

Home Video

Night of the Seagulls has been released on VHS and DVD format. The Blue Underground DVD includes a theatrical trailer, posters and stills gallery, and an English language print of the film: that is, the credits are in English (although strangely, the post-prologue subtitle identifying the shift from the past to present day, is in Spanish). The film can be viewed with either the English language track or with Spanish-audio and mandatory English subtitle. The Spanish dialogue sounds as dubbed as the English, but it is preferred to the English track. Also, the English subtitles' translation of the Spanish dialogue is occasionally different from the English dub. Although the box cover insists that it is a "definitive edition" containing all the "scenes of extreme violence and nudity", the opening sacrifice seems obviously trunched, with brief flash-edits creating awkward jump cuts. Later scenes of violence are also mild compared to the two entries in the series. Another hint that this English-language print is an alternative version is the fact that the film starts with the scene of the Templars performing a human sacrifice while still alive - like the re-cut English language versions of Tomb of the Blind Dead and Return of the Blind Dead. In both of those films, the original Spanish language versions featured the sacrifice scenes as flashbacks later in the running time, not as pre-credits prologues. The trailer is also from the English language version of the film, and it contains much of the best footage (including the Templars' final-reel assault on the doctor's house), along with one of the worst scenes in the film: when the doctor sets one of the shriveled mummies on fire. The image gallery contains some posters, a set of German lobby cards, and an extensive number of color and black-and-white stills.

The films was also released in a coffin-shaped box which contains all four blind dead films, plus a forty-page booklet called "Knights of Terror", which gives an excellent rundown of the Templar movies and their place in horror film history. The boxset also contains a fifth disc with three behind-the-scenes bonus features: "The Last Templar" - a half hour documentary on writer-director Amando de Ossorio, which was made for Spanish television. It contains his biographical details, and interviews with Spanish critics. The second is "Unearthing the Blind Dead", which provides a rare filmed interview with Ossorio. And the final is "Farewell to Spain's Knight of Horror", which is a special DVD-ROM feature, a reprint of an article written by Mike Hodges upon the occasion of Ossorio's death.