Original title: Último deseo
This science fiction/horror hybrid from director Leon Klimovsky features Paul Naschy in a supporting role and was something of a change of pace for the Spanish genre star who as taking a break from his series of Gothic horror films, some of which (La noche de Walpurgis/The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman (1970), Dr. Jekyll y el Hombre Lobo/Dr Jekyll and the Wolf Man (1971), La Rebelión de las Muertas/Vengeance of the Zombies (1972)) were directed by Klimovsky.
The film opens with a title sequence featuring solarised images from the film incongruously scored to Beethoven’s Symphony No.9. A group of wealthy men – among them Naschy, Emiliano Redondo, Alberto de Mendoza, Tomás Picó, Antonio Mayans and Ricardo Palacios – gather in a castle where they don masks and repair to the basement where host Clara (Nadiuska) and a group of other women (Teresa Gimpera, Julia Saly, Diana Polakov, Leona Devine et al) prepare for an orgy in the name of the Marquis de Sade. Before they can get going, however, what appears to be an earthquake rocks the castle. Emerging from the castle, the group find that the locals have been rendered blind by a nuclear attack and are now roaming the countryside killing sighted people who they track by sound.
Clearly influenced by Richard Matheon’s I Am Legend, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids. The People Who Own the Dark was itself influential if only in a minor way. In 1981, Christian de Chalonge made the arty French post-apocalypse film Malevil which also features a gathering of the rich and powerful in a castle emerging into a violent and uncertain world after a nuclear attack and the influence of Klimovsky’s film seems fairly clear cut. de Chalonge’s film is a more down-to-earth and dour affair, lacking the hordes of not-really-zombies-but-they’re-close-enough laying siege to the castle in the final act and although Klimovsky’s film – written by Gabriel Burgos, Joaquim Jordà and Vicente Aranda, the latter the writer/director of cult vampire film La novia ensangrentada/The Blood Spattered Bride (1972) – takes its time building up a head of steam it’s the more enjoyable experience.
The film flits about from Gothic horror to post-apocalyptic survival drama, spending perhaps a bit too much time in the company of the not terribly interesting characters before getting on with the task of killing them off but there are plenty of fun diversions along the way. The grotesque masks worn by the revellers recall the radiation scarred mutants of 50s B-movies, setting us up to expect the worst when we meet the survivors. Budget restrictions mean that when we do eventually encounter them, the apocalypse has cursed to the an unsteady stumble and the need for sunglasses or scarves draped across their eyes, though we do see at least one victim whose eyes have been burned white by the blast.
Elsewhere, there’s an uncommitted attempt at social satire with the wealthy elites lording it up in their castle, descending on the nearby village only to pillage for food and kill survivors. They meet their match in the shape of the lumpen proletariat rising up against them, a mass of feral hoi polloi blind to the world around them but not to the injustices meted out to them by their “betters”. There’s also a nicely nihilistic ending which completely levels the social playing field, the wealthy left in no doubt that their status will mean nothing in the aftermath of the apocalypse.
As was often the case with Spanish horror films of the 1970s, The People Who Own the Dark exists in a number of versions. Originally shot as Planeta ciego/Blind Planet (a far more accurate title than any it was lumbered with later), it was made in both a chaste “clothed” version and a saucier “unclothed” version and had its title changed to the nonsensical Último deseo/The Last Desire, making it sound more like a softcore sex romp. For the States, it was snapped up by Last House on the Left (1972) producer and Friday the 13th (1980) director Sean S. Cunningham (often erroneously credited as a producer on the Spanish film in some sources) who cut almost 15 minutes from the film before releasing it as The People Who Own the Dark, complete with misleading poster campaign that made it look like a devil worship film. Other cuts were later inflicted ion home video until the longer version was finally restored for DVD release many years later.
Naschy fans may be disappointed that their hero gets a relatively small role here but it’s an unusual and, if not entirely successful then at least interesting addition to his filmography. It’s clearly not one of his personal projects – he feels more like a hired gun than the auteur of his earlier films – but comes at a time when Naschy was branching out from usual werewolf films in a hectically busy period that found him stretching his acting muscles in a variety of genres not usually associated with him. It’s second tier Naschy, not a particularly subtle or nuanced film, despite the clumsy attempts at satire, but once it really gets going in the final act it’s a fun addition to those 70s post-apocalyptic thrillers that had kicked off with Charlton Heston taking the title role in Boris Sagal’s The Omega Man (1971), itself an official adaptation of Matheson’s I Am Legend.
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