The Swamp of the Ravens (1974)

As Good As It Gets

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Ecuadorian horror - I guess I can mark that off my bucket list. Honestly, who knew there was such a thing? For the most part, Swamp of the Ravens is fairly typical low budget 70s Euro-horror/trash type stuff. The plot goes something like this: Dr. Frosta is working with a serum to bring the recently dead back to life. Beyond that, the plot gets fuzzy. I'm sure he's trying to do something else, but for the life of me I don't know what it is. In fact, most of the rest of the movie doesn't make a bit of sense. When Dr. Frosta's experiments with the deceased go wrong, he hacks off a few limbs (again, not sure why - I suppose so they can turn inconveniently turn up later) and dumps the bodies in the swamp where their heads creepily bob up and down like apples at Halloween. Unfortunately, the police begin noticing people are missing and body parts start appearing. The police turn their attention to Dr. Frosta's shenanigans. Throw in a girlfriend that Dr. Frosta kidnaps and ties up so she won't leave, scenes from a real autopsy, huge buzzards (standing in for the titular ravens) everywhere you look, dubbing as bad as I've seen, a goofy lounge singer with an absurdly humorous song, bottom-of-the barrel acting, special effects that don't deserve to be called "special", and a touch of necrophilia, and you've got Swamp of the Ravens. While there is a certain amount of atmosphere and there are some creepy moments, none of it is very good. It's a cheap movie and it shows. And, as I said at the start, most of it makes absolutely no sense. A 3/10 from me.

This movie is an absolute must see if only for one reason. The character Richard sings the coolest song ever recorded in a movie (not the best just coolest heh). Its an insane mishmash of love and hate and you really really have to hear it to appreciate it. I've never found any piece of music in any movie as humorous as this one unintentionally was. You can check out the lyrics to the song here on IMDb they are put down as a quote for Richard but it's much funnier to actually hear performed.If you're fan of Mystery Science Theater or RiffTrax I highly recommend downloading the RiffTrax commentary to go along with this movie it is one of the best movies for getting the RiffTrax treatment.

Ramiro Oliveros plays a bad doctor named Dr. Frosta, who's up to your usual demented nonsense for a researcher in a horror film. His aim is to conquer death, so he regularly messes around with cadavers. All of the rejects are taken to the nearby swamp for disposal. Meanwhile, Dr. Frostas' fed-up girlfriend Simone (Marcia Bichette) has announced her desire to leave him for another man, night club crooner Richard (Marcos Molina). And Dr. Frosta had better watch it, for a dedicated police inspector, played by the always entertaining Fernando Sancho, is on the case.This Spanish-Ecuadoran horror film may well test the patience of some Euro-horror lovers. It's not gory enough, sleazy enough, atmospheric enough, or even funny enough, to quite succeed. It's best described as mildly amusing. Not much of note ever happens, but that doesn't mean that "The Swamp of the Ravens" is without its pleasures. For example, the inspector receives a gruesome piece of evidence - a severed hand - while he is stuffing his face at a restaurant.There are also low points, of course. Early on in the film there are some cringe-inducing romantic episodes with Simone and Richard. Director Manuel Cano fails to give the proceedings much style when it comes to his handling of the material. The performances are on a par with the film itself: no more than passably amusing. Oliveros is a handsome guy, but his antagonist is simply boring. At least we get one interesting character in the form of Frostas' mute assistant (Domingo Valdivieso), who kind of resembles Anthony Perkins.The dead bodies in the swamp never pay off as much as one would like, and the title is a misnomer: it should have been titled "The Swamp of the Buzzards". However, in presumably some sort of attempt to justify the title, Dr. Frosta quotes Poe right at the end.Five out of 10.

This truly exemplary vomit of unbound euro-weirdness is rendered in living, lurid colour by fiendishly tasteless director Manuel Cano who's knack for nut-ball visuals is given ample room in his grimy opus 'The Swamp of The Ravens'. While there are many references to Edgar Allan Poe the film owes a huge debt to H.P Lovecraft's immortal short story 'Re- Animator'. (There are also a few similarities to Stuart Gordon's landmark film; especially in the way the 're-brained' awaken in such a full-voiced fashion!) Much like Lovecraft's grimpen tale, the disgraced medic continues his debased experiments with circumventing the finality of brain death, and perfecting his troublesome elixir death, in a suitably Gothic locale; a moldering, cadaver-infested swamp seemingly overrun with these truly gross-looking Raven / vulture hybrids constantly shrieking as if at the brink of death themselves. The morbid and suitably weird psychedelic pan-pipe soundtrack by Joaquin Torres doing much to increase the already monumental levels of brain-tweaking oddness! (There is this one wildly incongruous montage featuring a series of especially malefic-looking stillborn babies in jaundiced pickle jars which is in delightfully bad taste!) 'The Swamp of The Ravens' is delirious, psychotronic madness that should appease the gibbering necrophile that lurks deep inside all of our murky synaptic folds!