Great Movie With Ingrid Pitt Looking Good
Customer Rating: 
This is a really cool movie. It involves a prehistoric monster which remains invisible through most of the movie.
The monster gives off a really cool sound.
Ingridd Pitt and this other gal do some really great dancing. This alone is worth buying the movie.
This is reminiscent of the famous Johnny Quest episode 'The Invisible Monster' (Johnny Quest and Spiderman 1967 original series are out on dvd now).
Catch Ingrid in 'The Vampire Lovers' and the world war 2 adventure 'Where Eagles Dare' with Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton.
Jeff Marzano
Voodoo Island/The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (Midnite Movies Double Feature)
The Flesh Eaters
Recommended further viewing:
Horror Hotel
IT ! (The Terror From Beyond Space)
Invasion Of The Saucer Men
Not Of This Earth (original)
The Blob (with Steve McQueen)
The Brain That Wouldn't Die
The Flesh Eaters
The Fly / The Return Of The Fly / The Curse Of The Fly
The Four Skulls Of Jonathan Drake
The Hideous Sun Demon
The Hypnotic Eye
The Incredible Shrinking Man
The Indestructible Man
The Manster
The Thing (from another world)
The Thing That Couldn't Die
The Twilight Zone Collections
The monster's invisible, but - luckily - Soledad Miranda is not
Customer Rating: 
So what have we learned here? Well, if you're going to go spelunking for treasure, you might want to bring along several huge bags of flour, destroy anything that even looks like a calcified dinosaur egg, and - for heaven's sake - come packing some guns and ammo. And, while bringing along a gorgeous young woman is of course optional, I would highly recommend it.
It's true that Sound of Horror is a really cheesy horror film, riddled with many little things it is easy to ridicule (I guarantee you'll laugh at one point during the climactic moments), yet it's well worth watching. This is a Spanish film from 1965, but the English dubbing is really quite good. It seems there's a treasure of ancient Greek and Roman artifacts buried in a cave in Greece, and only our little group of treasure hunters have the map detailing its location. The first guys on the scene find an egg-shaped rock and an ancient mummy, and that only goes to fuel the local housekeeper's talk of the curse on that particular cave. Eventually, after the rest of the fellows arrive, they think they've found the spot of the treasure - and that's when the deaths begin. There is a deadly monster lurking within the caves - an invisible monster with a heavy limp and a high-pitched ululating voice that sends shivers down these brave men's spines. It's hard to get too excited about an invisible monster, but it's certainly more effective than trotting out some guy in a rubber suit. (I should note that, for reasons I can't explain, the filmmakers do superimpose - for just a quick second - a monster image onto the screen on a couple of occasions, but this hardly counts and actually does more harm than good.) As characters start getting picked off one by one, things get more intense until the remaining survivors finally figure out a way to go on the offense against something they can't see. Their plan leads to one unforgettably campy scene you won't want to miss.
Perhaps the biggest reason to see this film, though, is the presence of the legendary Soledad Miranda in one of her earlier roles. Her Greek dancing is not exactly a must-see, but she's a beautiful actress who died much too young (at the age of 27), right when she was on the verge of becoming an international star. Miranda is best known for her starring roles in a number of Jess Franco classics (including Count Dracula and Vampyros Lesbos) - I think she can justifiably be looked upon as the queen of Spanish horror during the 1960s.
Something shrieky this way comes...
Customer Rating: So you're making a cheapie monster movie and you don't actually have the dough for a real monster...what to do? Easy, just make the monster invisible...and that's exactly what the makers of Sound of Horror (1964) aka El Sonido prehistórico, did...and somewhat effectively, I might add. This Spanish production was co-written and directed by José Antonio Nieves Conde (Captain Blackjack), and features James Philbrook (I Do Not Forgive... I Kill!), Arturo Fernández (The Incredible Invasion), Soledad Miranda (Eugénie, Vampyros lesbos), José Bódalo (Captain Apache), Antonio Casas (Kiss Kiss... Bang Bang), Lola Gaos (Pancho Villa), and horror flick junkie favorite Ingrid Pitt (The Vampire Lovers, Countess Dracula).
The story is set on a Greek isle, and opens with three people, two men and a woman, inside a cave, getting ready to make use of some DYN-O-MITE (that one's for you, J.J., wherever you are). There's Professor Andre (Fernández), his niece Maria (Miranda), and the Professor's assistant Stravos (Casas). Maria, new the archeology biz, makes some comment about the hardships of mucking about in caves with TNT to which Stravos replies, "You'd better get accustomed to the smoke, as well...it's the most uncomfortable part of these explosions." Really? I would have thought the explosions to be the most uncomfortable part of the explosions, but then I'm no archeologist, so what the hell do I know? Anyway, the blast seems to have turned up squat, except for some petrified eggs, one of which they take back to the house, another which hatches in the cave after everyone leaves, spewing out a muddy globule that soon disappears. About this time we meet the housekeeper Calliope (Gaos), a local woman who speaks about all the bad mojo surrounding the mountain (get used to this, as she harps on this aspect through most of the film). Soon afterwards four more people show up in Dr. Asilov (Philbrook), his girlfriend Sofia (Pitt), Dorman (Bódalo), and their driver/guide Andre (Casas), presenting quite a group of potential victims...er, I mean quite a group of characters. Turns out Professor Andre, Asilov, and Dorman have been working together for some time trying to locate a legendary treasure, and their finally completed map (which looks like it was drawn with a crayon) has lead them to this mountain...only thing is, treasure isn't the only thing to be found, as the Professor's earlier blast has awakened a prehistoric beastie invisible to the eye, thirsty for blood and a penchant for slashing...
I enjoyed this film somewhat, but it got mired down as a number of characters spent a lot of time getting all philosophical after the creature claimed a couple of victims, going on and on about how they may have ultimately wasted their lives in search of a treasure only to have found death. Also they compare their unintentional find and their subsequent fear to the threat of nuclear annihilation a few times, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but whatever...it was these overly talkative aspects that slowed the film down, dragging it out to an hour and a half, illustrated by the fact that by the end of the first hour of the film, there had only been two victims...well, two and a half as one person got injured when something clawed his leg, and had to gimp around for the rest of the film. The performances were okay, but the writing was such as there really wasn't one character I would have considered to be the lead. At the outset a lot of time is spent focusing on the men and their lust for treasure, hiding under the pretense of being archeologists, so that later we can see all these scenes were they feel remorseful about their behavior, possibly hoping to elicit sympathy from the audience, but it didn't really work out that way (for me, at least). The women were nice to look at, Miranda being sort of the mousy, sheltered type contrast against Pitt's worldly, experienced character, highlighted during their short dance sequences (watch the men eyeball Pitt as she shakes her moneymaker...it's kinda creepy). As far as the monster goes, its not completely invisible as it appears briefly a couple of times, looking much like a toy dinosaur super imposed on the screen, giving the feel of it being about six feet tall. From what I did see, it was for the best that they went the invisible route for most of the film, as the beast could be heard through its shuffle walk and its constant shrieking. One aspect that was really decent was the make up effects in terms of the bloody tears victims received after the creature attacked. They looked realistic and fairly horrific. In the last third of the film the survivors are trapped in the house, trying to come up with a means to fight the creature...my thoughts were to throw some paint or powdery substance at the beast, taking away its chameleon-like camouflage, but they went a different route, one that was temporary and dependant on specific circumstances...not the way I would have gone, but whatever...there were a few scary scenes (half being of the fake scare type) and tense moments, like the extended scene with Calliope going to the well in the middle of the night, but it didn't feel like enough to carry the film all the way through given its length. I will say the ending was quite good, and made up for a lot of minor misgivings I had about the rest of the film, but not all. In closing, this is decent little low budget film that just ran a little too long (if they cut about twenty minutes off, preferably in the talky sections, it would have been better).
The picture quality on this Alpha DVD release, presented in fullscreen, is pretty standard for Alpha, meaning its lousy through and through...the picture is murky, fuzzy, and shows signs of wear throughout. It is obvious the film isn't presented in its original aspect ratio as in the beginning, while the credits are rolling, many of the names are cut off. The audio fares slightly better than the picture as it's fairly clear, but a far cry from being sharp. Perhaps I complain too much, especially given the low cost of the DVD, but I don't necessarily mind paying a little more for better quality...sometimes it seems with these Alpha releases they go out of their way to find the worst possible source material and slap it on a DVD, but then that's just my opinion. As far as extras, there is a rough trailer for the film, and listing of other Alpha releases.
Cookieman108
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