Back in the town square, firework technician and former military captain Jack Marlowe (Tony Kendall) meets Mayor Duncan (Fernando Sancho), his assistant Dacosta (Frank Braña) and his fiancee/secretary Vivian (Esperanza Roy).

The governor is the third person (after the station manager, and then the mayor) to ignore warnings of the coming Templars, assuming the messenger to be drunk.

They try to get away in Jack's car, but are overwhelmed by zombies and escape into the church, where Beirao and his wife Amalia (Lone Fleming), are holed up with their daughter (Maria Nuria).

Down in the tunnels, Murdo is decapitated by the knights as he climbs out to the surface and Moncha is subsequently pulled by her head through the opening and killed.

They convince Amalia's daughter that the zombies and her mother's death were both part of a nightmare and then blindfold her as they attempt to silently creep through the square full of blind dead.

De Ossorio described the film as having "political aspects", evidenced by the mayor who looks to abandon the town and save himself when the Templars attack.

[2] Author and critic Jamie Russell described the thematic link between sex and death in the films as "a pessimistic vision in which youth and beauty are always destroyed".

The opening of the 87-minute English cut contains a truncated version of the Templars' blood sacrifice before the villagers capture and kill the knights.

In the Spanish version, the sacrifice flashback occurs when Murdo warns Jack and Vivian about the coming return of the Templars, and contains shots of the virgin's heart being removed and eaten by the knights.

In the Return of the Evil Dead cut, Murdo does not sacrifice a local girl to incite the Templars resurrection, and when he's decapitated later in the film, the shot of his headless, spurting neck is removed.

Several names are changed and/or Anglicized in the English dub of the film: the village of Bouzano is renamed Berzano, Moncha is Monica, Juan is Don, Dacosta is Howard, Beirao is Bert and Amalia's unnamed daughter is Nancy.

[4] SMV - See More Video - released the 97 minute version on VHS retitled as Mark of the Devil, Part V: Night of the Blind Terror in the mid-1990s.

[5] Paul Corupe of DVD Verdict called it "less a sequel than a complete re-imagining of the first film" that owes a debt to Night of the Living Dead.

[6] Adam Tyner of DVD Talk wrote, "Sitting through The Return of the Evil Dead is like wading through one of the later Jaws sequels.

Yes, the body count is exponentially higher, the Knights Templar are in virtually every scene, there's an attempt to keep the pacing amped up...and in the process, pretty much everything worthwhile about the original is discarded".