Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)
Posted on July 30, 2006
Filed Under Italian, Movies, Zombies
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, aka The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, aka any other number of titles you care to throw at it (including, perhaps strangest of all, Don’t Go Near the Window) definitely belongs to the upper tier of the many, many zombie movies made on the cheap following the success of Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. It tells the story of George, a Londoner, who travels north to the Lake District to meet a business associate. Following an accident on his bike, he accepts a lift from Edna, who is heading the same way to help admit her heroin-addicted sister to a clinic. Things go awry when Edna is attacked by a man who supposedly died the previous week, and when a string of other grizzly deaths take place, the local police are quick to point the finger of blame at George. Are the dead really coming to life, and can it have anything to do with the experimental crop treatments being carried out nearby?
On paper, it doesn’t look good – a Spanish-Italian co-production, set in rural England, and dubbed within an inch of its life. Certainly, the dubbing is the film’s weakest aspect, with the incredibly bizarre array of accents rendering key scenes more comical than dramatic. Most characters speak with rather plummy upper class diction, which is acceptable enough, as is George’s Eric Idle-ish cockney yelp. Things unravel somewhat with the Scottish petrol pump attendant, get downright silly with the Indian doctor in the hospital and culimate with Sergeant McCormick’s frankly astonishing Irish brogue. Aside from the unlikely suggestion that this remote country village should be such a hive of multiculturalism, the lame approximation of various accents and dialects does little to disguise the functional nature of the film’s dialogue. It’s all made even weirder by the swarthy, Mediterranean-looking cast, who couldn’t look more foreign if you tried.
It’s a shame that so many of the film’s problems lie in its dodgy post-production, as otherwise director Jorge Grau rarely puts a foot wrong. In a bid to break away from the rather linear plots of his peers, he sets up a rather nice double jeopardy for George and Edna, as they have to not only avoid being munched by zombies but also prove their innocence – or at least escape from – the local police. Grau’s characterisation is not up to much, but he gives the police some interesting socio-political motivation; McCormick is instantly suspicious of George with his “faggot clothes, long hair, sex, drugs and every other kind of filth” and is contemptuous of Londoners are their “permissive rot”. Essentially, the authorities play the same role here as they always do – blind scepticism, which gives way to realisation only when it’s too late – but it’s a worthwhile twist to suggested that they’re blinkered by prejuce rather than simply being a bit thick.
Grau’s direction is superb, making full use of both the gorgeous countryside and the rather more gothic trappings of the church crypt and the country hospital. There’s also some morbidly thrilling, if economical, gore from the team who would later go on to provide make up effects for Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters. And if the plot contains one too many coincidences to really ring true (it’s not enough for George to keep being found with a pile of dismembered corpses, he had to be a dealer in Satanic paraphernalia as well! No wonder the police take notice…) there’s at least a satisfyingly ironic conclusion that feels genuinely climactic.
If you can resist the urge to snigger at the accents and moronic pseudo-science, then there’s a lot to like here. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is a punchy little film that more than deserves its place near the top of the non-Romero zombie pack.
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