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Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
[Anchor Bay]
1974; color
Directed by Jorge Grau
Starring: Cristina Galbó, Ray Lovelock, Arthur Kennedy, Aldo Massasso & Giorgio Trestini
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Let Sleeping Corpse Lie - also known as The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue; and many, many other titles - owes much to the zombie films that preceded it, including the most famous zombie movie of all time. (Well, pretty much every zombie film ever made owes everything to Night Of The Living Dead but I suppose it doesn't hurt to point out the obvious.) Conversely, a couple recent old-school zombie films appear to owe a bit to this film, which preceded theirs by a good thirty years. (Mainly I'm thinking of Shaun Of The Dead, the only recently made zombie film I've seen recently. The scene where the nude woman runs down the street and no one notices was totally SOTD.) So I guess it all worked itself out in the end. In the end, the zombie movie formula isn't all that changeable really. I mean, we know we're gonna start off meeting some seemingly "normal", "innocent" people; then one or more of them will be frightened by one or more slow moving disheveled folks who are recently deceased yet curiously still alive and get scared; then everyone will really start to freak out after they realize what's really going on and / or after they see their co-worker, or friend, or enemy, have their entrails removed - by force, not surgery. Except the police, who won't believe anything anyone tells them, no matter whose guts are lying on the ground. Eventually more entrails will be ripped from their fleshy confines, limbs will be gnawed on and hands will suddenly appear through any opening afforded by the nearest door, window or loose floorboard and, even more eventually, there will be one big final gut munching finale during which a lot of people will meet fates equally as unpleasant as all of the unpleasant fates that preceded them and a few lucky folks will live long enough to, as Homer Simpson would say, die at an old age from natural causes after many years of limited mobility like god intended. Oh, but before that they'll figure out some way to rid the world of these somewhat lazy predators. (Long enough for some screenwriters to think up a sequel at least.) The end. On the other hand, we all come to a zombie movie looking for slow moving flesh eaters, forcible entrail removal, stupid cops, and triumphant heroes / anti-heroes so all of that was more observation than complaint. This particular zombie movie has all of those things plus many off-shooting plotlines that go nowhere and a castle that has the same name as the infamous island where the Cassadine family resides on General Hospital. (Love that part, by the way.) So yeah, we liked this film. Actually the first time we tried to watch it we got bored & distracted, and I ended up working on this clutch purse my sister requested I knit her for her birthday while the Kommandant messed with some files for his podcast to be. The second time though, it was a lot more engaging and really delivered on all of the standard and expected living dead touchstones mentioned above. Recommended for fans of the genre or any other horror movie fans that aren't easily grossed out.
—Bunny
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