Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1975, Color, 93 Mins., Unrated)
Directed by Jorge Grau
Released by Blue Underground
Review By: Matthew Dean Hill
Recommended DVD Source: Available Everywhere |
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What do you get when you cross Romero's Night of the Living Dead, a skilled Spanish director, a dash of Quatermass-esque sci-fi, and a distinctly British sensibility? Why, you get a darned-fine flick. Add to that recipe scads of early-1970's social angst, a post-hippie ecological message, some truly beautiful camera work, and a sick little EC-style revenge twist, and you've got one of the most important and most influential zombie movies ever. It must have come out of nowhere...I'm quite sure that early '70's audiences didn't know what to think. Since its original release, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie has probably had more aliases than just about any other flick. A few of the more familiar titles this film has had include Don't Open the Window (the U.S. theatrical release title), Breakfast at Manchester Morgue, and perhaps most famously The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. That's right, folks, this is that movie. It's the movie that featured graphic onscreen gut-yanking shenanigans years before Romero made that stuff de riguer with Dawn of the Dead. Aside from being at least a few years ahead of the curve, violence-wise, it laid some pretty solid groundwork for damned-near every shuffling undead flick that came after it, and that includes Dawn and its countless imitators, Mister Smartypants. Arguably, Jorge Grau's film was more responsible for the truly modern zombie epic as we know it than was Dawn...a film whose style and on-its-sleeve social message owe a lot to Corpses. Then, there's the whole matter of 28 Days Later..., but just look at that first screenshot down there...you'll see what I mean. Hell, I'll do ya one better. All those Fulci flicks? Those beloved-by-some atmospheric shockers that, for decades, have been all but dismissed as being shallow (though gory and eerily shot) ripoffs of Romero's Dawn? Well, I would contend that they actually owe a great deal more to Grau's film than to Romero's. Don't believe me? Just watch Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and immediately follow it up with a viewing of Fulci's Zombi, City of the Living Dead or The Beyond, and I think you'll find it impossible to disagree the distinct similarities, both in terms of structure and tone. Whatever. You be the judge. Here comes the review...
The synopsis...
Swingin' London antique shop proprietor George (Ray Lovelock) closes up shop for a long weekend in the quaint, peaceful English countryside. On his way out of town, he stops to fuel his motorbike, when a pretty but clumsy damsel named Edna (Christine Galbo) backs over George's bike with her car. George discovers that Edna is on her way to visit her drug-addled sister and her sister's swingin', hipster photographer husband, who live in a village near George's own destination. Rideless, he bullies Edna into giving him a ride to his country home. Along the way, they make a pit stop just outside of Manchester to ask for directions (!), and George leaves Edna behind to wait in the car while he chats it up with local scientists; knee deep in ultra-sonic wave-based pest control experiments utilizing a big, red rotating device that looks like something out of a Doctor Who episode. Meanwhile, Edna gets harassed by a stinky, slimy old dude who seems to have just waltzed out of a nearby creek. Of course, George makes his way back to the just in time to find Edna shaken and jabbering about the marauding looney, whom has since conveniently disappeared. Thinking her a bit silly and fragile, George convinces Edna to get a move-on, as it's rapidly getting dark. They make haste to a nearby town and get hotel rooms for the evening. Later that evening, Edna's sister witnesses the brutal murder of her husband at the hands of that same swaggering nutcase, and soon, Edna and George are embroiled in a strange, horrifying series of events involving people coming back to life and eating other people. In the meantime, George runs afoul of a hard-boiled Police Inspector (Arthur Kennedy), and it's a sparring match made in hell. These two dudes absolutely loathe each other right out of the gate, and their conflict of old versus new, traditional versus...well...swingin'...is really at the core of the film. Will George and Edna ever hook up? Will Edna ever stop whining? Will the Inspector ever stop gritting his teeth and mumbling about his distaste for permissive society? Turns out that the titular "corpses" aren't exactly inclined to simply "lie". No, they're active little buggers, and soon, the town is overrun with hordes (well, more like eight or ten) shambling zombies, hell-bent on creeping our heroes out with their freaky red eyes and then turning them into a luncheon buffet. All of this is tied up in a neat little bow, replete with the previously mentioned twist ending that adds a layer of satisfaction to the whole shebang.
Yes, we've seen all this before (or since, really), but rarely has a simple zombie film been so jam-packed with social satire, effectively moody sequences, and "Come on, love...don't be such a daft little bird" posturing from the hero. The much-lauded socio-economic observations of Dawn of the Dead may be effective, if a bit ham-fisted, but they don't work on the same level as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie's depiction of 1970's English generation-gap issues. Plus, there's the old saw about how "if we tamper with nature, we're bound to get bitten", here taken to its most literal extreme. If only those goofy agricultural scientists would have just left well enough alone, none of this crap would have happened. It's not easy to surmise exactly whose side Jorge Grau is on, but I'd venture to guess that the damning portrayal of "The Inspector" as a paranoid, dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist squarely root our sympathies and allegiances in the Swingin' British Proto-Hippy camp. Suffice it to say that there's a lot more going on in this film than just zombies eating people.
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie works on so many levels, it's hard to know where to start. One thing that just clicked for me is the camera work. Grau's camera is fluid and artful, without being distracting. The guy clearly knows how to make a movie, using framing and subtle shifts of perspective to heighten suspense and ratchet up the tension where it's needed. Certain shots linger in the memory; many years after my first viewing, and after I'd forgotten most of the plot and the minutiae of the film, the scene where a zombie lurches out of the foggy darkness, framed by "headlights", to attack an increasingly nutzoid Edna is a damned fine set piece, as are the cemetery and infamous morgue assault sequences. Another aspect of the film that works quite well is how Edna and her sister are portrayed. At first, Edna is the "stable"...if a bit skittish...one, and the sister is the nutbag. By film's end, though, it seems that perhaps Edna is the sibling that has the most trouble coping with "reality", even if "reality" involves corpses coming back to life and eating people. It must also be said that, even then, Grau had the sense to try to make these zombies his own...not mere carbon copies of the standard-issue Romero types as establish in the original NotLD. Grau introduces the fairly novel notion of having the zombies reanimate other corpses...thus propagating their "species"...through the act of dotting the eyelids of corpses with the blood of the living. It's a detail that, while never sufficiently explained (and perhaps that's for the best), adds a layer of oddness and, somehow, realism to the proceedings. Rarely in a zombie film are we given an inkling of how "zombieness" is transmitted, beyond "if you're bitten by a zombie, and then you die, you'll become a zombie". It's a nice touch, is all I'm saying.
One other side-note: the opening sequence of the film contains a lingering shot of a "Willendorf Goddess"; a distended-bellied, rough-featured stone carving representing the regenerative powers of "Mother Earth". Later, the Inspector finds this "idol" in George's possession, only to accuse him of being a "Satanist". I can't help but feel that this was meant to be some sort of subtle statement on Grau's part, or that, at least, it was originally meant to be a more fleshed-out plot contrivance. In either case, the symbolism and repercussions of the Willendorf Goddess in this context are interesting, to say the least. I digress...
Blue Underground's re-release of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is not exactly an uber-edition, but it's a damned fine release nonetheless. The cut is the original "unrated" 93 minutes, here presented in a very good 1.85:1 widescreen format, enhanced (naturally) for 16X9 sets. The print is a bit grainy, as could be expected, but clearly some work has been done to clean up the image, which has always been a bit on the oversaturated side. In any event, the visual presentation is clear and noise-free enough to be perfectly acceptable, and the colors (thankfully) are vivid and appropriate to the period. The sound, presented in 5.1 Surround, is unremarkable, as there just isn't a lot going on to fill up either the subwoofer or rear channels for most of the film. However, some of the score has been remastered for surround presentation, and the ever-present growling and gurgling of the zombies (allegedly performed/dubbed by Grau himself) seem to stretch to the surround channels from time to time. Again, it's totally serviceable, and only the bat-shit craziest of audiophiles will give a damn anyway. Special features are somewhat scant by Blue Underground standards, but then again, this is among their "budget" releases, so maybe I'm expecting too much. There's an introduction from Jorge Grau, and a twenty-ish minute interview with Grau, which is fascinating enough to see, I suppose. A feature commentary would have been welcome, as there are a lot of little things in Let Sleeping Corpses Lie that would have made for fascinating discussion. Grau seems unaware of the place of his film in the zombie canon...hey, at least he's not a self-congratulatory snob who knows he's made an important piece of horror cinema. Other features include a collection of stills and promotional materials (the kind of stuff that the folks at Blue Underground is great at compiling), as well as a handful of neat TV, Theatrical, and Radio spots (using several of the film's myriad titles). All in all, a nice presentation of a verifiable classic. It's a disc that belongs in the collection of all dyed-in-the-wool zombie fanatics. Heck, it might just knock Dawn of the Dead out of the running as the most important zombie movie ever made. Don't send me your hate mail, though. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie gets the AC Essential award.
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