A cop chases two hippies suspected of a series of Manson family-like murders; unbeknownst to him, the real culprits are the living dead, brought to life with a hunger for human flesh by ultrasonic radiation being used for pest control.
“The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue,” also known as “Don’t Open the Window” and “Let Sleeping Corpses Lie,” is a Spanish-Italian science fiction zombie horror that was shot in England and released in 1974. It was directed by Jorge Grau and starred Ray Lovelock, Arthur Kennedy, and Cristina Galbó. George (Ray Lovelock), a hippie and antique shop owner in Manchester, closes his shop for the weekend and heads out on his motorcycle to the countryside, but after stopping at a garage, Edna (Cristina Galbó) accidentally reverses her Mini Cooper into his bike, causing damage that will take the weekend to fix. She offers to take him to his destination, stating that she must get to her sister Katie’s (Jeannine Mestre) house first but will drop him off at his place afterward. Along the way, she gets lost, and they wind up in a cul-de-sac near a river. George walks to a nearby farm to ask for directions, but while Edna waits by the car, she is attacked by a man with red eyes who emerges from the river. She locks herself in the car, and when George returns, she tells him what happened, but the man has disappeared.
He laughs at her outlandish story and then tells her that while at the farm, he came across two men from the Ministry of Agriculture who were using an experimental machine in a field they said was created to kill insects utilizing ultra-sonic radiation. They head off in the car using the directions the farmer gave him, but when they reach Katie’s house, she is in a panic and screaming hysterically. She claims that a man with red eyes attacked her husband Martin (José Lifante) and then came after her but has since vanished. George finds Martin’s corpse by the river, and they call the police. Once they arrive, the lead inspector in the case has reservations about George and Edna and tells them not to leave town as they are considered people of interest. Over the next few days, strange goings-on at the nearby hospital and an attack by zombies at a local church convince George and Edna that, as absurd as it sounds, the dead are coming back to life, and George is convinced he knows how. Now he must prove to the inspector that he and Edna are innocent and spotlight the real culprits.
“The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue” is one of those cult classics that I had never heard of before, but then again, there are hundreds of zombie movies that I am not familiar with, so I was excited to check it out. Sadly, my enthusiasm was short-lived. The movie was a Spanish-Italian co-production filmed entirely on location in England using Spanish and Italian actors who were then dubbed into English. And the dubbing is horrendous. George sounds like a listless Mick Jagger, while Edna appears fatigued and painfully dull, with a bland, characterless accent. The dialogue and motivations of the characters throughout are asinine and completely preposterous. In the beginning, when Edna accidentally backs into George’s motorcycle, he aggressively forces his way into her car, takes possession of the keys, and tells her that he is going to drive. So much for English etiquette! Later, when they visit the local church, they wind up in the cellar where the dead come back to life, but before they can escape, they are mysteriously locked inside.
It’s not like there’s a villain holed up in the church who tries to silence them because they found out about his nefarious plan for world domination; in fact, the only people at the church are George and Edna, so how they find themselves locked inside is never explained, just a convenient plot point to allow our protagonists to interact with a horde of zombies, and then successfully escape, thereby releasing them to the world and helping to move the film along. George and Edna are as far removed from each other as humanly possible, with absolutely nothing in common, but by the movie’s end, they are a couple who love and care for each other, and again, this facet doesn’t come organically; it is implausibly thrust upon the characters and audience and is done so haphazardly just so the filmmakers can get to the finale and wrap everything up. I know that many foreign-made zombie movies of the ’70s had little to no character development or story exposition, but my God, man, would it kill you to write some believable dialogue and create two protagonists who are easily relatable and, most importantly, likable? The way they are presented here, you find yourself rooting for the zombies, and that pretty much negates the whole point of having them onscreen in the first place.
The one element of the film I was thoroughly impressed with was the cinematography. Francisco Sempere was a Spanish cinematographer who started as a cameraman in 1953 and worked his way up to cinematographer until his untimely death in 1979. He spent his career making Italian and Spanish films and had an excellent eye for positioning his camera in the right place at the right time. Most horror movies of the early 1970s utilized straightforward camera angles, with an occasional tracking shot, but Sempere, especially in “The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue,” takes full advantage of not just slow, suspenseful tracking shots but also crane shots, an unheard-of component in low-budget filmmaking, especially in the early ’70s. He was a master of light effects, clarity, and image quality, and while the film, overall, fails to impress, Sempere’s cinematography has most definitely left a lasting impression on me. My rating of this film gets an extra star based on Sempere’s work alone. The movie was beautifully restored in 4K from the original camera negative by Synapse Films, its Blu-ray™ distributor. The restoration is flawless, one of the best I have ever seen, exhibiting fantastic contrast and shadow detail, especially during dark scenes. It could pass for a film that was made last year its resolution is that good, so if you plan on checking this out, I would highly recommend this 4K restoration; the movie might be disappointing, but its presentation is absolutely fantastic.
Now available on Blu-ray
3.4k
20k
1.5k
1.3k