Having had something like fifteen different titles when originally released and distributed, sometimes known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and Don’t Open the Window, this film is best described by the title it’s most associated with, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. And for good reason, as one of the curious joys of this 1974 Spanish-Italian science fiction zombie horror film is its North of England setting, something which is both grounding and bizarre at the same time. More of that later.
When an accident forces strangers George and Edna to share a car journey towards the Lake District, they unwittingly become the central players in an accidental scientifically generated zombie outbreak and police investigation. The police mistake the pair as the killers. Can George and Edna stop the undead and prove their innocence before Manchester turns into zombie central?
There’s much to love about ‘The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue’ from several perspectives. As a piece of ‘70s cinema, it has a charm achieved by its limited budget, sometimes wonky performances and absolutely terrible but hugely enjoyable dubbing. As a film set in the North of England but mainly shot in Italy, the incongruity of one-shot being in a quaint Lake District village followed by another where there are Mediterranean cypress trees everywhere is fascinating (and accounts for the poor dubbing, with obviously swarthy Italian actors being dubbed into broad Northern accents verging on comedic. So there’s a kind of campness to it, not least in the (surely gay) character of George (Ray Lovelock), which is a joy in itself.
But as a zombie film, this is terrific. Like Night of the Living Dead, it’s a film with a message, a warning, a societal context about what happens when man starts mucking around with nature, adding depth to proceedings. Director Jorge Grau not only emphasises atmosphere and allows time for the story to build, he also displays a real talent for tension and, when it comes, genuinely disturbing imagery including some very grisly deaths. The scenes in the morgue towards the end of the film are pretty nightmarish.
It’s the very definition of a cult classic and this Synapse Films Blu-ray release is an excellent 4K restoration with extras that include two audio mainly academic commentaries, two interviews with fx maestro Gianetto De Rossi and, best of all, a feature-length documentary about director Grau, exploring his life and films.
All of this makes this pretty much a must-have in anyone’s collection.
The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue is available on Blu-ray from Synapse in the US.
