The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue

Finally got round to rewatching this after visiting some of the locations a while back, and it hasn't dimmed one iota. I rate this as the best Zombie movie ever and if there are slight faults here and there, the film as a whole more than makes up for it. Sure it can be said that Romero's Night Of The Living Dead hasn't dated as much, in fact NOTLD just refuses to date at all, but The Living Dead.... ends up as a more cohesive entity. The culture clash against the order and the hippies does come across as archaic and does age the film and there is quite a lot of unintentional humour involved. At the start, our hero George (Ray Lovelock) is probably the most hilariously rude person to grace a screen, but he redeems himself.


George leaves his London pad to spend the weekend in the Lake District. After Edna reverses over his bike he gets her to give him travel to his destination, but on the way they stop off at Edna's sister's place. All is not well. Nearby they are trying out a new invention to get rid of bugs by radiation. This has the unfortunate effect of bringing the dead back to life.

The German film poster, no idea how it translates!


Even during the opening credits it's plain to see that this is an environmental warning. We are witness to world in decline, a world so far in decay that even the appearance of a streaker in rush hour doesn't make the commuters bat an eyelid. Commuters that wear masks to try and stop the pollution filling their lungs. And it's worse than that, because this decay is spreading to the countryside. The locations used for filming is one of the big bonuses of this film. Geographically laughable perhaps, but they add an incredable amount of ambience to the proceedings as well as driving home the idea of a world in turmoil.


If you wish to dissect the film you get a feeling that the greatness it has is almost an accident. A veritable mish-mash of a production - Directed by a Spaniard, partly funded from Spain ands Italy with Italian, Spanish, American and British acting talent, filmed in various parts of Northern England as well as Spanish and Italian sound stages and a script that is filled with groaners, but despite this a remarkable film results. Lambsted at the time for its violence and gore (tame by todays standards) it bombed, but nevertheless hung around in people's consciousness and is now rightly regarded as a classic of its genre. All the more remarkable is the length of time that it takes for the actual living dead mayhem to occur. But this film has a steady pace, without any down time. We, as viewers, know what's coming and the film never lets our thoughts wander whiloe we wait for the inevitable. From the first off, we are hooked and hooked we stay. And for once the frustration of authority lasts until the last scene.


One of the standout scens happens when it all starts to kick off in the vault of a crypt. Like Romero, the director Jorge Grau knew that with slow moving attackers you have to contain the action and he does so in a genuinely suspenseful way. For such a relative unknown, and without many credits to his name, Jorge Grau does a very impressive job.

In short, this is is of the highest calibre that Eurohorror has to offer and can't be recommended highly enough. Also known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie.