The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974)
The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue aka Let Sleeping Corpses Lie aka Don’t Open the Window, aka No profanar el sueño de los muertos (Do Not Profane the Sleep of the Dead), was perhaps the biggest oddity among my selections, and clocks in tidily at just over an hour and a half. Also, how about this as a candidate for best poster ever! In all honesty, you might have to struggle through. I did. Manchester Morgue boasts our first of several Robert Redford-looking protagonists – this time it’s Jeremiah Johnson era, with Ray Lovelock labelled as a (forgive me for quoting) police-hating long-hair in faggot-clothes, who’s into drugs, sex, and every kind of filth.
Although it may fool some (including me) into thinking we’re in a little petrol station, somewhere near Lake Windermere, the majority of Manchester Morgue was filmed on location in Rome and Madrid, and in spite of almost the entire cast and crew likely being Italian, you’ve got folks saying things like, “Wee lassie,” “Struth,” and “Well done, Clive.” Lines like, “I haven’t the foggiest,” “I’m mad about apples,” and “Have you ever come across any of these satanists in your investigations?” when said in a thick northern accent, are a bizarre highlight.
Of course, the “science is bad” trope rears its cliched head (not for the last time in our selections), as the Ministry of Agriculture is clearly to blame for all this chaos. Although their modern machinery’s radiation, used to alter the behaviour of insects on farms, making them turn on each other, seems to be the catalyst, for this primitive contraption (which, “Runs like a charm”) to cause such anarchy is unlikely, as it’s roughly the size of a combine harvester.
Emerging from a morgue with bandaged head injuries, all sewn up from their autopsies, Sleeping Corpses’ zombies will sometimes strangle you before ripping you apart. They have strength, can fight, and possess the uncanny ability to raise each other from the dead. The classic, lurching zombie gait is prevalent here – arms outstretched in front, clamouring to claim their victims. These ghouls will also use weapons. For example, one bludgeons a doctor in the head with an axe, and others can climb ladders and exhibit shows of strength beyond the zombie norm. At the Manchester Morgue, it’s even possible to be bitten by a homicidal baby.
It’s the relatable shocks that remain the scariest and most palpable – like when someone gets a ’70s syringe jammed into their arm (likely for real). A British bobby gets a gravestone lobbed at him, a reanimated female corpse takes a gunshot directly to the head and peculiarly ploughs on, and there’s a number of putty clay-deaths with victims’ bodies appearing to be made out of Plasticine. There’s also a single note on the soundtrack that’s eerily reminiscent of Shaun of the Dead, and may have been either a nod or a steal. Again, much like Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, our protagonist meets an unjust end.
Scarious Artists 