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Last year Anchor Bay released a collector's DVD for a movie called "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie". I almost bought it blind, just for the packaging, but never quite did. Last weekend I finally saw the movie.
It is an Italian horror film set in Manchester, England and was originally released in 1974, with obvious imfluences from Night of the Living Dead. As a matter of fact, it's original English title was The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue. What I expected was a NOTLD clone, and was pleasantly surprised at its originality. To be sure, the zombies were cribbed directly from Romero in appearance and behavior, right down to the scenes of zombies standing around munching on the organs of their recent victims. There were particular shots that were lifted almost directly from the 1968 classic. Even so, this movie brought some very different "rules" to its world that made it stand alone on its own terms.
Where Romero used a returned space probe carrying some sort of virus or radiation that reanimates *all* corpses, Sleeping Corpses uses an experimental pest control device with a radius of only about five miles. Aside from pest control, this device turns out to effect only very recently deceased corpses within its radius as well as having a very dangerous effect on newborn infants (the connection being a nervous system in a very primative state). The reanimated corpses can also raise other zombies with the use of the blood of the living, but the bottom line is that the event is very limited in scope and could be controlled -- if only the authorities recognized the problem and took proper steps to address it. Needless to say, they don't.
The level of gore in the film is on par with that in the original NOTLD. There are some moments that will make a squeamish viewer cringe, but it certainly does not reach the level of Grand Guinol found so much in the italian cinema of the 70's and 80's. The pacing is very good, and leads to a very good (if slightly predictable) climax. Overall I would certainly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoyes a good zombie flick. It may not be groundbreaking, but it has enough originality to raise it above the many other NOTLD clones of the era.
I give it a solid four stars out of five.
It is an Italian horror film set in Manchester, England and was originally released in 1974, with obvious imfluences from Night of the Living Dead. As a matter of fact, it's original English title was The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue. What I expected was a NOTLD clone, and was pleasantly surprised at its originality. To be sure, the zombies were cribbed directly from Romero in appearance and behavior, right down to the scenes of zombies standing around munching on the organs of their recent victims. There were particular shots that were lifted almost directly from the 1968 classic. Even so, this movie brought some very different "rules" to its world that made it stand alone on its own terms.
Where Romero used a returned space probe carrying some sort of virus or radiation that reanimates *all* corpses, Sleeping Corpses uses an experimental pest control device with a radius of only about five miles. Aside from pest control, this device turns out to effect only very recently deceased corpses within its radius as well as having a very dangerous effect on newborn infants (the connection being a nervous system in a very primative state). The reanimated corpses can also raise other zombies with the use of the blood of the living, but the bottom line is that the event is very limited in scope and could be controlled -- if only the authorities recognized the problem and took proper steps to address it. Needless to say, they don't.
The level of gore in the film is on par with that in the original NOTLD. There are some moments that will make a squeamish viewer cringe, but it certainly does not reach the level of Grand Guinol found so much in the italian cinema of the 70's and 80's. The pacing is very good, and leads to a very good (if slightly predictable) climax. Overall I would certainly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoyes a good zombie flick. It may not be groundbreaking, but it has enough originality to raise it above the many other NOTLD clones of the era.
I give it a solid four stars out of five.