Also known as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue...
In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, we discuss the 1974 zombie movie Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, also known as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. It’s a sci-fi spin on the zombie genre, set in rural England and brought to life in a Spanish/Italian co-production. It’s bloody good!
It's also an eco-horror film of sorts, so we spend a fair amount of time trying to make sense of its anti-authority and anti-science(?) message. But more than anything, it's just a really solid zombie film that really makes the most out of plot, set pieces and ambience to maximize the horror in what amounts to a localized outbreak of the living dead in rural England.
I'll have more to say on the music in just a bit, but first let's have the podcast episode and one of my favorite trailers for the film (under one of its many release titles).
Now, as far as the music for the film goes, Giuliano Sorgini provides an excellent and unnerving score. This is probably the Italian composer's best known score, but his work is likely the only redeeming part of several subsequent films he scored in the 1970s. I'm talking some real bottom-of-the-barrel exploitation cinema of the time -- but you don't have to look all of that up! Because Sorgini has been releasing some of his unused tracks from that time period. Have a taste of his 2020 release Occulto:
Finally, while we call out the "You're all the same, the lot of you" speech from Arthur Kennedy's inspector character, I forgot to call it out as a notable sample at the start of Electric Wizard's doom song Wizard in Black collected on the 2006 album Come My Fanatics... The Inspector character in the film is such a seething storm of fascist, anti-hippie rage, so one can see why the band selected this sample. Full sample clip can be streamed here, though warning that it includes use of the hard f-word. They've also used art from the poster above, I believe. EDIT: Oh yeah, and they also have a track titled The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, so I think it's fair to say they're fans.
What's up next on Weirdhouse Cinema? We'll be having ourselves a little Godzilla with 1969's All Monsters Attack. In the meantime, be sure to check out the merch store and follow us on Letterboxd! All the movies we've covered are listed there in our list and you can click "read notes" to get links to the individual episodes posted here.
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