Films That Witness Madness

review

LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE

It takes Jorge Grau almost 45 minutes to unleash his first major zombie attack in LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE (AKA THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE). By todays horror standards, that's pure insanity. Grau's film is a masterpiece of the slow burn, a film that begins in the fresh air countryside, replete with rolling hills, a waterfall and untouched woodland, only to grow more and more claustrophobic. By the films end, we have traversed the peaceful tranquility of the country only to end up in a nightmare, surrounded by the shuffling, hungry dead, their half-eaten prey and hellfire. Not far removed from Romero's zombie films, LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE has an underlying concern, man's selfish destruction of nature, but it never forgets, first and foremost, that it is a horror movie and its true triumph is in its ability to remain true to the zombie film but stand totally apart from it.

The standard zombie film usually posits a pseudo-scientific explanation for its zombie outbreak and LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE is no different. The culprit here is a ultrasonic radiation generator hitched to the back of a large truck, a device designed to kill off insects and parasites in the soil of the farm lands - using the Department of Agriculture as a tool for man's destruction is one of the films most humorous touches. This causes not only the dead to rise but newborn babies to lash out in rage, their underdeveloped nervous systems poisoned by the "harmless" radiation. The zombies on display here are far less comedic in appearance than those in DAWN OF THE DEAD and far less fungal than those in DAY OF THE DEAD but are more lethal than anything in either of those two films thanks to a smattering of supernatural hocus pocus. They are, for example, incredibly strong, able to pull headstones out of the ground - not to mention toss them at bumbling policemen - and bust through doors with little effort. Their bites don't cause their victims to turn into zombies, either. Instead, they add to their numbers by anointing a corpse's eyelids with fresh blood. For some reason, that gets them up and going.

Reality is something most people want in their horror movies but it is ultimately destructive in large doses. Reality is really the enemy of horror. A horror film needs to be somewhat detached from reality. It must exist as a kind of warped mirror reflection where the natural laws are suspended but not broken. LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE is no different than SUSPIRIA in those regards. Both films are firmly grounded in real world scenarios but both contain heavy supernatural elements that uproot us just enough to feel insecure. In LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE, the zombies are only killed by burning them. In SUSPIRIA, a witch can be killed simply by stabbing her through the neck. You can feel the comfort of reality hiding behind the veil of unreality. When a film leaves the realm of reality completely, like Fulci's THE BEYOND, the results can be astoundingly frightening and captivating but the disconnect between the viewer and the material threatens to shatter the tension at any moment. A horror film in which there is no reality to rely on is a lost cause while a horror film that stays solely within the realm of the reasonable comes off as lacking.

Like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, its most obvious inspiration, LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE is more about the clashes between the living than zombies and cannibalism. Our main character is an activist, a man escaping to the countryside for the weekend to avoid the zombiefied culture of the big city. Along the way he meets a young woman on her way to help care for her drug addicted sister. They will eventually be blamed for the string of murders committed by the zombies by a fascist police Inspector who believes our heroes to be Satanists, disgusting hippy trash that deserves extermination. Of course, we know the real cause of the crime spree and the instrument behind it, an Earth-poisoning gizmo designed to make our lives easier at the expense of nature. The generation gaps and culture clashes that occur throughout the movie reach their climax at the films end with the Inspector gunning down our hero - even saying with a straight face "I wish the dead could come back to life, you bastard, because then I could kill you again" - and being congratulated as a hero for doing it. It takes an EC Comics-style final scene to set the record straight. But the final shot of the film offers little hope, the poisoning of the Earth will continue uninterrupted all because the two parties involved in the conflict, the young and the old, couldn't see eye-to-eye or trust one another.

All this is a little too pat for my tastes but it doesn't detract from the absolute mastery of Grau's film. LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE might not be a perfect film but it stands head and shoulders above the vast majority of zombie films ever made. For all its naivety, LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE remains able to shake the viewer and frighten them. The zombie attack inside the cemetery, for example, is a nail-biting experience, a Hammer-esque scene that is virtually unmatched within the sub-genre. Every time I watch the film, I have the same reaction to it. I'm well aware that George and Edna make it out of that crypt unharmed but my palms still sweat and my hair still stands on end. That is real strength of this film. Like HALLOWEEN and PSYCHO, the shocks never tire and the tension never dissipates with time. It remains, though slightly dated, as fresh as it was upon release.

Essential viewing.

DISCUSS THIS FILM IN THE FORUM! JUST CLICK HERE TO VISIT!