The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue

When it comes to Euro Horror, Italy by far leads the way; a close second however is Spain. During the early 1970's their short lived victory paved the road ready for Italy to roll through. During this time movies like Tombs Of The Blind Dead were great success stories but in 1974 No profanar el sueño de los metros, or Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue as it was known in the UK became the best known of the Spanish/Italian  horror epics.

George is owns an antiques store in Manchester, for the weekend he plans a trip to Windermere to visit a new house he has purchased as a retreat from society. On his trip he encounters Edna who accidentally reverses her car over his motorbike. George insists that Edna takes him to Windermere being as the accident was her fault. However on the journey Edna persuades him to detour to a nearby town where she needs to visit her sister by a certain time.

Having arrived near the beautiful riverside home of her sister, George goes off in search of directions from a nearby farm in order to make the final short distance. But while he looks for directions Edna encounters Guthrie the local down and out, who not only terrifies her, he launches an violent attack on her. Having managed to escape Guthrie Edna is reunited with George and a local farmer, who identifies by description Edna's attacker; the only thing he finds difficult to comprehend is the fact that Guthrie has been dead for a week.

The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue is a movie that is known by more alternative names than any other; alternative titles include Breakfast At The Manchester Morgue, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Don't Open The Window, and interestingly enough Zombie 3 (interesting as it received this title before Zombie 1 and 2 were even made). The movie was influential in the fact that a Zombie movie had never gone into such graphic detail before. There are lengthy scenes of organ eating and flesh being ripped open. But its most acclaimed special effect was a recently autopsied corpse complete with stitches falling open that turned the stomachs of audiences world wide. Even now 33 years after the movie was made the special effects can at times be very graphic, although you are fully aware that these contents were probably purchased that day down the local butchers.

While the special effects have stood the test of time the movie has not, it's a considerable time into the movie before things have kicked off, I'd say about 45 minutes. And unfortunately the movie has been dubbed into English and the accents and dialogue are hard to swallow. Having endured the terrible voices for 45 minutes by the time things have started you have almost lost all interest. Most annoyingly George, a Manchester Lad has a broad Michael Caine style East End accent.

The action is very drawn out, with periods of 20 minutes between incidents, culminating in a massive crescendo of blood and guts during the last 8 minutes of the movie.

One of the most annoying parts for me for the movie was the dramatically increasing size of the town they are staying in. What starts off as a 100+ dwelling location, soon develops into 500 and then 1000. The reason for this is down to the fact that like a lot of Euro Horror no permission was ever sought for filming locations. So the filmmakers would turn up in a location, film as much as they could before piling into their vans and running off before the police caught up. When of course the police caught up or got close they would have to move on to other locations in order to finish the movie. Luckily they had managed to film the lengthier scenes uninterrupted. The effect of this obviously made the picture look a bit dysfunctional. And this overall issue scars the movie heavily.

Another annoying issue is the fact that in this rural location Edna's sister is revealed to be a very popular drug abusing prostitute. But its obvious that it would be very difficult to peddle either of her vices in such a town. Its also odd that the town has such a massive police force, as most of us are aware most rural locations in the UK only have one or two police officers and historically always have, but this location has police officers, scenes of crime officers and CID. Not to mention the fact that they all bare arms.

Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue for me is one of the most boring of all Euro Horrors. While it wins some wars it fails on so many other fronts. It a real heavy going journey of a movie that will leave you cold for the most part; not cold from fear I should add, cold from boredom. Its poorly scripted, poorly cast, poorly acted, and incredibly poorly dubbed. If you're a completes freak that's into horror then it's a valuable addition to your collection, failing that it's a pile of pap that will sit on your shelf for a long time before seeing the light of day again.