Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti

'The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue' is possibly the most underrated zombie movie ever made. It's certainly one of the most interesting as it's an Italian/Spanish co-production, but curiously set in England, and it predates both 'Dawn Of The Dead' and the subsequent Eurozombie boom led by Lucio Fulci et al. The zombies themselves aren't as gruesome and repulsive as Romero or Fulci zombies, but once you get over that you've got yourself one very watchable and entertaining take on the genre. The two leads (Cristina Galbo and 'Autopsy's Ray Lovelock) are both good. They meet while travelling due to a minor accident, become uneasy travelling companions, and subsequently find themselves caught in a nightmare of non-stop zombie action while being pursued by a ruthless cop (Arthur Kennedy - 'Fantastic Voyage') who believes they are Manson-like hippie serial killers. I enjoyed this movie very much and recommend it to fans of 1970s European horror. An unfairly neglected movie that deserves a larger audience.

In Manchester, the owner of an antique shop George (Ray Lovelock) rides his motorcycle to Lake District in the countryside with a couple of antique pieces to a house where his friends are working. When he stops at a gas station, the driver of a Mini Copper Edna (Cristina Galbó) reverses her car and hits his motorcycle. George orders Edna to take him to Lake District to compensate the damage but she asks him to go first to Windermere since she needs to visit her problematic sister. Then she would lend the car to him. George drives Edna to her sister's cottage but they get lost in a dead end road. George leaves Edna in the car and walks to a nearby farm to ask for directions. He meets three men from the Department of Agriculture using an experimental machine to kill insects through ultra-sonic radiation in the range of one mile. Meanwhile Edna is attacked by a strange man and she runs toward George but the man disappears.

In Windermere, Edna's sister Katie (Jeannine Mestre) has an argument with her husband Martin (Jóse Lifante) and he leaves the house to take photos of a waterfall. Katie is addicted in heroin and prepares a shot while Martin is outside. However she is attacked by the same man that attacked her sister and she runs to the field where Martin is. The man hunts her down and kills Martin, and Katie flees and meets Edna and George that are arriving in their car. They call the police and the arrogant and bigoted Inspector (Arthur Kennedy) believes that Katie killed her husband. George and Edna try to find evidence that Katie is innocent and Edna discovers that the attacker is a man that has drowned in the river. George finds an absurd and heads with Edna to the cemetery to see the corpse of the man, and the inspector sends a police officer to follow them. Soon they discover that they are under siege in the cemetery by living dead. Will they succeed to escape from the group of zombies?

"Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" is a great zombie movie directed by Jorge Grau. This is the first movie from this director that I have seen and the beginning of the story shows his concern with the environment, showing the pollution everywhere in the area of London. Ray Lovelock and Cristina Galbó show great chemistry and have good performances and Arthur Kennedy is irritating in the role of a ruthless inspector. This movie was released with several alternate titles, and I bought a used collector's tin from Anchor Bay Entertainment and unfortunately is missing a couple of pages of the booklet. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Não se Deve Profanar o Sono dos Mortos" ("It Shall not Desecrate the Sleep of the Dead")

Note: On 13 September 2015, I saw this film again.

The 1971 giallo "What Have You Done to Solange?" was the film that first turned me on to the abundant charms of Spanish actress Christine Galbo, and I just had to have more. In "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie," an Italian/Spanish coproduction from 1974 directed by Jorge Grau, Galbo plays a redhead but is still oh-so gorgeous. In this one, she accidentally wrecks the motorcycle of vacationing antiques dealer Ray Lovelock in the English countryside, and before long, both of them are playing defense against the horde of reanimated corpses that has been brought to inadvertent life by an experimental, ultrasonic farming device. In one of the DVD's many extras, Grau freely admits, during an interview, the picture's debt to George A. Romero's seminal "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), and this debt is not only obvious with reference to the gut-munching zombies on display here (a fairly ugly, creepy, intelligent and fast-moving bunch, I must say), but also to the film's doubly ironic ending. Galbo is as pretty and appealing as I remembered from "Solange," and American star on the downslide Arthur Kennedy manages to score as a bigoted police officer who's convinced that Galbo and Lovelock are responsible for all the gruesome carnage. The film also features gorgeous photography, some well-done gross-out scenes, a tightly plotted story and better-than-average acting. Some of the action sequences unfortunately take place during the dark of night and in gloomy underground crypts, severely limiting the viewer's visibility, but the film on the whole is a gas, especially during its frenetic final half hour. And yes, I think I will be needing another dose of Christine Galbo very shortly....

This is an outstanding zombie film that instead of going straight for the jugular, piles on the atmosphere and tension...and then goes for the jugular.

Slightly annoying antiques dealer/hippy George leaves the polluted and overcrowded city and heads for the countryside on his motorbike, where he intends to spend the weekend watching the grass grow in the back garden of his cottage. His weekend is ruined when Cristinia Galbo reverses her car into his bike, wrecking it, so the least she can do is give him a ride to his cottage. Cristina soon finds that George is a bit of a gobby smartarse who might have a point, talking as he is about how the powers that be are destroying the Earth. George finds out the Cristina is a neurotic flake who doesn't even know where her sister's house is.

George ends up leaving Cristina in the car to go and ask a farmer for directions. It's at the farm he discovers an experimental machine that is being used for destroying insects and parasites (haven't these folk heard of the food chain?), which he lectures the scientists about in his strangely Zippy-from-Rainbow-like voice. It's about this time that a strange man dripping with water tries to attack Cristina, but when George and the farmer get back to the car, the man is gone. It's weird however how the description of the man reminds the farmer of Old Guthrie, a tramp who drowned in the area recently.

It's dark by the time George and Cristina get to her sister's house. It turns out Cristina's sister is a junky just about to be taken to rehab, and while trying to sneak a fix in the shed she's attacked by Guthrie, which leads to the death of her husband Martin. Enter the cops, especially hard-ass Irish cop Arthur Kennedy, and if there's one thing he hates more than dead bodies, it's hippies! He doesn't buy the story of walking corpses and arrests Cristina's sister after he finds out she's a junky. How are George and Cristina going to prove her innocence?

It takes ages for the first full on zombie attack to occur, but you won't be caring. Every scene in the film is just filled with atmosphere. Martin is killed right in front of his automatic camera that keeps flashing upon the scene of a waterfall. His house is adorned with pictures of his wife having withdrawl symptoms. The local pub has a scabby live owl perched in the hallway. When the zombies do rise up, there aren't that many of them but the sheer terror of the victims comes through live and clear. The zombie rules haven't truly been written in stone either - these zombies are super strong, can take a shot to the head, but really don't like being set on fire.

Grau doesn't skimp on the gore either, especially when zombies rise up in the hospital and attack the receptionist. Best of all is Arthur Kennedy's performance as the copper. He hates George so much that he will not listen to anything he's saying at all, even if it could save lives. This leads to several shocks near the end of the film, as well as the ambiguous ending.

I must admit this is one film I did rush out and buy when it appeared on DVD, and have watched it many a time. It's a good one! The only thing it lacks in comparison to the later Italian zombie film is cheese.

Corpses who seem to have risen from their graves infest an isolated piece of countryside and walk among the living again…Shortsighted and prejudiced critics might easily refer to this as another gem that tries to pick in on the success of George A. Romero's classic `Night of the Living Dead'. On top of that, `Let Sleeping Corpses Lie' is an early 70's Spanish/Italian co-production and those movies automatically get categorized as meaningless garbage. But, if you decide to ignore this movie due to these reasons, it's your loss. You'll miss out on one of the most imaginative and clever zombie films ever made! Jorge Grau's modest horror masterpiece is stuffed with ingenious findings, strong plot-twists and adorable black humor. And surprisingly great acting too, as Ray Lovelock (Autopsy) and Christina Galbo (What have you done to Solange) form a lovely horror couple. They're stuck with each other after a silly accident and continue their trip together. Ending up in a quiet little village, they discover that experiments with ultrasonic agriculture methods have disastrous effects on the nerve systems of primitive life forms, causing babies to act homicidal and the dead to live again. The dumb cops, however, have no ears for the warnings and the Inspector considers the couple to be Bonnie and Clyde-like Satanists. `Let Sleeping Corpses Lie' is an excellent horror film with a lot of style and substance. The film contains a lot less nauseating butchering than you might expect but the few sequences in which zombies are devouring their victims are pretty damn gory. The photography is beautiful and you should be prepared for a few impressive shocks that'll hit you like a ten-ton hammer. Highly recommended to all horror fans!