Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is just one of the many titles this Spanish/Italian/British co-production has been given. Here are some others:
Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue
Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead
Don't Open the Window (the inspiration for Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright's fake trailer, Don't, for Grindhouse) (also of note, the opening of a window plays absolutely no part in this film)
Invasion of the Zombies
The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
Zombie 3 (This is the most confusing, since it's not a sequel)
Spanish director Jorge Grau's zombie film was conceived and financed as a Night of the Living Dead rip-off, and, on those terms, it succeeds. It also succeeds as an inessential, entertaining piece of Eurotrash twaddle with a couple of excellent moments. The opening twenty minutes are atmospheric, eerie, and unusual, but the film eventually lines up in lockstep with the post-Romero zombie template, though it adds a few unique developments. Unfortunately, the characters are unlikeable, stupid, and thinly developed, and the pace tends to drag in spots.
Our main character, George, a post-hippie, post-Mod, ill-mannered, self-centered, leather-jacketed biker hipster closes his London curio shop for the weekend, hops on his motorcycle, and navigates through the city traffic and various distractions (including a naked woman streaking around and through the traffic) on his way to the countryside for some R&R with friends. When he stops for gas, a woman at the pump in front of him, Edna, backs into his bike, messing up the tire. A new tire can't be delivered until Monday, so he invites himself into the woman's car and tells her, "I'm driving." She convinces him to drop her at her sister and brother-in-law's country home first, since she and the in-law are about to have her sister institutionalized for heroin addiction. After George snippily and grudgingly accepts, they get lost. George goes off to a farmhouse to ask for directions, where he finds the government doing experiments ... with SCIENCE! You know how this is going to end. Never experiment with science in a horror film. Shit gets fucked up when you do that.
Anyway, the government scientists are using low-level soundwaves to turn the insects against each other as a chemical-free pesticide. Unfortunately, the low-level radiation adversely affects the nervous systems of any low-functioning entities, not just insects. So, within a mile of the experiment, the developing nervous systems of newborns are affected, creating violent, angry babies (my favorite part, though I, and probably most other people, think a baby's nervous system is a lot more complex than the filmmakers do -- they equate it to an ant's nervous system) and the recently dead (WARNING: DUBIOUS SCIENCE AHEAD: whose nervous systems are, of course, still perfunctorily functioning a week after their deaths) pop out of their tombs and graves and start kicking ass.
Needless to say, our motorcycle hipster doesn't believe this at first, and when Edna tells him she was attacked by a zombie while he was getting directions, he patronizingly tells her she was merely scared of being alone at dusk. The female characters are patronized and condescended to throughout the film, and the filmmakers seem to condone and support this condescension.
Anyway, when our pair arrives at the sister's home, the zombie mayhem begins. You probably know most of the rest if you've seen a zombie movie.
I forgot to mention American character actor Arthur Kennedy as the detective. He blusters and hams it up throughout the film, telling our protagonist that he is guilty of the zombie murders because of his "long hair and faggot clothes. It's nothing but sex, drugs, and filth for you people." Will he get his comeuppance?
These are possibly the stupidest characters ever put on film. In one scene, the characters are facing down zombies climbing a ladder. They kick the zombies off the ladder, but never think about kicking the ladder over, even though they don't need to go back down the ladder. In another scene, a policeman decides to run out of his safe hiding place, face down some zombies, and grab his radio to tell the chief detective where he is, even though he radioed his chief and told him where he was when he first arrived. The detective, who has been trying to radio the policeman, grows agitated that he can't reach him. His course of action: Send some backup? Go and check it out? No. Ignore it and do nothing. In another scene, our suspects steal a roll of film that may exonerate them from the police and get it developed themselves. Not suspicious at all. Also, Edna has no idea where her sister's house is, though she lives nearby. Do you know where your siblings live if you live in the same rough geographical area? I'm guessing you probably do.
I'm giving this one a marginal recommendation. I enjoyed it, but I can't say it's anything particularly special. See it if you have time.
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