#54: Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (Jorge Grau, 1974)

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.

#53: Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (Richard Blackburn, 1973)

Wow. Lemora is something else. I'm going to attempt to express my enthusiasm for this film without giving much away, since some of the pleasure of this under-appreciated low-budget horror film is going into it with little knowledge and not much expectation. It really is unlike anything I've ever seen, though director, co-writer, and supporting actor Richard Blackburn's cinematic and literary influences may tell you something about the tone and form: Luis Bunuel, Val Lewton (producer of 1940s horror classics including Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie), Curtis Harrington (director of experimental films, drive-in horror movies, and schlock TV like Dynasty), Charles Laughton's Night of the Hunter, Fritz Lang's Moonfleet, Victor Halperin's White Zombie, H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth," Arthur Machen's "The White People," Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland novels, James M. Barrie's Peter Pan, and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Additionally, parts of the film have been compared to Night of the Living Dead.
Blackburn and most of his cast and crew were amateurs, and the film is decidedly amateurish. The acting is a little rough and inconsistent at times, the camera setups are occasionally clumsy, and the special effects and makeup are a little on the high school theater side of things. These faults are forgivable, understandable, and lovable, and they actually reinforce the film's strengths by supporting the off-kilter, extended dream atmosphere. What Blackburn's film does right, it does really right. The tone is consistently eerie and nightmarish without any distracting subplots or comic relief (though it is darkly funny in parts), the editing and pacing are sharp and skillful, the actors' faces and movements are cinematic, and many of the images are beautiful, spooky, and unforgettable.

I will give away only the barest of storyline because I want everyone to see this unfairly neglected movie. Set in the Prohibition-era late 1920s or early 1930s in the rural South, Lemora follows a young devout Baptist 13-year-old girl (cult movie legend Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith), the daughter of a notorious gangster on the run, who has been adopted by the reverend and draws a huge crowd at Sunday services (oddly, only women) because of her angelic singing. She sneaks away one night to find her father and forgive him. The perilous journey involves things in the woods and even more menace at the home of Lemora. I'll leave it at that.
Fanboy verdict: This movie is awesome. Seriously awesome.

Some interesting info about the director and his star:
Richard Blackburn had a very short but interesting career in film and TV. Making Lemora with zero experience, but expecting to make a profit because of the popularity of the genre, Blackburn and his producer/co-writer Robert Fern (who unwisely bet his friend that Lemora would make more money than The Godfather) instead almost went bankrupt. The movie tanked in theaters, and Blackburn never directed another film. He did, however, go on to co-write Eating Raoul with Paul Bartel, write and direct an episode of Tales from the Darkside, and act in the sci-fi drama Threshold. Beyond his limited filmography, Blackburn worked as a book editor, writer for the L.A. Weekly and the Village Voice, and compiler of reissues and compilations for Rhino Records.












Star Cheryl Smith, later known as Rainbeaux Smith, worked steadily in the 1970s, and nearly every movie she acted in has become a cult classic. Despite being voluptuous enough to appear in Playboy and sexploitation movies, she convincingly played an innocent 13-year-old girl in Lemora. She had one of the most interesting, expressive faces in film. Her resume includes Evil Knievel; Jonathan Demme's Caged Heat and Melvin and Howard; my favorite cheerleadersploitation movie, Jack Hill's Swinging Cheerleaders; Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise; the Robert Mitchum and Harry Dean Stanton-starring Raymond Chandler adaptation Farewell, My Lovely; schlock "classics" The Incredible Melting Man and Laserblast; and the Cheech & Chong movies Up in Smoke and Nice Dreams. She was also a member of the famous rock group The Runaways, before they were famous. Unfortunately, a heroin habit she picked up in the late 1970s killed her acting career in the early 1980s, and she spent time homeless and in prison. She died of hepatitis, contracted from a dirty needle, in 2002 at the age of 47.
See Lemora.