The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue (1974)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s It About: English zombies being resurrected by a tractor and causing a right mess of things.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• AKA Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Do Not Profane the Sleep of the Dead, and Don’t Open the Window. Where the fuck did they get that last one?
• This scene is focusing on a dumb painting more than the one of Lord Vigo The Carpathian in Ghostbusters 2.
• It seems the movie has taken a pause to address the evils of pollution during the main credits.
• A woman streaks through the streets for no reason at all. As The Beatles once said, I admit it’s getting better.
• I realize that George was heavily inconvenienced when Edna trashed his motorcycle, but now he’s just being a real prick.
• The movie’s title mentions Manchester, but the road signs all say South Gate.
• When Edna tells George not to forget the medicine house; does she mean the chemist or the pharmacy? Fucking metric system.
• This experimental insect killer, to me, looks merely like a red tractor with an oversized white metal-detector.
• Edna is attacked by a zombie the same way Barbara was in Night Of The Living Dead.
• Guthrie the Looney is apparently the cause for all of the shenanigans going on in this town.
• Whatever Katie is about to spike up with, I hope she shares.
• I really wanted the zombie to scream, “my brain hurts!” after Martin gave him a few belts with a rock.
• British zombies even seem more polite than American ones.
• I love how the sergeant pronounces, “headquarters” like “headcarters.”
  

  Folks in these parts take their sweetbreads pretty damn seriously.

• Katie looks like a severely emaciated Penny Flame. That’s for all you porn fans out there.
• Would someone please give Katie a fix? She’s shaking worse than Michael J. Fox.
• The Old Owl Hotel looks almost as inviting as The Slaughtered Lamb Pub.
• Is this a zombie POV shot, or is the cameraman asthmatic?
• You gotta love a mortuary that uses the Slayer font in their advertising.
• Bloody Hell, even the infants in the maternity ward are biting people.
• I think the creepiness level in this movie is directly related to the size and thickness of eyeglasses.
• I just figured out that George looks exactly like Kenny Loggins from the cover to his Keep The Flame album.

• When scientists are accused of creating zombies with their experimental equipment, they will always say that the work they are doing is harmless.
• Zombies don’t register on film now? So vampire rules are being expanded to other supernatural nuisances it seems.
• OK, so if zombies can’t show up on film, why the fuck did Guthrie The Looney get a full page spread with a photo on the front page of the local newspaper?
• Ya know, at the halfway point through a zombie movie – Romero would have had more than one show up by now.
• Only in an English zombie movie can the hero enter a graveyard and ask out loud, “anyone about?”
• Well if you’re going to leave all of your coffin lids slightly ajar, you’re just begging for the undead to take over the town.
• Is that Guthrie again? He’s becoming harder to kill than Seagal.
• These zombies breathe louder than Darth Vader.
• Oh shit, gunshots to the head don’t work.
• Very fortuitous that the heroes lock themselves in a room that had a lovely lunch spread out for them.
• “…you pick a flower, but it goes on living for awhile.” The zombie genre summed up quite brilliantly actually.
• These are zombies you dumb-ass, forget the silver bullets and wooden stakes.
• Finally! Some gut eating. I was worried this movie was rated G.
• How about a little fire scarecrow? We finally learn what stops these fuckers.
  

  No one really understands how bad Antonio Salieri’s last days were.

• George tries to destroy the red tractor that is obviously causing all of this undead shit, yet gets quite annoyed when the fleeing scientists refuse to give him a ride back to town.
• The cops think that Satanists are causing this? Didn’t they read all of our shit from last year? That’s hardly ever the reason.
• There is a severed hand holding on to that door, is Michael Caine making a cameo?
• Edna’s brother-in-law is now a zombie. This is getting serious.
• I’m with George at this point: fuck the police.
• The scientists have repaired the tractor and turned it on again – I sense closure coming.
• I can’t believe George escaped police custody by throwing a wet towel in the face of one of the Bobbies.
• Again with the petrol station, it’s beginning to have more symbolism than Rosebud did.
• The brother-in-law zombie looks like Mr. Vargas from Fast Times.
• Anita and the dime store Christopher Lee doctor finally get themselves perished.
• The asshole sergeant shoots George dead and then wishes he could come back to life so he could kill him again. He has obviously not been paying attention to this movie.
• Zombie George gets his revenge and kills the asshole sergeant while the red tractor starts up yet again. Thankfully, even with that set-up – there is no sequel.
  

  I got my first real harmonica, bought it at the five-and-dime. Played it ’til my fingers bled.

Scare Level: I got scared when I was trying to decipher the warning sign at the petrol station. It says that everything is highly inflammable, but to not smoke and to turn off your engine. So they’re saying to take every precaution for materials that will in no way catch fire? Shouldn’t it be highly non-inflammable? Is it me?

Gore Level: Slightly better than average. Some gut ripping and severed bits here and there.

Nudity Level: The hospital’s telephone switchboard operator gets one of her tits ripped off. I guess that should count.

Best Line: “You’re all the same the lot of you, with your long hair and faggot clothes. Drugs, sex, every sort of filth!” This is England, how can a cigarette have attire that implies homosexuality?

Best Scene: An undead George killing the asshole sergeant who killed him.

Worst Scene: The revelation that not only a fucking tractor activates the zombies in this area, but also the touch of another zombie. With those rules in place, The Walking Dead can now go on for 6 more seasons. Hooray.

Overall: Another Video Nasty that shouldn’t be one. Sure, the gore might give cause for alarm but if you edit that out – this could have easily been a PG rated movie; even in uptight early 80’s England. A bad movie yes, a bad zombie movie yes, and… I’ve run out of steam.

Score: 2 Rather Ill-Mannered Zombies (out of 10)