Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
With Cristina Galbó, Ray Lovelock, Arthur Kennedy.
Italy/Spain/UK, 1975, 16mm, color, 95 min.
In English.
Jorge Grau’s groundbreaking Spanish zombie gore fest Let Sleeping Corpses Lie features an eclectic international cast and a plethora of aliases, 15 in all, including most famously Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue. Set in the English countryside, the film follows a pair of attractive young Londoners who cross paths in the English countryside and ultimately wind up joining forces in an epic battle with the living dead who have been brought back to life by a government designed insect-killing machine. As the number of victims climbs, the two hippies find themselves on the run from both the zombies and the police. Although the zombie film was still evolving in the early 1970’s, Jorge Grau follows the lead of George Romero in using the genre as a vehicle for satirical political comment even as he ramps up the gore significantly.