Save your money for something good and enjoyable

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Following George A. Romero's ground-breaking 'Night of the Living Dead (1968)', a whole new style of horror films arrived. This Italian/Spanish project, in which the title alone gives away its inspiration, is one of the best zombie follow-ups, notorious not least because of its array of titles (including 'Don't Open the Window' and 'Let Sleeping Corpses Lie').The main hero, the fairly objectionable George (Ray Lovelock) seems self-dubbed, and sounding like he is doing a Michael Caine impression. Edna (Christine Galbo) accidentally backs her car into George's motorbike and he has to wait a few days while it is repaired. This means she is then lumbered with his company as she visits her sister Katie (Jeannine Mestre), a struggling drug addict and husband Martin (José Lifante), who becomes the first victim of an apparently reanimated corpse.Galbo is excellent as Edna, who stoically puts up with George's over-bearing chauvinism (SPOILER – her final scene, in which she is newly 'turned' and left to burn, dead-eyed and uncomprehending, her hand held out despairingly to George, is tremendous). Yet George, for all his flaws, makes a captivating and solid lead, especially when pitted against the prejudiced police sergeant (an excellent Arthur Kennedy) – who might seem to spend his time telling everyone his force 'aren't as stupid as you seem to think', but with every utterance, appears to prove that, if anything, the claims are over generous.There are several nicely gruesome, gory moments and a genuine atmosphere of ghoulish jeopardy here, and the pace really builds towards a series of climactic highpoints. Having carefully built-up the growing conflagration involving deadly pesticides, an idiotic police force and a rapidly growing zombie community, the pay-off is splendidly grim. The first zombie is a dead ringer for actor Harry Dean Stanton, but he is soon joined by several others. Their number might be axed or burnt by the resolute heroes, but there are always more to take their place.Jorge Grau directs wonderfully. Filmed in Rome and Madrid, with extensive footage shot in Manchester (including a young lady streaking through the traffic in front of Manchester Cathedral, where no-one takes any notice), many scenes create a terrific snapshot of Britain in the early 1970s, whilst creating a world of living dead, squalid police stations and grainy hospitals. The musical score by Giuliano Sorgini is nicely minimalist and subtly sinister. Apart from the wonderful title, 'The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue' is a masterclass of growing horror and comes strongly recommended.

An Italian/Spanish production, this zombie gut-buster is an outstanding surprise: a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD rip-off which is actually as good as (if not in some ways better) than the film it seeks to cash in on! This atypical movie transcends the usual quality of European rip-offs of major American films by having a complex and thorough plot, complete with a number of interesting plot strands; plenty of twists and unexpected occurrences; a real sense of unpredictability about it in that no member of the cast is "safe"; plus plenty of wit and intelligence in the script, for once, which makes it easy to ignore the dubbing which usually ends up as a cultural boundary for foreign viewers.The acting is top-notch from the cast all around, especially Ray Lovelock who creates a likable yet tough leading man in George, complete with dodgy British accent in the English edition. Cristina Galbo has an underwritten role as the female lead but does what she can, while a number of supporting actors and actresses play surprisingly moving and sympathetic characters, a fact which makes the gory murders all the more harder to take. Acting honours go to Arthur Kennedy as the fascist cop, who is simply brilliant; it's a shame he didn't go on to make his own series as this guy. Now that I would have payed to see! A groovy '70s soundtrack is interspersed with more subtle and horrifying music in the zombie scenes, which also use pulsating noises to disorientate the viewer. Plus that creepy breathing which adds a lot to the physical horror. The makeup effects for the zombies is effectively gruesome (especially that autopsied corpse) and the gore effects by Giannetto de Rossi are every bit as good as his later work for ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS and the like.On top of this, the film makes fine use of the beautiful British countryside for many of its locations, which give it a really picturesque look to counteract the horror on display. From woods to rolling hills to mountains to green fields, this film is beautiful to behold. The unexpected twist ending is another original moment and simply adds to what is already a very frightening and effectively creepy movie. A scene with homicidal babies in a hospital is particularly disturbing, as is the aforementioned cemetery action where the corpses rise from their coffins after being smeared with blood. Packed with incident, plenty of exciting action, gore, good acting and lots of zombies, this is a classic movie which deserves a much bigger audience than it already has - and thankfully, with the recent DVD release of this film in America, it finally seems to be getting the recognition it deserves. Top-notch, exciting stuff, and bravo to director Jorge Grau and his crew in creating such an intense movie experience. Definitely one of my top Spanish movies.

LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE is one of the earliest of the Romero-inspired zombie movies, and it's one of the better ones, at that; it's exceptionally well crafted, and the cinematography is close to Art House quality. the only complaint (and it's a minor one, to be sure) is that it gets off to a rather slow start- but, unlike all too many of these movies, it at least attempts to explain the phenomena (granted, the "explanation" may be a bit far-fetched, but we ARE talking about a zombie movie, after all). The scenes of violence are sometimes as graphic as anything you'll find in a Lucio Fulci movie, but what I found interesting was that the number of the living dead are kept to a minimum during the attacks; this makes the attacks seem much more INTIMATE than what we're used to- something most such movies fail to take into account (the filmmakers tend to overdo the attacks, with hordes of zombies trailing after the victims). Another big plus is the music: it's appropriately spooky.

I hate using the word overrated. It's very derogatory in my opinion, and sounds rather crass as well, so I'll use a more polite term. It's over- praised by Horror fans in my opinion. I actually thought this might end up being something special when I first started this one. It was very atmospheric and has a rather tense first zombie sighting, but then that's where the problems started with me. It moves like molasses. It's very slow moving, and my interest started to wane big time. I also had trouble getting invested into the two lead characters. Cristina Galbó;s whiny performance grated my nerves quickly. I found her to be very unsympathetic in my opinion. Ray Lovelock tries to play it all cool, but he was rather nonchalant and annoying. I didn't care for him at all. Arthur Kennedy is even worse. His performance as the inspector quickly tested my patience. His anger wasn't enjoyable to watch. Chill. The gore is decent, but nothing like you'd see in a lot of zombie flicks. The zombies themselves are actually pretty creepy; too bad the movie is so boringFinal Thoughts: This tries to rely on atmosphere, but it failed miserably. The slow pace, the grating characters, and overall lack of thrills sink this one. It seems to have a big cult following, so maybe it's just me…4/10