The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974)

Like Vengeance of the Zombies, Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue is seventies continental zombie film set and partially filmed in the UK.  Which is where any comparison ends.  This Italian/Spanish co-production is a far more effective film, making excellent use of its locations and building up a fair head of tension and suspense in many scenes.  Moreover, it has a far more straightforward plot than Vengeance of the Zombies which unfolds in a far clearer fashion.  Known under multiple titles according to market - Don't Open the Window and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie in the US, for instance - Jorge Grau's film has often been dismissed as simply being a reworking of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.  While clearly inspired by the earlier film, Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue also goes off on several tangents of its own, developing its own zombie mythology and featuring a featuring a far more dynamic structure, eschewing the static siege scenario that takes up most of the narrative of the Romero film in favour of a fluid narrative involving twin investigations by the police and the main protagonists. 

But at its heart, Grau's film shares with Night of the Living Dead the theme of generational conflict, with an older, establishment authority figure being driven by their entrenched prejudices to persecute younger, characters.  While the US film only overtly addresses this at its climax, with a redneck sheriff casually killing the hero, who is black and young, because he assumes that he is one of the living dead, Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue develops this theme throughout most of the film. The central conflict becomes less that of the hero and heroine against the living dead, than that between Arthur Kennedy's reactionary police sergeant, (played with a bizarre 'Oirish' accent) and the two young protagonists, Edna and George (played by Cristina Galbo and Ray Lovelock, respectively), who he suspects are responsible for the spate of gory killings in the Lake District.  To the sergeant, they are clearly guilty as, not only are they young, but they are also outsiders,  In Lovelock's case, his prejudice is heightened by the fact that George has long hair, a beard, comes from London and rides a motorcycle - all of which clearly mark him out as some kind of degenerate hippy.  In reality, as the audience are aware, George actually owns an antiques shop and is clearly highly intelligent, (despite being cocky and abrasive).  Blinded by his preconceptions, the sergeant interprets everything George and Edna do as further proof that they are crazed killers, probably Satanists, to boot.

Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue also expands on the origins of the zombie outbreak.  Whereas Night of the Living Dead vaguely alludes to radiation from a space probe being the root cause, Grau's film provides a more elaborate explanation for its more localised outbreak of the living dead.  Here the culprit is an experimental pest control machine being tested on a local farm by the Ministry of Agriculture.  This uses ultrasonic radiation to kill insects, with the unintended side effect of reanimating the recently dead by stimulating their nervous systems.  As it turns out, it isn't just the dead being affected: new born babies at the local hospital have also become aggressive, biting anyone that comes near them.  While George, with the help of a local doctor, works out the link between the machine and the zombies, nobody will believe him and his attempts to destroy it simply reinforce the sergeant's belief that he is some kind of crazy counter-culture revolutionary.  Another distinctive feature of the zombies of Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, compared to their US predecessors, is the fact that they are far from mindless ghouls, blindly blundering around in search of their next meal.  They exhibit a significant degree of intelligence, apparently deliberately propagating themselves by smearing their blood onto other corpses in order to reanimate them, and using tools to achieve their objectives, (the uprooting of a stone cross from a grave to use as a battering ram against the door the hero and heroine are sheltering behind).  Indeed, the end of the film carries a clear implication that they retain at least some memories of their previous lives and some lingering sense of identity.

The film starts slowly, building up small details before gathering pace as the living dead begin to appear.  Grau handles a number of set-pieces - the tramp/zombie that menaces Edna as she waits for George in the car, the siege at the church, the zombie takeover of the hospital - to good effect, with plenty of tension and suspense.  There's also plenty of quite convincing gore - certainly more convincing that seen in many subsequent Italian zombie films - and surprisingly high production values.  As noted before, Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue features extensive location shooting in the UK, (much of it in the Peak District, despite the film being set in the Lake District), with Grau making the most of some bleakly beautiful and remote looking locations to create a sense of unease as the living dead erupt messily into the landscape.  He also succeeds in creating a sense of isolation for the two protagonists - clearly always outsiders in the local community, divorced from their usual support networks and well out of their urban comfort zone.  The interiors were shot in Spanish studios and, as is often the case, the spelling on the English language signage in the hospital and other buildings is eccentric, to say the least.

While Kennedy's performance is somewhat over the top, not helped by the accent he adopts, he at least speaks with his own voice in the English language version, in contrast to his co-stars who are all dubbed.  The quality of the dubbing varies, with many of the voices well matched to the on screen actors.  Lovelock, however, is given a jarring 'mockney' accent which doesn't really suit either the character or the actor, (Lovelock, an Italian whose father was an English ex-soldier who settled in Italy after the war, actually spoke English, but dubbing by other actors, even in the Italian version, was pretty much de rigeur in the seventies).  Nevertheless, despite this handicap, he turns in a decent enough performance as the never entirely sympathetic hero.  Dalbes fares better in the dubbing stakes and is quite convincing as the troubled heroine as her mental state rapidly unravels in the face of zombie attacks and police persecution.  Of course, despite the title, none of the action actually takes place at the Manchester Morgue, although it is frequently mentioned, (it is the destination for the recently deceased from the local hospital).  That said, Manchester itself does appear in the film, standing in for London in the opening scenes.  This sequence effectively sets the scene for the film, as George motorcycles his way out of the metropolis, surrounded by pollution and the indifference of passers by - the population seem already zombified by modern life, as they go through the repetitive motions of their daily lives.

There's no doubt that Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue is much more than just a knock off of Night of the Living Dead.  In many ways it is a far more accomplished piece of film making that builds on the earlier film's themes to produce its own unique vision.  It is also a lot more sophisticated than the many Italian  Zombie films (also inspired by George Romero's Living Dead films) which followed it in the late seventies and early eighties.  It has earned its status as a cult classic and is well worth seeking out - after many years of unavailability, since 2000 it has appeared in a number of DVD and Blu Ray editions under various of its titles.