The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974)

Tagline: “To avoid fainting keep repeating, it’s only a movie…only a movie…only a movie ”
UK Running Time: 92 minutes

Film Quality: 4/5
Gore Content: 3.5/5
Entertainment Value: 4/5
Originality: 4.5/5

Introduction

So what precisely happened in the ten years or so between George A. Romero’s zombie classics ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘Dawn of the Dead’? Other than a few notable efforts by Armando De Ossario and his ‘Blind Dead’ series, not a great deal but the Spanish did contribute one other film that virtually slipped through the net despite introducing us to the social comment that Romeero ran with so impressively. Proving that the zombie is capable of being more than just a shuffling corpse, namely a metaphor for what we as a human race are doing in society, ‘The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue’ (first released on UK video as ‘Don’t Open the Window’) is a surprisingly intelligent and prophetic film that deserves more praise.

In a nutshell

A couple, thrown together after a minor car accident, are accused of murder following the violent death of a local photographer. Protesting their innocence and blaming the crime on a local who died a week earlier, their stories fall on the deaf ears of local police. Could the dead really be coming back to life and how is it all connected to the Department of Agriculture!?!

So what’s good about it?

It has a great deal to say about the way we behave, treat nature and our surroundings and particularly our complete disregard, certainly at the time, about what our chemical experiments are doing to the planet. In this case it is a radioactive pesticide that appears to have the unfortunate bi-product of reanimating the recently deceased. This is an incredible piece of forward thinking from director Jorge Grau and the writers at a time when people were largely unaware or ambivalent to the potential environmental damage caused by things such as aerosols, crop sprays or pollution. More on this later.

Beautiful scenery!

I may be a bit biased, coming from the North of England myself, but the cinematography and scenery is just stunning. Set and filmed partly in the Peak District it lends the film an oddly familiar look for me. The Castleton area is home to some of the most bleak and imposing countryside this side of the Yorkshire Moors. It’s a far cry from Romero’s Pittsburgh or the barren landscape of de Ossario’s Spain. Much like the use of the Yorkshire Moors in ‘An American Werewolf in London’, the Peak District comes across as foreign, alien and far more claustrophobic and foreboding than it should, given its expanse.

The soundtrack is stunning with strange, high pitched oscillator noises and low frequency bass to represent the Department of Agricultures new device. It creates an incredibly eerie atmosphere with ghost-like wails and distorted explosive sound effects accompanying the living dead in the church cemetery scene. The combined effect of this and the, now obligatory, hoarse breathing of the zombies is really quite frightening and that’s before we touch on the visuals.

The living dead themselves are very much like Romero’s creations. They’re the recently deceased so there’s no decomposition, the monstrous aspect of them is that they are very much like us, resembling automatons and that’s what makes them frightening. There’s no emotion or expression in their features, there’s something very uncanny about it and plays on our fears in the same wway we might be unnerved by ventriloquist dummies and mannequins. They resemble human beings but have either grotesque or emotionless features to resemble and mimic human life…to see these things moving towards you of their own accord, staring right at you is something of a primal fear and Grau captures this perfectly. Particularly terrifying is the morgue zombie (above, left) with a scar running from torso to neck, clearly the result of a recent autopsy!

And then we have the gore effects, WAY more extreme than Romero’s first outing with quite a bit of blood, guts and offal flying about, particularly in the second half. The killing of the telephonist especially brings to mind the aftermath of Mrs Menard’s slaying and the killing of Rhodes more than a decade later in Romero’s film in its savagery and the way it dwells on the intestinal offerings. There are a few homages to Romero’s movie, not least the way Guthrie suddenly spots Edna and goes for her and when they discover the mutilated body at the top of the stairs in the church cellar. Yet it also influenced a good few other movies…the climbing of the stepladders to the open grave for example is referenced by Fulci in ‘The House by the Cemetery’

And what about the bad?

Oh there’s plenty! The acting and dubbing is terrible with over-exaggerated accents in abundance, particularly the almost insulting Irish police chief (I'm only surprised they didn't get him to say "To be sure, to be sure"!) and George’s mockney accent that would make Danny Dyer blush. There are also a couple of unintentionally funny scenes, particularly the way George escapes police custody by throwing a tea towel at the copper, reminding me of a scene out of ‘The Naked Gun’.

I have to take issue with the way some of the other zombies seem to come to life. There’s a scene where Guthrie reanimates two corpses by walking up to them and gently putting blood on their eyes. These ghouls are meant to have been created by radiation whereas this suggests an element of voodoo or contamination. Either way, this shows evidence of forethought and intelligence by Guthrie which goes against the ‘pure instinct’ nature of the zombies in every other scene.

No refuge in the Church

Having said that, it is relentlessly grim. Grau manages to throw in zombie babies, insanity, drug abuse, police corruption. All areas of life that you would traditionally see as salvation such as the church, a hospital, the police and even the countryside are places of death with no signs of hope. It has a nihilistic ending very similar to Romero’s landmark debut which sees our hero forced to watch Edna die twice. I’m also not sure it really needed the ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ style ending, the undead possess a strange ‘Jason Vorhees’ style quality of being able to shuffle around faster than people can drive cars when they’re off camera, but it does leave you with at least a small sense of justice.

Any themes?

At a time when the term eco-warrior had probably never been coined, Jorge Grau has produced a cautionary tale, about how our scientific advancements could have an adverse effect on the planet and the way it behaves towards us. He doesn’t do it in a particularly subtle way, George gives the agricultural scientists a hard time at every turn and voices his disapproval of what they’re doing, viewing the use of radioactive waves as cancer causing and abusing nature.

To go alongside we have that brilliant opening montage of cars spewing fumes into the atmosphere, litter on our streets, industrial chimneys belching gases into the air, birds lying dead on the streets…it’s not a subtext, it’s right there on the screen. I do like the artistic touches though, the playful scene right in the middle of that montage where a woman throws off her clothes and runs naked across the street without anyone giving her the time of day. In the context of the film it can be viewed two ways. Is it that we’re so consumed by the technology and destruction of nature around us that we don’t notice one of the most natural things in the world – the naked human form? Or is it that we’re all so dead inside that we ignore the female form completely, capable of bringing life into the world?

Don't count on the police in this film!

There’s a strong anti-establishment feel to the film, particularly within George’s staunchly political, pro-nature character and the portrayal of the police as violent, thuggish and vindictive, failing to believe their story and believing them to be murderers. The Church is seen as a place of death and decay and when Edna is taken to a hospital for treatment she’s strapped to a bed and branded insane. It’s interesting though that through their actions, each institution brings about its own downfall…the police chief in the final few scenes, murdered as a consequence of taking a life, the church is overrun by its own buried dead and the hospital burns to the ground because it fails in its duty to treat Edna.

Release history

This was another to fall victim of the dreaded BBFC’s decision to cut pretty much anything that didn’t keep its intestines on the inside. Just under a minute and a half was removed for its original UK cinema release in 1975 before a pre-cut version known as ‘Don’t Open the Window’ was released by LVC.

The telephonist murder troubled the BBFC

The film was placed on the DPP list and prosecuted in 1983 but was taken off the list less than two years later, at which point the cut cinema release was submitted to the BBFC who insisted on further snips. Consequently Network Distribution put out a version that was missing one minute and 53 seconds of blood, guts and gougings in 1985.

Anchor Bay submitted an uncut version in 2002 and it was passed without any cuts with a few extras and an informative booklet. It has since been re-released a couple of times, including a disappointingly barebones release by Optimum, without any further cuts. It’s crying out for a decent blu ray release in the UK…yes, I’m talking to you Arrow and 88!

Cultural Impact

We’ve already talked about how some of the scenes have influenced the work of Fulci and I suppose as a precursor to ‘Dawn of the Dead’ but it’s hard to gauge its influence. I’d like to think that it helped to usher in the new wave of zombie flicks that came in the wake of ‘Dawn’ and Fulci’s movies and, alongside the Blind Dead films and a couple of half decent US films (I really must watch ‘Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things’ as I’ve heard very good things about it!), it kept the seat warm for Romero to cement his reputation as the zombie king!

Final Thoughts…

I like this film a lot and think it’s seriously underrated. It has no little style, a wonderfully eerie soundtrack, stunning settings and some pretty serious gore. It also anticipates Romero’s social commentary and gives the film a reason for being, instead of a no-brain rip off that is only here to entertain or repulse…it genuinely has something to say. If you’ve not seen it then please do give it a try, it has dated pretty horribly thanks to the haircuts, fashions and cars on display but as an ‘of the time’ slice of gory socio-political zombie mayhem you won’t be disappointed!

Memorable Quote

Police Chief: “I wish the dead could come back to life so that I could kill you again.”

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Night of the Living Dead’, ‘Tombs of the Blind Dead’, ‘Psychomania’, ‘Dawn of the Dead’