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Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)

The Good News: When this one came out, everyone was trying to generate the buzz that came from earlier films, and this Spanish film is one of the better ones. The first attack, while being threatening and scary in it’s own right, is a complete influence from the opening attack to those movies, and it plays out pretty much the same as well. It’s very thrilling, and really gets to you. The film also contains another throw- back to another earlier film in that the subliminal themes undercurrent in the film are present in the film. The cause of resurrection for the zombies is blamed on an environmental problem, and the undercurrents gathered from it are directly responsible. We bump up the gore significantly from the previous films, and it makes it much more interesting to see. There is the usual disemboweling, a couple of amputations, and several giant blood-spurts from other kills involved. There’s much more gore in here as well, too much to mention, so it doesn’t need it. Also, this is the main cause from all the zombie action in this film, and we get a large amount of it as well. The entire last half-hour is completely full of action, including an entire part taking place inside a morgue. That just ups the action a lot, and it sends the movie out on a high. Which is exactly what is needed in a film like this. Even better, the zombies get a couple of creepy scenes. The first attack is one, and a later sequence about them rising up from the ground is practically dripping with suspense, and it even gets a cheap jump as well that actually works with the way the movie was heading. There is a lot more, but I can’t spoil anything else.

The Bad News: The film does have two things I wasn’t that impressed with: the zombies, and the detective story. The zombies don’t have a large amount of facial distortion to give them their look, and instead just use the standard make-on the face to create the overall look. Later in the film, they look much better, but there still are the other kind as well. They just don’t look like how zombies should look. Then, the detective story is pretty preposterous, and it doesn’t really gel that well with the rest of the movie. It’s creative and such, but it seems weird to the rest of the movie.