1. The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue (1974)
Also known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and Don't Open the Window, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue is a very well made Italian-Spanish co-production featuring lots of zombies. It manages to convey a real sense of dread and doom, and it is definitely one of the all time greatest zombie movies. Apparently the producer was obsessed with both Romero's Night of the Living Dead and the city of Manchester - the film HAD to be set in Manchester. Jorge Grau took the directorial reins in order to play out the producer's desires. George gets his motorbike run over by Edna. He was en route to the Lake District and she happens to be going there too, so he grudgingly accepts a ride. Edna wants to stop off to see her heroin addicted sister. On the way, George comes across a bunch of Agricultural department people carrying out an experiment to get rid of insects from crops using an ultrasonic pitch that humans cannot hear. Edna's sister Katie gets into an argument with her husband. A strange man appears and attacks Katie. She manages to get away but the man attacks her husband and kills him. When George and Edna arrive, they go with Katie to the police to report the death, the taciturn Sergeant believes it was Katie who killed her husband. George and Edna book into a hotel and Katie has a complete breakdown and is hospitalised. There are reports from the hospital that new born babies have been abnormally aggressive and are attacking their parents and doctors. The unhelpful Sergeant sends a PC to trail George and Edna. He ends up as zombie chow. George is attacked by zombies and he manages to kill them via fire. He has a strong suspicion that the government experiment with ultra-sonic waves is to blame. George attacks the machine and tries to warn the officials who are so alarmed by his behaviour, they quickly flee the scene. The sergeant finds his PC eviscerated and blames George and Edna, calling them devil worshippers. He orders a shoot to kill policy. The machine is repaired and awakens many corpses - particularly those in the hospital nearby. George goes to the hospital and finds a sedated Edna. The police are in hot pursuit as the living dead rise in the morgue and attack the hospital staff. George uses fire to repel the zombies but it is too late for Edna, who is now a walking stiff. The stupid sergeant shoots George. This is a bad move on his part that comes back to haunt him when George is resurrected as a zombie. The Sergeant gets his just desserts - literally! A genuinely terrifying zombie movie, The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue definitely deserves a bigger following than what it already has. And we must remember that the film was made four years before George Romero's Dawn of the Dead - a film that set the zombie movie blueprint in stone. The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue is therefore more original than the vast majority of zombie movies. The English countryside has never looked so menacing as rural zombies prowl for victims. The gore is very explicit and shocking, and also of a very high quality. The film, in a way, redresses the tragedy of Ben's death in Romero's film. Ben was killed by gunmen after heroically surviving a night of terror and zombie onslaught. His corpse was unceremoniously dumped on a pile of burning bodies. In Manchester Morgue, the hero - George is similarly shot by stupid law enforcement people. But he gets his own back in the end in his incarnation as a flesh hungry ghoul... Ben's death is avenged as well as George's own demise.