A cult film is a lot like a crush. It shares with infatuation the thrill of discovery, the giddy delusion that the object of your affection has qualities only you can fully discern. The loved one is special because you are special. If only they could see it.
Likewise, the audience at a screening of a cult film is like a conspiracy of romantics, sharing a particular sensibility, delighting in the nod and wink of getting it in the same way; decidedly not like the others. It’s a semi-secret society, pleased with a sense of aesthetic distinction both slightly diminished and reinforced by the presence of kindred spirits. Put another way, it’s a congregation in which every member was once a lone voice in the wilderness.
Aptly enough, CULTPLEX‘s reopening in Manchester is just such a black mass. It’s perhaps only somewhat overstating the case to claim that The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue has become to the city’s Hallowe’en what It’s A Wonderful Life is to a wider, whiter Christmas. Having lain in wait since 1974, and seen release under a number of less Manc-pandering titles, not least Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, it’s slowly asserted its grip on the city’s psyche.
Under the directorship of Italian Jorge Grau, the Deansgate and Piccadilly of the orange-liveried 1970s are fleetingly delineated in an opening sequence as much a public information film as an advert for the tourist board. Surreally, the nicotine crawl of the streets is punctuated not only by foreshadowing commuters in pre-Covid face masks, but by an unexplained streaker whose spontaneous – and gratuitous – nudity does nothing to break the monotony of the city’s post-60s hangover.
It’s the last the audience sees of Manchester, as Ray Lovelock’s dramatically foppish George Meaning kick-starts both his motorcycle and the plot, speeding towards the Lakes and a gentle collision with the translucently pre-Raphaelite Cristina Galbo, whose character is saddled with the decidedly unpoetic name of Edna Simmonds.
Like an augury of Withnail & I, the city-dwellers (Edna’s tragedy is that she hails from London) find themselves unmoored in the Peak District backwaters, conspicuously open to mistrust and suspicion, not least by Arthur Kennedy’s splenetically intolerant police inspector, like Life On Mars‘ Gene Hunt avant la lettre, determined to hammer the two outsiders into the missing pieces of his investigative jigsaw. True enough, the solution to the murders that follow remorselessly in the footsteps of Edna and George is not exactly run-of-the-mill, since it turns out that the dead are traipsing the tourist spots around Castleton, summoned from the hereafter by man’s persistent insistence in meddling with nature.
Throughout, Grau’s direction is thoughtful, the scenes framed beautifully with a fine eye for the disquieting detail, such as the live namesake perched ominously in The Old Owl Hotel. Likewise, the plot – questionable science aside – is well-considered, its subtexts of ecology and authoritarianism timely once again.
What elevates the film into the Elysium of cult is the dialogue and the acting. The former is jarring enough to be learned by heart and hollered at the screen. Presumably at least partly the consequence of film-making in a second language, it’s wonderfully over-stated and – even for the time – eye-wateringly anachronistic; with all the finesse of speech bubbles in a children’s comic. George is often heard hectoring Edna in the manner of a character rolling out his catchphrase on a period sitcom with such elegant phraseology as “don’t get your knickers in a twist”.
Without wishing to be unkind, the quality of the performances underpinning the unlikely lines is likewise somewhat uneven. The presumably dubbed Lovelock’s would-be machismo is compromised by being delivered with the enervated camp of the wonderful Larry Grayson, while Jeannine Mestre’s portrayal of heroin addiction is an hilariously twitchy caricature. Just the same, the punctuating gore itself is genuinely unsettling, so that the audience can never quite feel comfortable in their seats.
As ripe as a pumpkin coming into season, The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue is ripe for rediscovery. If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to join the northern death cult.
By Desmond Bullen, Chief Arts Correspondent
Main image by CULTPLEX
