THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

Two tourists get lost in the countryside around Manchester and, through a bizarre chain of events, are landed as the chief suspects in a murder investigation. However, unbeknownst to the investigating police officer, the murder was committed, not by the living, by the dead; returned from the grave by a new pesticide method being trialled on nearby farmland.

MY VERDICT:

This film (also known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Do Not Profane the Sleep of the Dead and Don't Open the Window), confusingly shot primarily in Italy, despite being set in and around Manchester, is very average; not excelling in any way or standing, noticeably above the hordes of other Zombie movies. One thing I did really enjoy was the few scenes that play at the very start of the film, as the initial credits roll - there are lots of old city vistas with blowing rubbish and billowing smoke stacks coupled with very eerie scenes of lifeless countryside hills and lonely trees; it's all very unsettling and reminds me of the opening to adaptions of chilling M. R. James ghost stories. As the movie gets going though, you'll learn that the story is primitive and not very believable - talking about recently dead people still having a basic consciousness in the same way that plants do not die immediately once plucked from the ground and how a technology used for farmland pest-control can stimulate this lower form of consciousness and thus, bring them back to life (a unique concept but one that is more than a little outlandish). Oh yes, and corpses can be re-animated by having the blood of the living dabbed on their closed eyelids which does not make much sense at all, even with the offbeat narrative. However, as farmland pest-control is still a hot-topic today, especially so with climate change, maybe there is some merit in such a seemingly flawed story. Other than that, the film borrows a lot of content, direction and ideas from Night of the Living Dead and, despite trying to hide this fact, it never really establishes its own identity. Take its Zombies for example; they smash lights, use tools, rarely moan and recoil from fire, mimicking their behaviour in Night. The dead are not completely the same as in that landmark masterpiece though, as they seem to be able to just walk stiffly in this one, no slow and relentless shuffle forward - disappointing given the film's stalwart desire to copy the rules set down by the original, modern Zombie movie. Nor are the Zombies particularly Zombie-like in appearance; apart from the first encountered Zombie with his demonic red irises, the Zombies just look like normal people, often even without any blood on them or anything to make the grotesque horrors horrible - again, not a terrible blemish on the film's report card but far from outstanding. A big negative for me though is the movie's bizarre choice of accompanying the few Zombies it has (less than ten in total) with a very odd, and quite unpleasant, windy sound - as if air is being blown briskly around a narrow tunnel.