- Year
- 1974
- Country
- Spain · Italy
- Runtime
- 95 min
- Director
- Jorge Grau
- Updated
- 10 Aug 2026
- Obscurity
- known (33/100)
- Also known as
- Don't Open the Window · The Living Dead · Let Sleeping Corpses Lie · Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue
- Banned in
- UK
Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
A DPP video nasty under its UK title The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue.
Spanish-Italian, shot in England, and much smarter than its stablemates.
A Spanish-Italian production shot in the English countryside, and far smarter than most of the cycle. An experimental agricultural device reanimates the local dead, and a bickering pair of strangers get blamed for the killings by a reactionary police inspector who despises them on sight.
The environmental angle and the class-and-generation politics give it real bite, and the location shooting in Manchester and the Lake District looks like nothing else in Euro-horror. The final line is a perfect sour joke.
One of the best zombie films you have probably never seen.
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Written about
- Gut-munchers: the Italian zombie boom, 1979 to 1983
There was no first one. Argento recut Romero, Fulci forged the sequel, and Italy spent four years feeding the British censors.
- Fantaterror: the Spanish horror boom, 1968 to 1976
Two cuts of every film, one for the censor in Madrid and one for the drive-in. Democracy killed the trick in two years.
Filed alongside
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▶ watchcultSugar Hill
Revenge via Haitian zombies. The best of the blaxploitation horror crossovers.
▶ watchcultThe Loreley's Grasp
A Rhine myth relocated to Spain, with a monster that only works in long shot.
▶ watchcultMessiah of Evil
Made by the couple who then wrote American Graffiti. A nightmare that never explains itself.
▶ watchcultThe Living Dead Girl
Rollin's best late film. Melancholy where the Italians were loud.
▶ watchcultThe Ghost Galleon
The Blind Dead put to sea on a model boat in a visible fish tank. The runt of the four.