#cristina galbo

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue

I originally saw Jorge Grau’s THE LIVING DEAD AT THE MANCHESTER MORGUE (1974, Shudder) during its U.S. theatrical release as DON’T OPEN THE WINDOW. It’s also been released as LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE, DO NOT PROFANE THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD, DO NOT SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD, ZOMBI 3 and ten other titles. Don’t let that questionable provenance fool you. Although it’s far from the greatest zombie film ever made and has its share of flaws, it’s also far from total monkey dump. It’s got a strong environmental viewpoint, beautiful location photography of the English countryside, a camp performance by an Irish-accented Arthur Kennedy as the world’s dumbest police inspector and the lovely and talented Ray Lovelock one of the hottest hunks in European genre films. Lovelock is an antiques dealer on the way to Windermere when a beautiful redhead (Cristina Galbo) backs into his motorcycle. He dragoons her into giving him a lift, then accompanies her to visit her drug-addicted sister (Jeanine Mestre) in Southgate, an area where experiments with a sonic pesticide have caused the dead to rise and feast on various body parts. Grau contrasts shots of pollution and overcrowding in London with the idyllic countryside to position the deadly sonic pesticide as another step in humanity’s destruction of nature. At one point, Lovelock turns off the car radio when a commentator starts trying to debunk environmental concerns. What did he expect listing to the Vivek Ramaswamy station? The scenes with the zombies are truly frightening, though they may be too gory for some. But the fight scenes are clumsily, almost laughably staged. And though the two male leads are good, Galbo is basically a blank face and Mestre’s depiction of a drug addict is almost ludicrous, like Marion Cotillard channeling Andrea Martin’s greatest hits. But the film has a queasy power, not just because of the gore but also because of the different types of zombies, from the seemingly normal homeless man who starts the apocalypse to an accident survivor with a bandaged head and profuse autopsy scars. You may laugh in a lot of places, but there are images you won’t soon forget.

[ladamarossa]

The House that Screamed (1969)

[kenro199x]

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue AKA Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974)

Synapse Films Blu-Ray 2020

[moviemosaics]

What Have You Done to Solange?

directed by Massimo Dallamano, 1972

[marypickfords]

Cristina Galbó in The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (Jorge Grau, 1974)

[brokehorrorfan]

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue will be released as a three-disc Steelbook Blu-ray/DVD/CD set on September 1 via Synapse Films. Limited to 6,000, it's available for pre-order exclusively from Synapse for $49.95.

Also known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and Don't Open the Window, the 1974 Spanish-Italian zombie film is directed by Jorge Grau and written by Sandro Continenza and Marcello Coscia. Ray Lovelock, Cristina Galbó, and Arthur Kennedy star.

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue has been newly restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative with the real opening and closing credit sequences intact. It features a new 5.1 English stereo surround remix and the original English theatrical mono mix.

In addition to the film on Blu-ray and DVD, a CD of Giuliano Sorgini's soundtrack is included along with a booklet featuring writing from Spanish film scholar Dr. Nicholas Schlegel.

Wes Benscoter designed the new Steelbook cover art. It's housed inside a slipcover featuring the original poster. It comes with a mini-poster of Benscoter's art. A full list of special features can be found below.

Special features:

Two audio commentaries featuring film historians Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson, and Bruce Holecheck

Jorge Grau: Catalonia’s Cult Film King - Featuring-length documentary on director Jorge Grau (Blu-ray only)

Interview with special effects artist Giannetto De Rossi (Blu-ray only)

Giannetto De Rossi Q&A from the Festival of Fantastic Films (Blu-ray only)

Theatrical trailer

TV spots

Radio spots

Also included:

Soundtrack CD composed by Giuliano Sorgini

Booklet featuring writing by Spanish film scholar Dr. Nicholas Schlegel

Mini-poster with artwork by Wes Benscoter

A strange twist of fate brings two young travelers, George (Ray Lovelock) and Edna (Christine Galbo), to a small town where an experimental agricultural machine may be bringing the dead back to life! As zombies infest the area and attack the living, a bullheaded detective (Arthur Kennedy) thinks the couple are Satanists responsible for the local killings. George and Edna have to fight for their lives, and prove their innocence, as they try and stop the impending zombie apocalypse!

[davidosu87]

This was another movie that I watched thanks to Duncan​ and the TPUTS Collective show of Where to Begin with Giallo. This is an interesting giallo film that is mean spirited at the heart. It has some sleaze that I enjoy in this movie and we also get an Ennio Morricone score. This is a good giallo, but if you seen this one, what did you think?

[vintage1981]

Don May, Jr. | Fantasia 2019 | The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue Screening [ 07.28.19 ]

Don May, Jr. (of Synapse Films) came to the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal to present the world premiere of the 4K restoration (from the original 35mm camera negative) of the Spanish / Italian 1974 Zombie movie The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue directed by Jorge Grau and starring Ray Lovelock and Cristina Galbo.

Don also spilled the beans on another classic Spanish genre film he's restoring 1972's Tombs Of The Blind Dead that should come out 2nd quarter of 2020 so stay tuned for that.

[johnnymundano]

What Have You Done To Solange? (Cosa Avete Fatto a Solange?) (1972)

AKA: The Secret of the Green Pins, The School That Couldn't Scream, and Who's Next?

Directed by Massimo Dallamano

Written by Bruno Di Geronimo, Massimo Dallamano

Music by Ennio Morricone

Country: Italy, West Germany

Language: Italian, English

Running Time: 103 minutes

CAST

Fabio Testi as Enrico "Henry" Rosseni

Karin Baal as Herta Rosseni

Joachim Fuchsberger as Inspektor Barth

Günther Stoll as Professor Bascombe

Claudia Butenuth as Brenda Pilchard

Camille Keaton as Solange Beauregard

Cristina Galbó as Elizabeth Seccles (as Christine Galbo)

Maria Monti as Mrs. Erickson

Giancarlo Badessi as Mr. Erickson

Antonio Casale as Mr. Newton

What Have You Done To Solange? is a giallo. What’s a “giallo”? I’m glad you asked; they are 20th Century Italian thrillers with a marked emphasis on sex, violence and style over narrative coherence. Other, more precise definitions may apply but that’ll do for now. It’s not a great example of a giallo because it has a much more sedate visual approach than that of, say,  giallo king Dario Argento, but on the other (black-gloved) hand it compensates with plenty of creepy salaciousness and unpleasantly misogynistic murders. Unlike Argento or Mario Bava (the genre’s progenitor) Dallamano directs as though he’s making an orthodox murder mystery for the most part, with straightforward sets ups and a lack of the dreamlike delirium the more outré giallo entries possess. What Have You Done To Solange? could easily be mistaken for a mainstream ‘70s thriller except for the grubby sexuality capering like a satyr alongside the Sunday afternoon movie elements. But that weird synchronised existence of the uptight alongside the immoral is what the movie seems to be about; the way socially repressed sexuality results in perversion, sometimes of the murderous persuasion. Or maybe it was just the ‘70s; that flasher-in-the-park of a decade that makes everything that bit more rank and vile.

We hear a lot about misogyny these days which is good, or it’s better at least; because in the ‘70s you didn’t hear about it, you lived in it. And What Have You Done To Solange? captures that feeling of misogyny being in the tap water and the air itself perfectly. Our hero, Enrico Rossini (Fabio Testi), is a teacher (a position of authority) but he’s knocking off one of his pupils, Brenda Pilchard (that name, tho! Pilchard!) (Claudia Butenuth),  (so there goes his Ofsted rating) and their initial tryst is interrupted by a did-I-didn’t-I witnessing of a brutal sex murder (both the uncertainty of the witness and the sexual violence are more giallo staples). This puts the teacher in a bit of a pickle when the body is discovered and his pen is found near the scene; the police and his wife being unlikely to see it as a bit of “cheeky fun” unlike his fellow teacher. And he’s set up his schoolgirl fancy in a love pad that has posters of topless ladies adorning the walls, which is a new level of piggishness. In order to clear his name Enrico and his wife, Herta (Karen Ball), investigate, but only after Ms Pilchard is murdered which reunites the estranged couple because, well, life goes on, right? Well, not for Brenda Pilchard, but never mind. The crux of the matter, and the key to proving Enrico’s innocence, will not only be what has been done to Solange, but who did it and why? And who is Solange anyway? 

While the inescapable moral turpitude on show tends to distract from it, Dallamano has, I think, made a daring decision to face head-on some of the sexual horrors of the time. It would have been easy to make the whole thing more palatable by recasting the events as metaphoric horror tomfoolery, perhaps involving a coven and some kind of ritual gone wrong, but What Have You Done To Solange? uses its seediness  to call attention to the often traumatic repercussions of society reducing a medical procedure to a criminal enterprise. Things were tough for chicks during the dirty mac decade, is what it’s saying. Baby.

So if you want to watch a movie where a sex creep is the hero and the awful things that happen to women when misogyny becomes institutionalised are challenged via the mechanism of a whodunit set in a ‘70s London where everyone inexplicably speaks Italian, What Have You Done To Solange? is for you.  However if you want to see a sleazily prurient and intermittently violent movie set in a ‘70s London where everyone inexplicably speaks Italian with a sex creep as the hero, What Have You Done To Solange? is also for you. Either way the guy’s a sex creep.

[lets-kriyazur-rhan-blog]

Cristina Galbo: Movie The Killer must kill again

[ladamarossa]

The House that Screamed (1969)

[grindhousefunhouse]

Don May, Jr. | Fantasia 2019 | The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue Screening

Don May, Jr. (of Synapse Films) came to the 2019 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal to present the world premiere of the 4K restoration (from the original 35mm camera negative) of the Spanish / Italian 1974 Zombie movie "The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue" directed byJorge Grau and starring Ray Lovelock and Cristina Galbo.

Don also spilled the beans on another classic Spanish genre film he's restoring 1972's "Tombs Of The Blind Dead" that should come out 2nd quarter of 2020 sostay tuned for that.

[marypickfords]

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (Jorge Grau, 1974)

[brokehorrorfan]

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue will be released on Blu-ray on June 7 via Synapse Films. The 1974 Spanish-Italian zombie film was previously available on limited edition Steelbook.

Also known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and Don’t Open the Window, Jorge Grau directs from a script by Sandro Continenza and Marcello Coscia. Ray Lovelock, Cristina Galbó, and Arthur Kennedy star.

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue has been newly restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative with the real opening and closing credit sequences intact. It features a new 5.1 English stereo surround remix and the original English theatrical mono mix.

Special features are listed below.

Special features:

Two audio commentaries featuring film historians Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson, and Bruce Holecheck

Jorge Grau: Catalonia’s Cult Film King - Featuring-length documentary on director Jorge Grau

Interview with special effects artist Giannetto De Rossi

Giannetto De Rossi Q&A from the Festival of Fantastic Films

Theatrical trailer

TV spots

Radio spots

A strange twist of fate brings two young travelers, George (Ray Lovelock) and Edna (Christine Galbo), to a small town where an experimental agricultural machine may be bringing the dead back to life! As zombies infest the area and attack the living, a bullheaded detective (Arthur Kennedy) thinks the couple are Satanists responsible for the local killings. George and Edna have to fight for their lives, and prove their innocence, as they try and stop the impending zombie apocalypse!

Pre-order The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue.

[beyond-horror-design]

[soreelflix-blog]

Review: What Have You Done To Solange? (Arrow Video)

Masked Avenger Reviews Arrow Video's Blu-Ray Release of What Have You Done To Solange? Click here to see what the Ninja Thinks of this Mystery Thriller

What Have You Done To Solange? Amazon Price: $34.88

Starring: Camille Keaton, Fabio Testi, Cristina Galbo, Karin Baal, Joachim Fuchsberger

Directed: Massimo Dallamano

Release Date: December 15, 2015

Run Time: 102 Minutes

Format: Blu-Ray Color: Color

Audio: Italian / English Subtitles: English

Distributor: Arrow Video

Synopsis

From director Massimo…