"The Curse of the Living Corpse" (1963) is probably director Del Tenney's best movie (faint praise indeed, with such competition as "The Horror of Party Beach" and "I Eat Your Skin", both 1964). All the main faults lie in Tenney's script, which appears to have been hastily concocted in the most rudimentary fashion (at least he allowed his wife to show as much skin as the censors would allow for its time). For those already familiar with the film, let's examine some of the details: since Roy Scheider is climactically revealed as the disguised killer, he could not be the corpse that awakens in the tomb while the lawyer is still reading the will; the gloved hand that locks the pretty blonde maid in the crypt would seem to be Scheider's, since the corpse is also locked in, and commits the film's first murder; after this, however, there is no evidence that the cowled killer is anyone but Scheider, yet there are no explanations as to the disappearance of the corpse, who is not found in the crypt when the maid's headless body is recovered and later dumped in the bog; if the secret passages included an unknown entrance to the crypt, then Scheider could have locked in the maid, returning via the hidden passage to kill her; after his brother is dragged to a violent death back to the stable, Scheider appears in the living room looking rested and relaxed; a drinking session with the idiot constable gives him the time to murder his fearful mother, but he sneaks in through the second floor window; lastly, Seth is murdered in the crypt despite the fact that all of the men are off on the manhunt; after Seth's murder, Scheider is clearly seen leaving the posse behind to return to the house for a final reckoning with the two remaining women. As one of the previous comments points out, the film does not bear close scrutiny (except by those of us with too much time on our hands), but could have been a classic of the genre rather than just a minor "cult" item notable chiefly as the film debut of Roy Scheider. It must be stated for the record that director Del Tenney made films that look more professional than the works of Ed Wood, Phil Tucker, Jerry Warren, Richard E. Cunha, David L. Hewitt, or Al Adamson.
Review of The Curse of the Living Corpse
