Glenn McQuaid's I SELL THE DEAD is a jubilant send-up of Hammer horror - a genre film squarely aimed toward laughs, but with enough scares to keep fans of both satisfied.
The film's staggered plot revolves around a graverobbing duo (Larry Fessenden and Dominic Monaghan), first introduced in the wraparound story. As one of them is beheaded, the other begins to recount their lives together to a strange priest (Ron Perlman, doing his best Darby O'Gill impression) - and thus begins an anthology of tales that ultimately lead back to the film's very first moments.
In the first tale, young Arthur Blake (Daniel Manche) meets Willie Grimes (Fessenden). Desperate to help his starving family, he learns the bodysnatching trade, finds himself indebted to a ghoulish doctor (the wonderful Angus Scrimm), and eventually forming a deep familial bond with Grimes.
In the second story, grown Arthur (Monaghan) and Grimes are on a most peculiar dig: unearthing a garlic-saddled woman with a wooden stake through her heart. Unschooled in such folklore, they remove the items and find themselves face-to-face with the undead. After subduing the creature, they realize that unearthing the strange, supernatural, and altogether unworldly might just be a financial windfall. The only problem, they quickly discover, is that this trade is already handled by a vicious gang of thugs known as The House of Murphy.
And in the final act, Willie and Grimes (along with their new partner, played by the lovely Brenda Cooney) hear stories of a shipwreck that has left a crate containing a zombie washed up a nearby island. They head out to make a quick retrieval, but end up facing off against something far more deadly - The House of Murphy.
For a low budget film, the performances in I SELL THE DEAD are uniformly solid and the decor is a sight to behold. Having shot the feature in America, McQuaid and set decorator Devin Febbroriello do an amazing job of placing the film in a time that never existed, and a unnamed British isle that certainly seems real enough to have existed.
Accompanied by a beautiful, haunting score and a fine supporting cast of lesser-known faces, I SELL THE DEAD is one of the finest genre films to have hit the States in the past decade: a genuinely heartfelt love letter to the films of yesteryear, while still holding its own as solid modern entertainment.
The film's staggered plot revolves around a graverobbing duo (Larry Fessenden and Dominic Monaghan), first introduced in the wraparound story. As one of them is beheaded, the other begins to recount their lives together to a strange priest (Ron Perlman, doing his best Darby O'Gill impression) - and thus begins an anthology of tales that ultimately lead back to the film's very first moments.
In the first tale, young Arthur Blake (Daniel Manche) meets Willie Grimes (Fessenden). Desperate to help his starving family, he learns the bodysnatching trade, finds himself indebted to a ghoulish doctor (the wonderful Angus Scrimm), and eventually forming a deep familial bond with Grimes.
In the second story, grown Arthur (Monaghan) and Grimes are on a most peculiar dig: unearthing a garlic-saddled woman with a wooden stake through her heart. Unschooled in such folklore, they remove the items and find themselves face-to-face with the undead. After subduing the creature, they realize that unearthing the strange, supernatural, and altogether unworldly might just be a financial windfall. The only problem, they quickly discover, is that this trade is already handled by a vicious gang of thugs known as The House of Murphy.
And in the final act, Willie and Grimes (along with their new partner, played by the lovely Brenda Cooney) hear stories of a shipwreck that has left a crate containing a zombie washed up a nearby island. They head out to make a quick retrieval, but end up facing off against something far more deadly - The House of Murphy.
For a low budget film, the performances in I SELL THE DEAD are uniformly solid and the decor is a sight to behold. Having shot the feature in America, McQuaid and set decorator Devin Febbroriello do an amazing job of placing the film in a time that never existed, and a unnamed British isle that certainly seems real enough to have existed.
Accompanied by a beautiful, haunting score and a fine supporting cast of lesser-known faces, I SELL THE DEAD is one of the finest genre films to have hit the States in the past decade: a genuinely heartfelt love letter to the films of yesteryear, while still holding its own as solid modern entertainment.