I have been to literally dozens
of funerals in my life. I’ve probably
been to more funerals than I’ve been to weddings. And I have been going to funerals since I was
just a kid. So we’re clear, I didn’t
seek funerals out and skulk around morgues or anything. My family simply had no problem with
accepting that death is as much a part of life as birth is, and we should
respect that whoever is in the casket is gone now and show that respect to the
deceased and their family by being there and bearing witness as they’re
interred in their final resting place.
Going way back in my family’s history, when someone would pass on their
body would often be kept in the house for viewings and so on. In fact, the house I occupy right now has had
quite a few corpses hanging around in it from time to time. I’m surprised the place isn’t haunted
(wait…did you hear that noise?).
It’s always interesting to me,
then, when I hear from parents who won’t take their children to viewings and/or
funerals. I’m not a parent, so I have no
skin in the game on this, and certainly my opinion is not going to be fully
informed because of that. But I would
like to think that, were I a parent, I wouldn’t have a lot of trepidation about
bringing my kids to a funeral. For the level
of permissiveness I have seen from some parents toward their scions, to not
acclimate them to the concept of death is just odd to me. It’s not the sort of decision I would get in
an argument over, and I get where some parents are coming from with it, so I
don’t fault them, per se. And now you
know where I stand on kids and funerals.
Onward and downward…
Lindsay Finch (Mary Wilcox) likes
to attend wakes, and, once all the other mourners have left, she enjoys kissing
and fondling the corpses being viewed.
Mortician Fred (Timothy Scott)
espies Lindsay’s secret, and he lets her in on one of his own: He (and several compatriots)
are also necrophiliacs, and they often convene at his mortuary to desecrate
corpses together. Meanwhile, Lindsay
meets cute with art gallery owner Alex (Lyle Waggoner) while
attending his brother’s wake, and the two soon form an amorous
relationship. But Alex can’t figure out
why Lindsay won’t consummate with him.
Jacques La Certe’s
Love Me Deadly (aka Secrets Of The Death Room) is simply
bizarre just on its face. To a genre
film lover, this type of film should be on all sorts of favorite movie
lists. But it’s not, and there are
reasons for that, and we’ll get to them later.
The instant this plot is put forth, it is almost impossible to not think
of Joe D’Amato’s sleaze classic Buio
Omega (aka Beyond The Darkness),
though that movie was initially released about six years after this one. Both films deal with necrophilia, but more
than that, they deal with characters who cannot let go of people who were in
their lives, so they turn to necrophilia to satisfy their passions. Further, necrophilia represents a form of
possession for these necrophiles of the most intimate kind, and since the
corpses cannot object or defend themselves, this is also a violation of the people
the deceased once were (there’s a reason it gets lumped under “Desecration of a
Corpse” in most law books). Lindsay’s
issues go back to her deep connection with her father (Michael Pardue). While it is never shown or even implied that
their relationship was ever in any way incestuous (in the flashbacks throughout
the film, Lindsay’s father is only ever shown as coddling toward his daughter),
incestuous is exactly what their relationship became after her dad died. I mean, as well as necrophilic.
Lindsay knows that her desires
are not culturally (or legally) acceptable, so she indulges them in
secret. Also, the filmmakers hold back
on showing her getting completely naked with a dead body, intimating that she
has not taken her psychosis to the next level.
It’s a quasi-chaste version of necrophilia, watered down for some level
of palatability. Conversely, Fred not
only indulges totally in the act, but he kills to acquire his play things. To some extent, Fred can be seen as a cult
leader, the other necrophiles in his sect following his lead. When the group gets together, they not only
want to have sex with a corpse, they want to mutilate it as well. They scratch them, whip them, and stab them,
indicating a more sadomasochistic (read: deviant) angle to their obsession). There is also the implication that the cult
is satanic in nature, though religion is never overtly brought up even
once. Nevertheless, they behave like a
satanic cult from the movies. They wear
dark robes and nothing else. They look
like filthy hippies. They act in unison,
as if performing some sacred ritual. The
idea for a sort of support group for necrophiliacs is interesting, but the only
two who are in any way distinct are Lindsay and Fred, and they are separated by
the line that Fred will cross and Lindsay (up to this point) will not.
La Certe and company do a nice
job of editing the film, especially in their use of transitions. The film flows quite fluidly between present
and past via cutting on action and form cuts.
The best example I can think of is after the scene where Lindsay first
stops by Alex’s gallery to find out about an upcoming showing (and by extension
to stalk him). As she walks away, La
Certe places the camera at street level, showing Lindsay’s legs strolling down
the street from the knees down. We then
cut to the same angle on a younger Lindsay in a flashback segment (which are
almost always differentiated by being monochromatic). The third cut maintains the same angle, but
we’re back to the adult Lindsay. Not
only that, but she is now dressed for one of her little outings and about enter
a funeral home. It’s as smooth a piece
of transitional montage as you can get.
That said, much of the rest of
the film doesn’t rise to this same level, and I feel that a lot (though not
all) of the blame can be placed at the feet of the screenplay (co-written by La
Certe). There are very upbeat (even
risible) montages, replete with jaunty, television-level music, and they are
inserted at the most awkward of times.
Furthermore (and most infuriating for me), once the cult is introduced
to us, they play almost no part whatsoever for much of the film. There is little to no consequence to pretty
much every action the characters make (including and especially murder), and
these are simply some of the dumbest people on the planet, if they can’t pick
up on the sledgehammer-subtle hints being dropped about what’s actually going
on. And did I mention that Lindsay is
borderline infantilistic, to boot? But
again, it’s only when the writers need something to pepper the story up. All of these wild inconsistencies effectively
kill what could have been a fun, sleazy piece of cinema. To be fair, Love Me Deadly isn’t entirely horrible, but it never reaches for
the brass ring that it needed to if it was ever going to be a contender for
greatness. Consequently, I’d classify it
as semi-stiff (cue rim shot).
MVT: I have to admit, it
took a set of stones to produce a film like this in the early Seventies, and
especially to do so in America. So,
credit where it’s due; that this film exists at all is something of a
miracle. But that it doesn’t live up to
its own premise is something of a sin.
Make Or Break: The Make is
the scene where Fred kills a male hustler (played with more than appropriate
levels of histrionics by I.
William Quinn). It’s actually a
pretty graphic and disturbing scene, and the degree of discomfort is only accentuated
by Quinn’s nudity, which provides a squirm-inducing vulnerability for the
proceedings.
Score: 6/10
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