Graverobbers (1988)

aka Dead Mate

Nora Mae (Elizabeth Mannino) lives a rather sad life. She has managed to upgrade from being a New York prostitute to a Nowhere, USA night shift waitress, but is plagued by gory nightmares, terminal boredom, and an obnoxious condom salesman. Enter John Henry Cox (David Gregory), who waltzes into her diner, acquaints herself with her marital status, and at once proposes marriage, whipping out a proper diamond ring. Having some sort of spell when the ring cuts her finger, Nora says yes to the total stranger with the creepy look, and off the happy (?) couple drive to Henry’s hometown of Newbury (apparently a great place to live forever) in his shiny limousine.

Well, actually, the limousine is not so much a limousine as it is a hearse (Nora knows less about cars than I do, it seems, but then all those Fast & Furious movies had to pay off for me sometime), because Henry turns out to be the town’s mortician. Greeted by the creepy and weird (as well as weirdly acted) local people of importance, the couple is married at once. The wedding night’s rather interesting, Henry insisting on Nora not moving at all. But then, she’s probably had to suffer worse.

The next morning sees Henry giving Nora the grand tour. Most conspicuous is “The Preparation Room”, which she is never to enter. Unlike certain fairy tale wives, she’s even going to hold to that, and instead finds a way to spy on what’s going on inside. What is going on is necrophilia, weird mortuary science (Seabury Quinn to the courtesy phone, please) and tasteful talk about dead bodies not infecting you with AIDS. Turns out many of the townspeople are necrophiliacs, and also undead. Henry does have a tendency to murder his wives, too.

Straw Weisman’s (who is still working as a producer today) Graverobbers is quite the thing. Not necessarily a good thing, but if you’re like me, interested in the late stages of US regional horror filmmaking, or are okay with a film being weird instead of good, certainly a thing of interest.

Tonally, the film is a complete mess, with serious gore, tasteless sleaze like the first necrophily scene, and many a moment where it’s completely unclear what kind of emotion the film is actually trying to evoke crashing into standard thriller woman in peril tropes and a scene about an undead gentleman riding a motorbike. The whole thing has a very off the cuff vibe, as if the writer (hey, it’s Straw Weisman again) had simply jotted down ideas for set pieces, some things obviously borrowed from films deeply out of the film’s league like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death and Dead and Buried, had stuck on a risibly dumb twist ending and called it a movie.

So this is absolutely not a film able to suck anyone in with anything amounting to a consistent mood. Its tone is just too disjointed for this, particularly since most of the humour falls down with the dull thud of a dead body dropping out of a coffin, and the film’s greatest ambition seems to be that of being a black comedy – unless when it is not. The only thing connecting everything is a certain weirdness, a weirdness coming from Weisman’s direction, that clearly tries to be stylish but doesn’t quite seem to know how to get there, and an acting ensemble mostly consisting of one or two credit actors who apparently have even less of a clue of what the film’s actually going for than the people behind the camera and so go off on tangents, speak in monotones or act way too hysterically, depending on the time of the day. And don’t even ask me if Larry Bockius’s (the man playing the Sheriff) face is getting so red because that’s needed to spit out dialogue, he’s having a heart attack on set, or what?

Obviously, little of what’s going on in the narrative makes even a lick of sense even if you accept unexplained undeath and a town of necrophiliacs as par for the course. Basically, it’s Elizabeth Mannino looking very pretty while pointlessly walking around and encountering weird shit. The film’s ending has an excuse for that, of course, but if you’re going the “it’s all been a dream, a vision, or whatever” route, you really need to plan your film with that in mind instead of using it as an excuse for its failings.

All of this does obviously make for a less than satisfying movie if you’re looking for even a lick of sense, but Graverobbers is one of those films that can be very enjoyable if you meet it halfway and just wait and see what kind of weird crap it is going to throw at you next. Suddenly zombies? Sure. Undead biker? Yes! Our heroine suddenly shouting “No more one night stands in hell!” for no reason whatsoever? Yup. And really, watched this way, Graverobbers is seldom not entertaining, making it, par the cult movie rule book, a pretty great movie (though not a good one).