Love Me Deadly

This steaming-hot slice of 70s grindhouse bliss denotes a lovely young woman(Mary Charlotte Wilcox - BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT, 1971) coming to terms with her compulsive longing for intimacy...with deceased men(um...does rigor-mortis set in down there?). Through frequent off-hand visits to the local mortuary, she networks into a sub-rosa society of like-minded individuals who are more than eager to bring her "into the fold". Unfortunately, her husband(CAROL BURNETT SHOW alum Lyle Waggoner) is unaware of her warped desires, and can't understand why he's not "getting any".

The key issue making LOVE ME DEADLY such a memorably divergent trinket is the prudent sensitivity with which it approaches its grotesque premise. It plays like a schmaltzy, melodramatic LIFETIME CHANNEL movie with necrophilia in place of the customary, commiserative "disease-of-the-week" topic...never has a film been so characteristically at-odds with itself. Amazingly, this ill-advised wonder-work actually delivers in an all-wrong and rather dishonorable sort of way...it's not a great movie, critically speaking, or even an especially GOOD movie...but considering the unsavory subject-matter at hand, it's a surprisingly groomed and buttoned-down production which takes itself quite seriously(and for sheer novelty, what more could you possibly hope for?).

5.5/10