Part of Music City Mondays
Writer-director Grace Glowicki stars as a wily gravedigger whose stench has left her bereft of amorous suitors. That is, until a horny dandy (co-writer Ben Petrie) with a penchant for her fetid funk enters this vibrantly chiaroscuro picture. The two consummate their love, but when a misbegotten voyage reduces the gravedigger’s lover to a mere severed finger, she feverishly turns to unnatural sciences to concoct a means of literally resurrecting the relationship. And if you know your Mary Shelley, you know that such Promethean malpractice can only go so right, before going so very wrong.
From Sundance to Rotterdam, Glowicki’s wonderfully wackadoo DEAD LOVER has enjoyed a robust film festival run as one of the year’s most quintessential midnight movie experiences. Concocted from a delightfully campy witches’ brew of influences, from British pantomime to German Expressionism, this madcap gothic comedy wears its bleeding, beating heart on the pointy end of its proverbial shovel as it volleys a cavalcade of impish slapstick and DayGlo splatter upon a romantic parable of love conquering over petty inconveniences like body odour, impotency and rigor mortis.
“Writer-director Grace Glowicki keeps surprising the audience and gives much more than they expected…. The visual ingenuity in costumes, art direction and makeup proves DEAD LOVER a singular and strange vision.” —Murtada Elfadl, Variety “Even in such close proximity to Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s THE BRIDE!, it still feels like nothing else.” —Steven Scaife, Slant Magazine
