‘A hunger from beyond the grave!’
Love Me Deadly is a 1972 horror film directed by Jaques Lacrete from a screenplay co-written with producer Buck Rogers, based on a story by Robert Cleere and Roger Wall. It stars Mary Charlotte Wilcox (Beast of the Yellow Night; Psychic Killer), Lyle Waggoner (Murder Weapon; Dream a Little Evil), Christopher Stone (The Howling; Cujo), Timothy Scott (Monster Squad TV series) and Michael Pardue.
Plot teaser:
Attractive Lindsay Finch (Mary Charlotte Wilcox) has a habit of dressing in mourning and attending wakes for men she never knew. When everyone else leaves, she kneels before the coffins and kisses the corpses passionately. However, at the many parties she holds at her house, she shows no interest in any of the (living) men. She is also fixated with her deceased father (Michael Pardue), frequently daydreaming about her childhood with him and putting her hair in pigtails to visit his grave.
Her friend Wade Farrow (Christopher Stone) is romantically interested in her, but she rejects his affections. Meanwhile, mortician Fred McSweeney (Timothy Scott) notices Lindsay’s attendance at the wakes and, although she won’t admit to her secret passion, he recognises her as a kindred spirit.
McSweeney has a Satanic coven that meets after hours in the mortuary for necrophilic orgies with the latest cadavers…
Buy via Amazon.com
Reviews:
” … mostly a camp-fest directed by someone who obviously had little knowledge of the horror genre and no film experience whatsoever. However, this doesn’t mean that it’s not a watchable time capsule curio, and the backdrop of early 1970s Southern California is just as interesting as the actors themselves. The sight of statuesque Mary Wilcox kissing actors pretending to be corpses while not trying to crack a welcomed smile is amusing, and this is about as intense as her necrophilic activities get.” George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In
“While a good part of the movie is devoted to a pretty standard, sexless romance between funeral-haunting rich-bitch heroine Lindsay (Mary Wilcox) and humpy-yet-bland suitor Alex (Waggoner, who must still be cursing his agents to this day for this role), it’s punctuated with enough nastiness (attempted date-rape, corpse orgies, aforementioned crocheted ensembles) to keep you suitably off-balance.” Camp Blood
“Sleaze fan-addicts will likely be disappointed in this exercise of sex with the living and the dead. The storyline has so much going for it, but the director wastes far too many opportunities for me to recommend this to anyone other than die hard 70’s horror film completists.” Cool Ass Cinema
“As in Psycho–the film Love Me Deadly wants so desperately to match in terms of “shock value”–director Lacerte offers a full psycho-pathological post-mortem toward the end of the story. But who cares, really? Hitchcock’s decision to spend the last ten minutes of Psycho “diagnosing” Norman is the film’s one stumble, and the device is even less convincing here.” Ludic Despair
Wikipedia | IMDb | Image credits: Cool Ass Cinema | Ad mats courtesy of Raleigh Bronkowski via the Psychotronic Movies Facebook page
