LoveMeDeadly

Love Me Deadly (1973)

This is a strange little movie, which revolves around a character named Lindsay. She has a really strange and unhealthy attraction to funerals. Well not really the funerals so much as the bodies that are the center of attention. Her odd habits bring her into contact with a like-minded group of individuals who like to throw sex parties with the recently deceased as the center of attention. But if that weren’t already creepy enough when there isn’t a body available on their schedule they go out and make one. But just as Lindsay finds her new friends she also meets the love of her life and marries him. Though married life doesn’t agree with her since she can’t consummate it with some one that has a pulse. Eventually her patient husband follows her to one of the meetings and discovers her unsavory habit. How does he handle it? How will Lindsay’s friends deal with her husband discovering their little club?

The answers are not well and violently. This is one of those movies that sound a lot better on the back of the DVD case then it really is. There really isn’t much to the story that spends way too much time establishing Lindsay’s unhealthy relationship with her dead father and not enough time on the clubs she joins. The scenes with them are far more interesting. Early on we are shown the ringleader picking up and killing a victim for one of there parties. While not overly graphic the scene is pretty damn brutal as he embalms the man to death. At that point I thought the movie was going to be pretty killer, but it never comes close to that scene again. Not only that but from there on out the club basically disappears and we are treated to several montages of Lindsay falling in love and trying to be happy. This ends up being really boring stuff. The ending of the movie is anticlimactic and predictable. I saw it coming a good ten or fifteen minutes ahead of time.

The special effects here are limited. There are only three on screen kills, two of which are really tame. The one killing where the man is embalmed is less about the effects and more about a really well acted scene. Still there is a neat embalming needle into the arm that looks pretty sweet. But other than that there isn’t much else to speak of. The music of Love Me Deadly is vintage 70s, especially the theme song. I wouldn’t say it was great music, but I did get a kick out of it.

Based upon the first kill and how creepy the subject of the Lindsay character’s obsession is I had hoped for so much more. What I ended up getting was a mediocre movie with a couple of cool scenes sandwiched around a love story told in montages. While far from the worst movie I’ve seen there is nothing special here at all. This is a rental at best.

2 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer