Archive for the 'I Sell the Dead' Category

One of this year’s quirkier horror offerings is opening in limited release on August 7th and we’ve got the official trailer from distributor IFC Films. Below you can watch the latest preview for I Sell the Dead from director Glenn McQuaid. The film follows Larry Fessenden and Dominic Monaghan, grave robbers who land in all sorts of trouble. Fun stuff – definitely check it out if it comes your way! If it doesn’t reach a theater near you, you can catch it August 12th On Demand.

Source (Click to view the trailer)

One would think that being a grave robber was a hard enough career. But in writer-director Glenn McQuaid’s bumptious horror comedy, “I Sell the Dead,” it’s a one-way ticket to indentured servitude and terrifying encounters with the undead.

Set in a particularly fog-shrouded corner of 19th century Ireland, the film is a buddy story about a pair of no-luck grave robbers, crusty old drunk Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden in fully whiskered, slovenly oaf mode) and impish joker Arthur Blake (a particularly puckish Dominic Monaghan), who discover that successfully stealing corpses is the least of their concerns.

The result is smart, gruesome and inventive enough to more than please niche genre fans who are likely to spread the word to fellow admirers of gallows humor.
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Good news for those waiting to see this Dominic Monaghan-Ron Perlman horror-comedy I Sell the Dead. After touring festival for over a year and leaving their fans wanting, they’ve finally found US distribution, courtesy of IFC Films. IFC plans to release the film this August both theatrically and on Video on Demand services.

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The joy behind this film is right there in the old-time, exploitation-tinged title. The grim undertakings of the storyline – about a pair of grave robbers whose trade turns more and more curious – is undercut by a devious irreverence. Irish writer-director Glenn McQuaid is out to make a horror comedy, in which the main players soon turn into bumbling bits of irony. Yet “I Sell the Dead” sports playful genre inventiveness, in which fans can delight and even outsiders can enjoy.

McQuaid fashions a flashback narrative structure, in which Father Duffy, played by Ron Perlman – that character actor who will inhabit offbeat historical roles forever – visits an imprisoned Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan), who awaits the guillotine for body snatching. While this confessional approach suggests the fatalism of something like “Double Indemnity,” the tone remains slight, thanks to light performances and a kitschy soundtrack.
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I Sell The Dead stars Dominic Monaghan as Arthur Blake, an 18th Century British graverobber. He’s been arrested for his crimes and is now locked up in prison awaiting his judgement, but before he faces the guillotine a priest (played by Ron Perlman) comes to talk to him. In the guise of confessing his sins Arthur brings us all back to when he was taught all about his morbid vocation by his cockney mentor/partner Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden) with whom he provided bodies for the local mad doctor, played by one Angus Scrimm.

I really don’t have to go on, do I? All the genre fans have already just run and bought tickets after reading that.

But it somehow gets better! Not only does this graverobbing duo have to deal with pissed-off relatives and competing body snatchers, they also live in a world populated by ghouls, vampires and zombies… among other things. This all makes their work a helluva lot more dangerous, but also a lot more profitable. After all, what scientist wouldn’t want to have their own Bub to perform tests on? Of course, things soon spiral out of control and our duo goes for one big job too many.
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With a sub-million dollar budget, frames of comic book art and a cast full of character actors, the creators of “I Sell the Dead” seem to be gunning for a “cult classic” tag. This may very well happen thanks to the film’s stellar cinematography and actors’ enthusiastic performances.

The film centers around the misadventures of professional body snatchers Willis Grimes (B-movie producer/actor Larry Fessenden) and Arthur Blake (Dominic Monaghan), who begin to steal supernatural bodies at the behest of a sinister doctor (Angus Scrimm, best known as the Tall Man from “Phantasm”). Grimes is executed for his crimes in the opening of the movie and Blake has only hours before suffering the same fate, although he’s forced to undergo a pre-execution interview with a coarse-talking priest (Ron Perlman).

Director Glenn McQuaid adapted the idea from his short “The Resurrection Apprentice,” which showed at the 2005 Slamdance Film Festival. The short was included in one of many vignettes culled from Blake’s colorful tales that he regales the priest. In fact, much of the movie is shown by flashback—and sometimes flashbacks within those flashbacks. Because of this, the story can feel little anecdotal, but the ghoulishly fantastic scenarios the hapless duo fall into keep the film fun.
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